Fidel Velázquez Sánchez

Fidel Velázquez Sánchez (May 12, 1900 – June 21, 1997) was the preeminent Mexican union leader of the 20th century. In 1936 he was one of the original founders, along with Vicente Lombardo Toledano, of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the national labor federation most closely associated with the ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He replaced Lombardo as the leader of the CTM in 1941, then expelled him from it in 1948. He led the CTM, which grew increasingly corrupt and conservative, until his death in 1997.

Velázquez was born in San Pedro Azcapotzaltongo (now Villa Nicolás Romero), State of México. His father was the mayor of the town. The family moved to Puebla, Puebla, during the Mexican Revolution.

After his father's death in 1920 Velázquez moved to the Azcapotzalco area of Mexico City, where he worked, among other things, delivering milk. In 1923 he organized a union of milk industry workers, which he affiliated with the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana, (CROM), the largest and most powerful union confederation of the day and a key supporter of the regimes of Plutarco Elías Calles and Álvaro Obregón.

In 1928 former President Obregón was assassinated by a right-wing Roman Catholic associated with the Cristero movement. While neither CROM nor its leader, Luis Morones, had any connection to the crime, Calles (who was about to finish his term of office and to begin his run as éminence grise behind the presidency in the period known as El Maximato) considered Morones the intellectual author of the assassination because he had denounced Obregón's plans to amend the constitution to allow himself to serve another term as President of Mexico. Obregón's successor, Emilio Portes Gil – a forced ally of Calles due to the upheaval created by Obregón's assassination – fired CROM officials from their government posts and threw the government's support to rival union groups, such as the Confederación General de Trabajadores, (CGT), a nominally anarchist group, and the Confederación Sindical Unitaria de México, a group associated with the Mexican Communist Party (PCM). The CROM began to disintegrate once it lost state support.

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