Dockworkers Demand Justice 35 Years After Salinas, Carlos Slim Rip-Off

ByRicardo Ravelo

This article by Ricardo Ravelo originally appeared in the January 2, 2026 edition of Sol Yucatán.

After former President Andrés López Obrador promised, time and again, to resolve the labor conflict faced by port workers in Veracruz following the illegal takeover ordered by [former President] Carlos Salinas in 1991, the problem remains unresolved.

The union, currently made up of 461 members – more than half of whom have died since 1991 – faces lawsuits against federal government institutions for lack of pensions and housing, as they lost their rights and so far no authority has provided a solution to their demands.

There are also disputes over the concession of the docks, particularly number 9, which belongs to the Union of Stevedores, Cart Drivers and Loaders, which was taken from them after the requisition orchestrated by Carlos Salinas and supported in Veracruz by the then Governor Dante Delgado, whom they describe as “a traitor to the workers’ struggle”, as well as the magnate Carlos Slim, one of the beneficiaries of the port requisition thanks to the blow dealt by Salinas de Gortari.

Former Veracruz Governor Dante Delgada (left), shaking hands with Marcelo Ebrard, now Mexico’s Secretary of Economy.

The leader of the port workers, Alejandro Pulido Cueto, has been fighting for several years to recover the assets that Salinas de Gortari took from them in 1991.

During that painful period, the dockworkers —then 850 members— were stripped of the docks, buildings, labor rights, and bank accounts belonging to both the union and the company, Servicios Portuarios de Veracruz. The buildings were handed over to the Tax Administration Service (SAT) and other institutions to be used as government offices; the bank accounts, 48 in total, remain frozen by the SAT and are still active at Banamex, but neither the SAT nor the National Banking and Securities Commission has any intention of returning them, according to Pulido Cueto.

Interviewed in the port of Veracruz, Pulido Cueto explained that the workers’ cause continues to advance with lawsuits, arguing, he says, that the 1991 takeover was illegal and violated workers’ human rights. There are also labor violations for which no redress has been sought. “These violations are imprescriptible, meaning they do not expire, and that is why we continue the legal battle to recover our assets.”

Then-President López Obrador deceived you, as you have denounced several times, despite his promise to resolve the conflict. Even so, do you trust President Claudia Sheinbaum?

“We have confidence in the President; she offered to look into the matter. We also have confidence in Secretary Omar García Harfuch, who may be appointed to the Ministry of the Interior, where our case was discussed during the previous administration. There has been a lack of political will to address our problem and find a solution.”

Pulido explains that due to Salinas’s illegal seizure, the union he represents suffered damages of 292 billion pesos. They also lost the concession, which, he points out, “includes all the docks in the port of Veracruz, but we are only asking for dock number 9 to be returned to us. We don’t want to affect the companies that are operating in the port. Dock 9 covers 43 hectares. What I do want to make clear is that we don’t want to go against the workers or port operations. We only want justice: the return of our buildings, accounts, labor rights, pensions, and the houses that are still pending.”

“Are you willing to negotiate with the government?,” the union leader is asked.

“We have always been open to dialogue and negotiation, but we are also pursuing legal action. It is urgent that this problem be resolved because our elderly members are dying. Many members are ill, lack medical care, and don’t even have the resources for medicine. The government has not addressed this human aspect to date. When one of our members gets sick, we all chip in to buy medicine, and if they die, we do the same to cremate or bury them.”

The Dockworkers, Forklift Operators, and Checkers Union of the Port of Veracruz was one of the most powerful unions in Latin America. When Carlos Salinas was president, they began selling off government owned companies, even though many were profitable, as was the case with Teléfonos de México (Telmex). “They saw a huge business opportunity in the Port of Veracruz and snatched it away from us with death threats,” recalls Pulido Cueto.

“Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios sent men to threaten us: he told us they were going to make us disappear by throwing us into the sea if we didn’t sign all the documents they had brought to take away our property. That was a robbery that to this day remains unrepaired.”

After that coup, many union members committed suicide. Some jumped from rooftops, others drowned at sea. It was all a tragedy.

“But the real winners,” Pulido says, “were Salinas, Slim, and Dante Delgado, because they created the companies to exploit the port, and even the union leaders were handpicked by them. That’s how they fractured us.”

“We have documents proving that after the robbery, Carlos Salinas ordered Pedro Aspe, then Secretary of Finance, to return the buildings and accounts to us. And so it was done, but we as a union had ceased to exist and lacked the legal standing to demand anything. Furthermore, since we had received death threats, we didn’t want to take any action until we reopened the matter almost thirty years later.”

Regarding the 43 bank accounts that were secured for the union in 1991, the workers have been denied access to them. Furthermore, they don’t even have access to the balances. Thirty-five years later, they were only able to find out the balances of nine accounts, “which we are trying to get back,” says Pulido, “but it has all been a brutal struggle against bureaucracy and official refusal.”

But do you still trust the President?

“We have faith, that’s all we have. The rest is out of our hands: it depends on Ms. Sheinbaum’s will. I hope she’ll have compassion for our workers, because many are quite ill and the least they deserve is justice after the dispossession we suffered in 1991.”