| Scholars have generally ignored the activities of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) outside the United States. In Mexico, the focus of this study, the IWW played a key role in organizing miners in the nation's northern states, and petroleum workers in Tampico. While scholars of the Mexican labor movement have acknowledged the presence of IWW organizers south of the Rio Grande, especially at Cananea in 1906 and Tampico during the years 1917-1924, an analysis of Wobbly organization among Mexico's emerging working-class has been lacking.;An examination of IWW newspapers and documents, along with letters and telegrams of American Consuls in Mexico from 1910-1929, show that the Wobblies were a factor within the Mexican labor movement. The IWW played an important role championing independent and militant union organization, and resisting the new Mexican state's efforts to control the direction of the Mexican labor movement. |
