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Sarah Salazar

Professor Hernandez

CCS 375

9 December 2015

The Culminating Events which led to the Cananea Strike

The 20th century was a time of modernization for countries who could afford it like the

United States which was making electricity available nationwide. This caused copper to be the

new gold to opportunists. As a result, the U.S. and Mexico copper rich borderlands of Arizona

and Sonora were the new unpicked lands that dreamers sought for and consequentially fostered

extortion on both sides of the border. Through this event, we can see to which extent dangerous

ideologies such as Manifest Destiny can lead to when U.S. citizens believe it is within their right

to involve their quasi-military enforcement in foreign lands. Colonel William E. Green was one

such opportunist who would own one the largest copper companies on both sides of the southern

border known as the Green Consolidated Copper Company (GCCC). With the exemptions from

both the U.S. and Mexican government, this powerful company would find itself at the center of

the historical event known as the Cananea Strike. The significance of this strike would later on

be known as the birthplace of the Mexican revolution. While the Cananea Strike has a significant

place in history, it is more important to analyze the culminating events such as the racial

practices and the American invasion which led to the strike.

Delving into in the history of the 20th century, the Gilded Age was coming to an end. It

was meant as a reflection of the “period of gross materialism and blatant political corruption in

U.S. history” which was filled with “greedy industrialists and corrupt politicians” according the

Britannica Encyclopedia (“Gilded Age”). This does not mean that its influence remained in the

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past. It became more enticing thereafter for these companies to work with corrupt officials in

order to extort their workers; it became so easy to adapt to corruption and continue in this

unethical routine when the owners found themselves benefitting doubly. The Gilded Age itself

had caused the purses of the dominant class to be overfilled while they overlooked, overworked

and underpaid their employees.

The unfair treatment and extortion of workers caused for the creation of corporation’s

worst nightmare—unions. Some unions that would arise in the U.S. during this time were the

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and for the protection of miners there was the Western

Federation of Miners (WFM) which “is invariably mentioned as further proof of strikers'

political radicalism” according to Michael Gonzales’ article “United States Copper Companies,

the State, and Labor Conflict in Mexico, 1900-1910” (Gonzales 652). These organizations made

it more appealing for entrepreneurs, large corporations, and opportunists like William Green to

take their businesses abroad. In fact, according to Samuel Truet’s historical text Fugitive

Landscapes (2006), Green first “created a Mexican corporation, the Cananea Consolidated

Copper Company (CCCC), and then founded a U.S. holding company, the Green Consolidated

Copper Company” (GCCC) (87). Cananea was one such inviting terrain where surveillance was

lacking and governments were easily influenced like Mexican President Porfirio Diaz.

Cananea was the prime spot for dreamers who wanted to strike it rich. Copper had

become the new gold. At the height of modernizing the U.S. with the technology of electricity,

small desert mining towns in the border of Arizona and Sonora became hot spots and

experienced a sudden boom (Truett 4). The U.S. government was compensating people in the

copper industry such as Green. “For example, the United States government offered copper

companies generous investment incentives, favorable tax laws, and a high tariff on refined

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copper” (Gonzales 653). Keeping in mind the unions that were coming together on the side of

the U.S. border, all these government incentives appeared to deliberately drive corporations

abroad to a land that they believed could be more easily duped such as Mexico.

On the other side of the border in Sonora, Mexico, the Gilded Age had not yet ended.

Although not formally known as such, the socioeconomic caste system was alive and well.

Except, unlike the U.S., unions had not yet formed. Mexicans were either rich landowners or the

poor field workers. The government system was already corrupt by this time as well and catering

to the dominant higher class. Kelly Lytle Hernández explains that Mexican President Porfirio

Diaz welcomed the boom of the copper mines and the foreign mining companies in her text

Migra!, because it brought substantial financial gain which would allow for the progress and

modernization in Mexico (25). Gonzales writes that “New legislation [i.e. under President Diaz]

permitted foreigners to own subsoil rights (1892) and to buy land on the border (1894), repealing

two restrictions (653). Breaking these constitutional restrictions showed foreign companies that

the Mexican government officials were willing to make certain allowances if they were offered

something to gain.

Similar to the United States, Mexico was also offering great compensation to mining

companies. “Mexican government's policy” attracted “overseas investors to Mexico through

generous concessions and tax breaks that facilitated foreign control over key industries.”

(Gonzales 651). This includes Green’s own company whose fortune was produced with the help

of these concessions. Some of his exemptions included the payment of “import taxes on all

machinery and materials requires to build a new custom smelter”, the importation of “fuel oil

duty free”, as well as “all taxes on copper production and on the construction and operation of its

physical plant” saving his company “‘several hundred thousand dollars each year’” (Gonzales

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656-57). With these enormous savings both Green and the Mexican government would be able to

realize their plans for the modernization of the mining towns and the country.

Green wasted no time in modernizing Cananea to the standards that would facilitate his

mining company with the following: a border connecting railway and train, restaurants, hospital,

telephone, cars, machine shops, bank, school, store, hotel, lumberyard, foundry, brickyard,

houses and more (657). Cananea would find itself indebted to Green for everything but the

feeling of gratitude would not last long as soon. The Mexican townspeople would soon regret

their financial dependence on foreign mine companies like Greens. “The most flamboyant

mining entrepreneur in Porfirian Mexico was Colonel William E. Green who transformed

Cananea, Sonora, from a modest settlement into the province’s largest town and one of Mexico’s

premier mines” (Gonzales 656). This settlement had grown from a hundred to over than the

thousands. With so many facilities, one would think that it brought more opportunity to the

original locals, however, they would soon find themselves at a financial disadvantage because of

their government’s corruption and the racism that ran rampantly through the mines. With all of

the CCCC’s contributions, it can be understood how Green and his management adopted a sense

of ownership, not only over the town, but the Mexican residents as well.

It is important to remember that President Diaz was now trying to cater to both Mexican

rich landowners and the foreign companies. Hernández says that until recently in that time

period, Diaz had liberated many entrapped Mexican peasants from debt peonage and switched to

wage labor, however, his plan for Mexico’s “‘order and progress’ was forged at a tremendous

price of dispossession and poverty for Mexico’s overwhelmingly rural population” (Hernández

25). Furthermore, in order to keep the support of the elite Mexican land owners to aid in

Mexico’s progress, Diaz would create a greater disparity by intervening in the wages of Mexican

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mine workers. Herbert O. Brayer who is the author of the article “The Cananea Incident”, quotes

a written account of Antonio I. Villareal, a witness with the following statement:

. . . Colonel Greene was willing to pay the Mexican laborers wages as good as

those paid Americans, but.…It would mean that the Mexican peasant would leave

the farm, where the Mexican employer pays from twenty-five to fifty cents a day,

and seek employment in the mines, where he could get two or three times as much

salary…. Mexican officials have used their official power—their friendship with

Diaz—as a means of keeping the wage standard down to the minimum. (389)

When opposing to Green’s plan of equal payment for both his foreign and Mexican laborers in

the mines, Diaz’s intervention further betrayed his people in the lower stratum to a life of

drudgery without an escape. This underhanded agreement would eventually exacerbate the

tensions amongst Mexican field workers and miners.

With support and encouragement from both sides of the U.S.—Mexico border, other

concepts such as Manifest Destiny can easily take root and its’ meaning can foster racist and

prejudicial ideals. If an idea such as Manifest Destiny allows individuals to feel they are

privileged to rightfully dispossess people of their lands from sea to shining sea, what is to stop

them from thinking they cannot do the same by encroaching their neighbors towards the south as

well? Hernández shows in her text Migra!, how this ideology helped the U.S. greatly by

obtaining Texas amongst “50 percent of its [i.e. Mexico’s] northern territory” at the end of the

U.S.-Mexico War (21). More than a dangerous philosophy, Manifest Destiny is used as a pathos

propaganda leading to an excuse to overthrow countries who are at a military and political

disadvantage. Cananea and other small mining towns, found itself in this position. In fact,

Gonzales shares the perspectives of some wealthy U.S. citizens who “were impressed with the

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possibilities for land acquisition” thinking, “what is to prevent us from owning all of Mexico and

running it to suit ourselves.” (Gonzales 654). The enticement of such an opportunity was not

resisted by many foreign opportunists. However, the presence of foreign entrepreneurs in

Cananea was hardly the greatest problem, but the mentality that they brought with them which

led to the ill treatment of Mexican workers.

The attitude of superiority, greatly affected many white managers in Green’s mines on

both sides of the borderlands. Like Green’s GCCC, the CCCC also practiced a dual wage system.

“The racist policies of the US mine manager at Cananea and elsewhere, moreover, clearly

contributed to the deterioration of labor management relations. The reluctance of foreign miners

to accept Mexican miners as equals, all along the border, also created tensions that slowed the

unionization process and strengthened management's position.” (Gonzales 652). Not only were

the wages for Mexican workers less in comparison to white foreigners, but they were also given

the inferior positions. They were not allowed to go into the mine with white miners, but were

given the most laborious and undesirable tasks. According to Gonzales, “Ethnic division of

labor at Cananea attributed to U.S. manager’s social, ethnic and racial prejudices against

Mexicans” (659-60). Receiving a pittance for payment did nothing to ease the expenses of the

Mexican laborers. While the white foreign laborers where able to live in great ease and comfort,

the Mexicans were trying to stay alive. Just like in the California Gold Rush in the previous

century, these mining towns were extremely overpriced. Adding this problem with that of

unequally and underpaid workers, based on racism and corruption, one can connect the dots and

see how the strike was induced.

Despite the profits that Green made, he made no attempt to rectify the racial dual wages

that existed in GCCC. Gonzales writes that no matter the increase of profit, Mexican-Americans

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were still unequally paid in comparison to Anglo-Americans for the same labor in Arizona, just

like in Cananea (665). Although Mexican migrants and Mexican-Americans were paid less in

Arizona, it was, nevertheless, more than the Mexican laborers at the CCCC. Even though

Mexican workers were supposed to be paid according to the quantity of work they produced,

unfortunately, “the mine could still refuse payment if the copper content of the ore fell below a

predetermined minimum grade, such as two per cent” (Gonzales 661). What was worst, was that

while white workers at the GCCC were provided with the equipment necessary for mining,

Mexican-Americans and Mexican migrant workers were not. Not only was their pay refused if

the content of copper fell below the mine’s expectations, but Mexican workers were also not paid

until their contractor “had reimbursed the company for all the materials used by his workers,

such as dynamite, blasting caps, timber, fuses and candles” (Gonzales 661). The Mexican

workers who had recently left a century of debt peonage behind were now finding themselves in

a new age of modern peonage by a different name, racism in disguise. Under the authority of

Diaz’s regime and Green’s copper mines, Lytle writes that “unabated poverty was a

consequence” and “More Mexicans were free wage laborers, but more Mexicans were also

dangerously poor” (25). The extortion of Green’s mining companies on his workers was

culminating animosity feelings amongst them towards everything that represented Green, such as

American culture and the company itself.

Even though Mexicans were guaranteed jobs in the mines within their country, they were

treated with unwelcome in their own lands. “In Sonora, by law, at least 70 percent of the workers

in a given camp had to be Mexican citizens” (Truett 111). However, this did not protect them

from racism at work. Unfortunately, the racism did not stay within the mines. Because of their

financial disparity as well, Mexican workers and their families were also forced to live in

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segregated housing while they watched their white coworkers treated with privilege in pay and

living conditions. “Mexicans remained under-paid, poorly housed, and unappreciated” (Gonzales

666). Truett includes descriptions of how Mexican mine workers and their families in Cananea

were forced to live in tiny crude homes, sometimes sharing it with livestock or other families as

well (114). Their low financial status confined them to segregated housing in Cananea, where

they found themselves foreigners in their own land by foreign invaders.

Finally, the tensions boiled over when on July 1 1906, the difference in the dual wage

system further increased. According to Brayer, the strike finally broke out “when the Cananea

Consolidated 'Copper Company raised the wages of its American workers and not those of the

Mexican miners” (Brayer 392). Mexicans had grown tired of the preferences given to foreign

workers, but Green had not listened for the five years ago when he established his mine. As a

result, liberal clubs like the Unión Liberal Humanidad and the Club Liberal de Cananea were

formed by aggravated Mexican miners, Manuel Dieguez, Estaban Baca Calderon according to

Jaime Ramon Olivares in his article “Cananéa Strike” (127). When the miners united against the

company, the WFM also took the opportunity to take action. Having been recently unsuccessful

in Arizona, the WFM expected to triumph in the Mexican bordering towns. Because Mexican-

American and Mexican migrant workers in Arizona also “had to deal with segregation, inferior

housing, and discrimination in local communities,” WFM took advantage of their disparity

which “made it easier for Mexicans to be hired as strikebreakers” in Cananea (Gonzales 665).

With the help of the discontent miners, the WFM hoped to finally infiltrate the foreign mining

companies in Mexico.

Because Mexican mine workers were the majority of the workers, their strike was

temporarily successful in stopping the work. However, they had two major forces against them:

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Green and President Diaz (Olivares 127). Company stores and other buildings were destroyed by

fire because “they symbolized the negative influence of the American capitalist culture”

(Olivares 127). Feeling threatened by the strikers, Green made an uncalled for decision of

requesting for government help from the other side of the border. Green “over-reacted, perhaps

even panicked, when he asked Phelps-Dodge chief Walter Douglas to send 200 armed Arizona

Rangers to Cananea” (Gonzales 667). The American presence of the Arizona Rangers in Mexico

felt like a violation of their land to the Mexicans. Their presence was in fact considered a foreign

invasion and raised tensions. Interestingly, an international variant of Manifest Destiny played a

key role for which these men volunteered their services in Cananea. The Arizona Rangers “tied

the ‘liberation’ of Cananea to a mix of older frontier models—where posses took matters into

their own hands—and new models of U.S. militarism abroad” (Truett 146). One can see how far

such a philosophy can sneak through the mentality of generations years afterwards. The tensions

and animosity for foreign companies simply increased by this action which would baptize the

Cananea Strike as the birthplace of the Mexican Revolution soon afterwards. “It brought to

national attention the grievances of Mexican workers over wage scales that favored foreign

workers over natives, falling real wages, and the power and arrogance of United States

companies in Mexico” (Gonzales 651). The riot between the miners and the Americans placated

after a three-day riot, after many deaths on both sides.

Mexicans received no assistance from their plight from those in authority at Cananea

prior to the strike. In Managing Urban America by Robert E. England, John P. Pelissero, and

David R. Morgan, they give an example of what the Mexican people expected from their

government, “Citizens want city services to be responsive to their demands, and they also expect

that services will be distributed in an equitable fashion” (195). Mexican’s would remember how

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they suffered at the hands of Americans, other white foreigners, and how they had felt betrayed

by their own country who did nothing to protect them. They had long been saying that “Mexico

is the mother of foreigners and the stepmother of Mexicans” (Truett). This quote shows how

Mexicans felt about their government making preferences for foreigners over them. The event of

the Cananea Strike and how it was provoked is important because it allows us to understand

some of the border tensions which exist on both sides of the border. It also plays a key role

which “links the 1906 strike with the Mexican Revolution because it contributed to anti-foreign

sentiment and helped justify revolutionary legislation that rescinded concessions to foreign firms,

increased corporate taxes and gave more rights to mine workers (Gonzales 667). Had Diaz been

a true leader for his people, the foreign companies wouldn’t have had the opportunity to extort

Mexico, its’ citizens, and the bloodshed on both sides could have been prevented.

By analyzing the events which led to the Cananea Strike, one can better understand the

outbreak of the riots, violence and revolution which occurred afterward. It is significant to learn

and remember that racial practices were at the root of the provocations which Mexicans

experiences. They had received the last drop of oppression. By analyzing the culminating events,

it is also important to see the U.S.’s involvement in Cananea, their racism and invasion in hopes

that we can change our philosophies and grow as a nation with better international relations.

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Bibliography

Brayer, Herbert O. "The Cananea Incident." New Mexico Historical Review, 13.4 (1938): 389+.

University of New Mexico. Web. 6 Dec. 2015.

"Gilded Age". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Encyclopaedia

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Gonzales, Michael J. "United States Copper Companies, the State, and Labour Conflict in

Mexico, 1900-1910." Journal of Latin American Studies [H.W. Wilson - SSA], 26.3

(1994): 651

Hernandez, Kelly Lytle. Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol. Berkeley: U of California,

2010. Print.

Morgan, David R., Robert E. England, and John P. Pelissero. Managing Urban America. 7th ed.

DC: CQ, 2007. Print.

Olivares, Jaime Ramon. "Cananéa Strike." St. James Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide.

Ed. Neil Schlager. Vol. 1. Detroit: St. James Press, 2004. 125-128. Gale Virtual

Reference Library. Web. 3 Dec. 2015.

Truett, Samuel. Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.

New Haven: Yale UP, 2006. Print.

Turner, D. L.. “ARIZONA'S TWENTY-FOUR HOUR WAR: The Arizona Rangers and the

Cananea Copper Strike of 1906”. The Journal of Arizona History 48.3 (2007): 257–288.

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