Confederation of Mexican Workers - Founding The CTM

Founding The CTM

The CTM was founded in 1936, under President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río. Cárdenas' predecessors had relied heavily on the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana, or "CROM", in order to garner support from the working class. However, this support was withdrawn after the assassination of President Álvaro Obregón in 1928. Once this happened the CROM began to fragment as unions and their leaders defected from the organization.

One of the most important leaders who left CROM was Vicente Lombardo Toledano, a Marxist intellectual who later developed close ties with the Soviet Union. Lombardo Toledano formed his own federation of disaffected CROM members, which he called the "Purified CROM".

He later formed an alliance with Fidel Velázquez Sánchez, the leader of the Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores del Distrito Federal (CSTDF), and with the leaders of the Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT). Once these alliances were consolidated they founded the Confederación General de Obreros y Campesinos de México (CGOCM) on June 28, 1933.

The CGOCM became the most important union body in México, leading a number of strikes in 1934. The CGOCM and the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) rallied to support President Cárdenas when he called on unions for support in resisting a threat of coup by former president Plutarco Elías Calles, and in opposing an employers' strike in Monterrey. Cárdenas also called on the CGT and the CSTDF unions to form a single unified body. The CGOCM then transformed itself into the Confederación de Trabajadores de México in response.

The CTM almost disintegrated at the moment of its formation, however. While Lombardo Toledano was a convinced Stalinist—and the most important representative of the Soviet Union in México and Latin America after his visit there in 1935—he was never a member of the PCM. At the founding convention of the CTM, the PCM and its industrial unions had been promised the second most powerful position within the CTM secretariat. However when Lombardo Toledano granted that position to Fidel Velázquez, the leftist unions walked out of the convention. They returned under pressure with the excuse of preserving unity and grudgingly assented to Velázquez's election.