Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Washington DCDecember 15, 2014About 18 miles from the Zocalo as the crow flies from the center of Mexico City if convoluted ride on three of the city’s metro lines (for about 30 cents) takes you to Buenavista Station this was once the main inter-urban train station in the city before national passenger service fell by the wayside in the wake of the rail privatization It's much more a mall than a train station at this point though it remains my entry point into and out of the city proper a forty minute ride on the Tren Suburbano (for about a dollar) takes you far to the north across the border between the capital’s Federal District into the adjacent State of Mexico and finally to the station at Cuautitlán more shopping center on stilts than transit terminal Cuautitlán station sits above the freight trains and a staging area for a small flotilla of shared van-buses you can find a small piece of seat cushion in one of these peseros to carry you home to outlying points even further north The walk from the station to my home is only about 40 minutes but in the face of a wall of freight tracks if unquantifiable feeling of unfriendliness to pedestrians My bus drops me off about 10 minutes later right in front of my house; there are no official stops and they’ll drop you more or less where you need and the homes here aren’t so dissimilar to those in the more historically branded Haciendas Cuautitlán or the generically styled La Guadalupana to the other side “La Toscana,” is still selling allegedly-Italianate homes if anyone is interested.) Developed as whole units by large development companies like Casas Geo or Consorcio Ara each entire neighborhood made up of only one or two designs the fanciful name of my own neighborhood means that the peseros to my development have a nice little star on the sign designating its destination [@portabletext/react] Unknown block type "span" specify a component for it in the `components.types` prop Not that there was ever much of a chance of innovative design in the budget and some of the funds available to help purchase them are provided by the federal agency Infonavit—the Insituto del Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores or the National Institute for Workers Housing Infonavit guarantees millions of mortgages throughout Mexico—some 70% of all housing loans in the country—and has therefore enabled a boom of new single-family homes In a city where the median household income struggles to break through $10,000 U.S. the homes had to be priced to be affordable the feeling is different from much of the rest of the city The street I live on is the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare before it peters out to a rough dirt road a block further down and though it’s certainly the most populated space in the neighborhood commercial core of Cuautitlán a few miles away save for a couple teenager navigating the speed bumps on their bikes blasting tinny music from a phone and dodging the last handful of peseros for the night like the perhaps more journalistically exciting (and dangerous) informal settlements to the east of the city But this is a new phenomenon for Mexico as well, as indeed it is for much of the world The couple that owns my house are from Iztapalapa and Milpa Alta respectively—outlying districts in their own ways but nothing like a suburb in the way that I know it This is not to say that Cuautitlán feels familiar; it's easy to feel isolated I’m tempted to chalk it up to being an outsider here but I think that lack of familiarity is perhaps a part of the suburban experience as well Hoping to meet some more people on the block I asked my landlord if he knew anyone in the area but after five years living on the block and driving a cab at the other end of the commuter train he hadn’t yet gotten to know any of the other Galaxians About The National Geographic SocietyThe National Geographic Society is a global nonprofit organization that uses the power of science education and storytelling to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world National Geographic has pushed the boundaries of exploration investing in bold people and transformative ideas providing more than 15,000 grants for work across all seven continents reaching 3 million students each year through education offerings and engaging audiences around the globe through signature experiences To learn more, visit www.nationalgeographic.org or follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. National Geographic Headquarters 1145 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20036 Rob McKenzie is a writer and former auto worker at the Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant in St. Paul, Minn., where he worked as an assembler, industrial electrician, and then as a full-time union representative for the United Auto Workers (UAW) until the plant closed in 2011 During his time as a steward at the Twin Cities plant in 1990 news hit of a deadly attack on a Ford plant in Cuautitlán The autoworkers in Cuautitlán were part of a radicalizing union reform movement due to their union’s management colluding with the company to undermine them The workers were demonstrating for improved pay when a group of 300 unidentified men many of them local gang members and petty criminals and attacked the workers—leaving one worker autoworkers in Minnesota and across the United States stood in solidarity with the Ford Cuautitlán workers Local chapters of the UAW invited representatives of the Mexican auto worker reform movement to their union halls to speak and wore bands around their arms to honor the death of Nigmo the official narrative never provided McKenzie with closure and haunted him for years to come until his retirement when he decided to dedicate his time to investigating the truth of the attack at Ford Cuautitlán and who was really behind it.  McKenzie initially thought the project would be a five-page-long research paper. Instead, he wrote the book El Golpe: US Labor, the CIA and the Coup at Ford in Mexico, authored with historian, Patrick Dunne. Published in 2022 by Pluto Press the book is essential reading for anyone in the labor movement looking to learn more about the foreign policy of the U.S The central argument of El Golpe is that the deadly attack on the Cuautitlán workers was tied to the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) a wing of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) that funded by the U.S McKenzie hypothesizes that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) played a big—and overlooked—role in steering AIFLD as it schemed behind the scenes to stomp out radical labor and social movements in British Guiana As labor historian Jeff Schuhrke noted in his review of the book for Jacobin “Despite his dogged research—which included issuing a plethora of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and interviews with retired U.S labor officials—McKenzie did not find a ‘smoking gun’ undeniably proving either AIFLD or the CIA’s participation in the events in Cuautitlán But he did discover a troubling amount of circumstantial evidence.”  the corrupt Federation of Mexican Workers (CTM) and Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which all had a stake in smoothly ushering in NAFTA a 1994 trade agreement that promoted free trade between Mexico and squashing burgeoning workers movements in the Mexican auto industry.  was especially close with AIFLD; Uriarte regularly met with AIFLD in the years leading up to the attack for some on and off record meetings and served as a go-between the Mexican union and the American intelligence.  on the morning of the attack on the Ford Cuautitlán workers Hector Uriarte was seen with Wallace de la Mancha a notorious hitman who had a long history of working for both the CIA and the PRI to intimidate Wallace de la Mancha had a history of smaller scale hits the onslaught at Ford Cuautitlán involved 300 attackers indicating that he was involved with a larger and more powerful entity when some of the attackers were caught and questioned by Mexican authorities they admitted to being contracted by Hector Uriarte Uriarte was suspected by the workers to have been the only person who could have pulled off this attack considering the attackers had infiltrated locked areas of the plant Someone from the inside was clearly aiding them The investigation into the violent attack on the Ford Cuautitlán workers was marred with corruption and many of the attackers were never prosecuted or were able to avoid real consequences McKenzie was determined to dig into this history and what he finds is concerning for anyone who cares about building a strong labor movement that is not confined by borders McKenzie emphasizes that his research comes from a place of valuing the integrity of the labor movement and he hopes that his findings are used to account for past mistakes in order to not repeat them in the future his commitment to the betterment of the labor movement is clear.  From United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America denouncing the war in Vietnam in 1964 to the International Longshore & Warehouse Union opposing the Iraq War in 2008 McKenzie is one voice in a growing legacy of labor leaders demanding accountability for American labor’s complicity in foreign policy atrocities Workday Magazine spoke with McKenzie about how the labor movement must reckon with the past in order to move forward the experience of working in auto manufacturing through the onset of NAFTA This interview has been edited for clarity Rob McKenzie: I knew about this attack that had taken place on these workers at the Ford plant in Mexico in 1990 I had heard rumors that this had been the CIA and that a labor front group called the American Institute for Free Labor Development had been involved.  I was thinking it’d be a four or five page paper and I would need to get some academic help to do that I realized that no labor historian had done a history of the AIFLD I realized the AFL-CIO had never acknowledged or accounted for their relationship with the CIA in the Cold War So I thought that was something I had to look at and define which is the first four chapters of the book.  I think I really found out what happened in Mexico and what happened in the plant It was a fairly complicated situation politically in Mexico and there were a number of forces working together to crush a reform movement in Mexico to the detriment of not only Mexicans but American workers too McKenzie: There’s no question in my mind the CIA was involved extensively within labor that they were running AFL-CIO foreign policy directly with agents during the Cold War They were also active in suppressing dissent in labor over foreign policy this relationship led to the defeat of a reform movement led to the pouring of manufacturing work into low-wage Mexico labor participated in their own demise by their activities around Mexico I was thinking I wouldn’t have this much controversy I didn’t have any career to lose or threaten So I just went on to write what I believed to be true and what I felt I could verify through the research Most of the union activists I knew were just appalled by this There was a lot of support for this reform movement in our local union and I think there would have been in other UAW local unions if the issues had been brought to them We had an armband day where almost everybody wore a black armband to commemorate the worker who was killed in this Ford plant sending people down there to moderate union elections and bringing some of the workers up to Minnesota That all had to be approved and voted on by the local and there was a great deal of support for that activity McKenzie: It’s been a few years now since I’ve been active in labor that the people who are in there now have grown up under NAFTA and have just grown up with all these jobs being in Mexico They didn’t experience the loss that people in my generation saw but in terms of  specifically how that’s affected them—there needs to be some education done in labor on these issues McKenzie: People could really feel the jobs slipping away they bring hundreds of thousands of parts to the assembly line And then people would put them on the vehicles or put the vehicles together I remember the first time someone saw parts had been made in Mexico people realized that these jobs were disappearing And you could see factories closing all over the country We really went through a period of deindustrialization And then along with that de-unionization.  McKenzie: One of the real weaknesses of labor that I’ve seen over my life is an inability to critically examine the stakes You can point to a lot of places where this has really hurt us you’re just stuck in a circular trap of chasing your tail and never really breaking free of these past mistakes.  A healthy labor movement has criticism and dissent we’ve come a long way back—there really was genuine debate but the labor movement today is really weakened I don’t think you’re gonna have a hard time convincing me there’s somebody more concerned about the future of labor than me I think there are people in labor who think we had to do those things during the Cold War and it was correct to do those things.” So that’s a debate that needs to take place McKenzie: I think that’s one of the real lessons of this—how international solidarity isn’t just an ethical type of thing The only thing that was going to slow the loss of U.S manufacturing jobs to Mexico was to improve the wages and conditions in Mexico In every country in this international globalized economy you really need to cooperate with workers and other countries and not compete If I could help current labor people learn any lesson it is the critical importance for pursuing international solidarity when it’s so easy to transfer work and jobs and in all sorts of fields now It would take local unions and state federations demanding that they do that and asking questions It’s hard to defend the policy if we want to keep the secret which is a position that’s hard to defend in public when the spotlight is on it It just takes some people willing to speak out If you look at the 1987 Minnesota AFL-CIO convention where they passed the resolution against military aid to the Contras People had to really stick their neck out and spent months working around the issue.  McKenzie: The problem is a lot of people are dying off Labor historians have really missed an opportunity to interview these people and record it It’s just a shame that more isn’t being done to record their personal recollections and they may have personal documents about this stuff too.  I know a lot of the UAW leaders are very supportive of the idea of solidarity with the Mexican workers In an In These Times interview with Shawn Fain So I think there’s a lot of opportunity to do something there But unless you can do something to stabilize the wages and equalize the wages on the border militancy is not going to be an answer in itself You do organize the unorganized auto workers in the country We need to do something to improve the wages and conditions in Mexico Unless you understand how we got where we’re at it’s very hard to find the way forward There is definitely a more militant mood among American workers In order to find a way forward for the auto workers we really need to study the past and see what things we could have done better I think that’s really important to navigate the way forward.  Isabela is the Senior Associate Editor for Workday Magazine An argument for public memorialization as a path through the crises of capitalism An interview with the author of ‘Blue-Collar Empire,’ a forthcoming book that uncovers the AFL-CIO’s Cold War-era involvement in undermining left-wing and anti-imperialist labor movements abroad A conversation with a labor journalist and author eager to see labor seize on the post-pandemic surge of union enthusiasm Get the latest on worker culture and power STATE OF MEXICO – Ford announced the production of the 150,000th Mustang® Mach-E® unit at the Cuautitlán Izcalli Assembly and Stamping Plant in the State of Mexico since production began nearly two years ago This is a significant milestone as the company scales electric vehicle production to a target of 600,000 units annually by the end of 2023 and more than 2 million annually by 2026 Most of Mustang Mach-E's growth to date has come from customers who have replaced an internal combustion vehicle with an electric vehicle (8 out of 10 U.S customers and 9 out of 10 European customers) demonstrating that Ford is creating electric vehicles that meet customer needs Mustang Mach-E will be available in 37 countries by 2023 up from 22 in the first year of production Brazil and Argentina are among the latest markets added to the Mustang Mach-E "stable." The global growth comes as Ford upgrades the Cuautitlan Stamping and Assembly Plant to support even more customers and markets electric vehicle sales thanks to strong demand for Mustang Mach-E We’re in the business of providing relevant information through print and electronic media organizing events to bring industrial value chain actors together and services to create new business relationships Our goal is to improve our clients’ competitiveness This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page MEXICO – The Cuautitlan-Tultitlan-Tepotzotlan (CTT) corridor has not only positioned itself as the largest and most dynamic of the nine that make up the industrial market of the Valley of Mexico but has also positioned itself as the most important logistics hub in the country The consulting firm reported that currently the region of the Valley of Mexico ranks as the largest in the country in terms of rentable area since it has totaled 14.3 million square meters (m²) at the close of the third quarter of 2021 70% are located in the CTT corridor that contains about 8.4 m² "The gross absorption recorded from January to September 2021 in the CTT corridor was 590,438 square meters representing 71% of the gross absorption recorded in the entire market in the region as 836,128 square meters were marketed in this period 5% higher than what was recorded during the entire 2020," the company's new report added at the end of the third quarter of the year 224,365 square meters were developed throughout the Valley of Mexico market 67% of which are located in the CTT corridor with 148,687 square meters in five buildings to be delivered before the first quarter of 2022 it is expected that the CTT industrial corridor will continue to show a positive trend in the market and conclude with great dynamism in 2021 The other eight corridors in the zone are Centro will be assembled at the Cuautitlán Izcalli plant the Mexican Governor Alfredo Del Mazo Maza pointed out that with this new electric car the automotive giant shows its innovation in processes and designs a very important day for Mexico and a more important day for the State of Mexico because here the first 100% electric Ford vehicle is being manufactured for the whole world " Del Mazo also reported that this plant increased its capacities and said that the new Mustang Mach-E becomes the first large-scale step towards the manufacture of vehicles that do not depend on gasoline in the country "Production begins here in Cuautitlán Izcalli I thank Ford very much because it has had confidence in the State of Mexico this facility that also celebrates 56 years as a plant but was transformed to become this first one that manufactures the first electric car of Ford and that from here will also be exporting to the United States and in 20 countries in Europe,” he emphasized the Mexican governor recognized this company because it encourages the hiring of women and promotes gender equality within its work centers "I also want to acknowledge that jobs are being created an important part of the engineering development that is being carried out is done with Mexican engineers Alfredo Del Mazo made a test drive of a Ford Mustang Mach-E inside the assembly plant pastor of Our Lady of Carmen Parish in Cuautitlan Izcalli was stabbed to death in his parish April 18 He is pictured with two unidentified women in 2015 in Mexico City crop-20180420T1504-17089-CNS-MEXICO-PRIEST-STABBED.jpg MEXICO CITY — Yet another Mexican Catholic priest has been murdered in his parish — the second such lethal attack against clergy in the country in less than a week Father Juan Miguel Contreras Garcia was shot dead in the St Pius of Pietrelcina parish in the Guadalajara suburb of Tlajomulco de Zuniga An April 20 statement from the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said Father Contreras was confronted and shot in the sacristy Two assailants subsequently fled in a compact car The attack on Father Contreras followed the April 18 murder of Father Ruben Alcantara Diaz in the northern Mexico City suburb of Cuautitlan Izcalli the Diocese of Izcalli said in a short statement The Mexican bishops’ conference issued a call for action on the violence consuming the country and impacting the church “We are making an urgent call to construct a culture of peace and reconciliation These regrettable occurrences call all of us to a much deeper and more sincere conversion It’s time to look honestly at our culture and society in order to ask ourselves how we lost respect for life and the sacred,” the conference said in an April 20 statement “We ask the Catholic faithful to accompany their priests with prayer in the pastoral service of the communities they are entrusted to,” the statement continued “We ask those that do not appreciate and take away life for any reason to look up to the kind face of God was accosted by the assailant and was involved in a discussion prior to the attack The assailant alleged abuse in his shouts and fled the scene Attacks on clergy have become common in Mexico where the homicide rate reached historic high levels in 2017 and the violence consuming large swaths of the country has not spared the Catholic Church The Catholic Multimedia Center has counted 23 priests killed in Mexico since December 2012 when the six-year administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto began Arlington Catholic Herald200 N. Glebe Rd.Suite 615Arlington, VA 22203703-841-2590800-377-0511 Website Design and Development by New Target STATE OF MEXICO – Isuzu Motors de Mexico achieved the assembly of the 10,000th truck at its plant in Cuautitlan Izcalli Isuzu's Director of Production and After Sales was in charge of giving the starting signal to the 10,000th unit which for the moment has not been assigned to a particular customer said he was very satisfied with the efforts of all the plant's workers who continued to work practically throughout the pandemic despite the difficulties and risks involved The Isuzu plant is located in the San Martin Obispo industrial park in Cuautitlan Izcalli The plant began operations in 2009 and assembles the ELF 600 The plant has a production capacity of 800 units per year Ford has announced a significant increase in production for its all-electric Mustang Mach-E Ford wants to achieve an annual output of more than 200,000 units of the electric car That would be three times as many as were produced in 2021 so these vehicles are not affected by Farley’s statements In order to create the capacities in Cuautitlan for these increased numbers Ford apparently has to adjust the production planning for the Mexican plant According to information from Automotive News the US manufacturer apparently wants to withdraw the planned production of two electric SUV series from Mexico The all-electric Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator are to be built at another location yet to be determined – and significantly later than originally planned: From late 2024 instead of mid-2023 Automotive News refers to a Ford document that was apparently sent to suppliers The models developed under the code names CDX746 and CDX747 are to go into series production as the U759 and U760 with a planned start of production in December 2024 The new planning for the two electric SUVs had been foreshadowed: Lisa Drake had already spoken about the considerations in an interview last week “We had previously contemplated building an additional electric vehicle down there in Cuautitlan but our first priority right now is to scale production of the Mach-E given that demand,” Drake said “Our production system is very flexible by design and we’ll utilize multiple North American plants as we build out our future North American lineup.” The executive did not hint at where the Explorer and Aviator might be built Ford plans to use cells from SK Innovation for the F-150 Lightning These are to be produced at a factory in the US state of Georgia Ford and SKI have agreed to set up a battery joint venture the production of its own battery cells will not start before 2025 – until then Ford will have to rely on purchased cells Ford has raised the price of the Mustang Mach-E by $1,000 with the final price depending on the variant as part of the move to the 2022 model year I agree with the Privacy policy electrive has been following the development of electric mobility with journalistic passion and expertise since 2013. As the industry's leading trade media, we offer comprehensive coverage of the highest quality — as a central platform for the rapid development of this technology. With news, background information, driving reports, interviews, videos and advertising messages. by Sean O'Kane FacebookThreadsIllustration by Alex Castro / The VergeFord is delaying the launch of its forthcoming all-electric Explorer SUV from mid-2023 to at least December 2024, according to Automotive News The rollout of an all-electric Lincoln Aviator built on the same shared Ford EV platform is also being delayed along that same timeframe Ford also no longer plans to build the two EVs at its factory in Cuautitlan, Mexico, where it makes the Mustang Mach-E, according to the report. The company confirmed the vehicles in May Ford’s director of EV communications declined to confirm the delay but said that Ford now plans to use the entire plant in Cuautitlan for Mach-E production “We have unprecedented demand for Mustang Mach-E and we are going to scale production quickly to meet demand We are now planning to utilize the entire Cuautitlan plant for production of Mach-E,” Bergg wrote in an email She added that Ford now plans to make as many as 200,000 Mach-Es per year by 2023 The delay means that it now may be a while before there’s a third electric vehicle in Ford’s North American lineup, following the Mach-E and the F-150 Lightning. CEO Jim Farley has hinted at all-electric versions of the new Bronco SUV and Maverick compact pickup though the company hasn’t said when those would be built 2 electric vehicle maker in North America within the next couple years and then challenge for No Correction: This story previously stated Ford was working on a mid-size electric SUV similar to the Edge based on a 2019 report, but that vehicle wound up being the Explorer EV. We’ve removed the reference to the Edge and regret the error. A weekly newsletter by David Pierce designed to tell you everything you need to download, watch, read, listen to, and explore that fits in The Verge’s universe.