N.A.C.L.A. labor laws. Workers are often blacklisted by the CTM and must ,pay CTM dues without receiving any protection in return. But the obvious class-collaboration of the CTM labor bureaucrats over the past 40 years may be their undoing in the decade ahead. According to leftist organizers in the northwestern states who aire giving direction to the spontaneous outbursts of the rural population, rural worke-rs no longer follow the leadership of the CTM officials. Furthermore, they report, the true antiworker nature of the entrenc•hed Institutionalized Revolutionary Party (PRI) now in power, has demonstrated to farm workers .the need for union that are truely independent of the government. The 4000 employees of the Wilson/Bustamante tomato exporting operation in Sinaloa, for example, declared a strike protesting against both the U.S. controlled -company and its CTM union two years ago. The strike was violently broken by the ARMY and its leaders were jailed, but the unified action of the workers send out shock-waves throughout the area. Similar actions have followed, occasionally winning specific wage and working conditions demands, though rarely collective bargaining agreements. The recent confrontations have raised the consciousness of many workers, and pointed out the need for organization and a strategy t+1atgoes beyond simple wage and trade union demands. They have also shown that significant ,political and economic gains can only be won if the isolated strikes, protests, ,land occupations and walkouts become one coor,dinated and class conscious movement. DEVELOPING A REVOLUTIONARY ALTERNATIVE Traditionally the demands of left opposition groups in Mexico have focused more on the distribution o·f land than on the unionization o.f agrarian workers - this due largely to the strong peasant ideology of the Mexico Revolution of ·19'10. Today more emphasis is put on organizing the rural proletariat, as one left organizer explained: "We consider agricultural workers important because o.f their growing numbers, because their relation to the means of production gives them economic leverage, and because their demands are closest to those of workeirs in the cities". Several new ,palitical parties and labor unions have made important strides in recent years towards the task of organizing 128
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