The edge of miracles: Postrevolutionary Mexico City and the remaking of the industrial working class, 1925--1982

This dissertation examines the remaking of working-class politics, culture, and consciousness among Mexican autoworkers between 1925 and 1982. Delving deeply into both Mexico City's auto factories and working-class neighborhoods, the dissertation reveals how dissident rank-and-file labor movements emerged out of the vast industrial changes occurring in automaking, the frenzied and largely uncontrolled process of urbanization transpiring along Mexico City's industrial periphery, and wage earners' shifting relations with the state during the Mexican “miracle.” It locates the roots of working-class consciousness in wage earners' changing social and cultural orientations arising out of their shifting encounters with the burgeoning Mexican state and their employment for multinational corporations. This study is based on a variety of sources, including company records, municipal archives, labor court documents, union records, and oral history.; The dissertation begins by tracing the origins of Mexico's auto industry and its workforce, attending closely to the combative labor movement and political culture wage earners developed in the early years of the postrevolutionary period. This study also examines the various ways state formation and class formation articulated historically, revealing how state and corporate officials succeeded in consolidating a loyal and productive “official” labor movement. The second section explores the transformations in working-class politics consciousness and the birth of an insurgent rank-and-file union movement that followed the industry's rapid industrial expansion in the 1960s and 1970s. Though taking shape on the shop floor, this insurgent movement became politically combative in the new neighborhoods arising on the city's industrial periphery. The final portion analyzes the evolution and coalescence of these dissident movements amidst “la insurgencia obrera” of the 1970s. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of the demise of the Mexican “miracle” in 1982 and the debilitating effects it had on the city's labor movement.