For 26 years, Carlos Antonio Romero Deschamps went from driving an oil tanker to leading more than 100,000 unionized workers at Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex). He studied accounting at the Banking and Commercial School in his hometown of Tampico, Tamaulipas state, but never practiced. Romero Deschamps, the son of a railway worker, emigrated to Salamanca (Guanajuato), where one of his cousins gave him a temporary job at the Pemex refinery in the city. He was barely 26 years old. In this city he would meet the man who would become his wife, Blanca Rosa Durán, and the man who would promote him in the oil industry: Joaquín Hernández Galicia La Quina, then leader of the Petroleum Workers Union of the Mexican Republic (SPTRM ). ).
Under the protection of La Quina, also born in Tampico, Romero Deschamps went from driving the union leader’s car to organizing meetings and managing some of the union’s assets. In parallel, already a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), he began a political career as a deputy of the Federal District for the periods 1979 to 1982 and then from 1991 to 1994. His last promotion came when Hernández Galicia was imprisoned during the mandate the PRI. Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in 1989. Although Sebastián Guzmán Cabrera was initially appointed general secretary of Section 10 of Minatitlán, Romero Deschamps eventually held the union’s top position in 1993.
At the head of one of Mexico’s most important unions, Romeo Deschamps had to manage the Pemex boom, in which production exceeded three million barrels per day. An abundance that did not spare the shadow of corruption and the evasion of resources for the party to which he had belonged since 1961, the PRI. In 2000, one of the most notorious scandals erupted when an alleged diversion of resources from Pemex to the union for the presidential campaign of then-PRI candidate Francisco Labastida was uncovered, a case that became known as Pemexgate. His immunity as a representative and senator as well as numerous protections freed him from all these accusations.
Members of the National Coalition of Oil Workers demand the imprisonment of Romero Deschamps in September 2003. Jorge Alvarado (Cuartoscuro)
For years, the Mexican media presented the lavish life of him and his family: travel, yachts, fine watches, the houses in Acapulco and Cancún or the Ferrari that his son drove, an open secret. Romero Deschamps boasted trips to Canada and Norway while leading the union and also serving as a senator in the government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018). The size of his fortune has always been questioned by dissident Pemex workers. Questions about the source of his wealth, raised during the six years in office of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, have resurfaced in this administration, leading to at least 12 investigations into alleged fraud, illicit enrichment and money laundering.
Pursued by corruption, he finally submitted his resignation from the union leadership in October 2019. Far from the spotlight, the once-powerful union leader chose to keep a low profile in the final years of his life. However, for some of the oil company’s workers, the impression of its management as a one-sided and undemocratic union boss is still noticeable. Engineer Silvia Ramos, employed by Pemex since 1985, says she met Deschamps when he was head of Department 35 in Tula, Hidalgo. “The wage increases were good, the work allowances were good and there was also a lot of impunity, workers could do anything and the union defended them.” After the Quinazo (the imprisonment of Hernández Galicia), the union continued its routine, without meetings, without union democracy , but the people remained calm because the sale of places, the wholesale huachicoleo, continued, as it happened in all the charro unions,” he tells .
Emilio Lozoya, then head of Pemex, and Senator Carlos Romero Deschamps in the plenary session of the PRI and PVEM senators in 2014. Saúl López (Cuartoscuro)
The engineer and former general secretary of the National Union of Petroleum Technicians and Professionals (UNTyPP) explains that a system of control through positions and family positions was developed within Pemex, under the threat that unionized workers would lose this important prerogative if they rebelled against it Leader. “It was more than 80 years without organization, without understanding of the purpose of the union, without class consciousness and without love for the company,” he accuses.
UNAM researcher and coordinator of the National Observatory for Labor Reforms, Alfonso Bouzas Ortíz, describes Romero Deschamps as the last boss of the corporate union in Mexico, representative of the old school of trade unions. “He came to the presidency by appointment and is committed to maintaining good relations with the government apparatus as a clientelistic union in which workers recognize management while management gives them benefits.” We can say anything except that he won’t get majority votes has. The methods he resorted to as a clientele are under discussion, such as a job for a family member, a financial loan or reduced working hours. he points out. .
Deschamps at an official Pemex event in Mexico City in 2016. Sáshenka Gutiérrez Sáshenka Gutiérrez (EFE)
For Diego García Saucedo, an expert on labor issues, Romero Deschamps’ leadership was characterized by the opacity allowed to unions in those years in managing employer contributions and benefits, which were not subject to audit. “He took great advantage of the lack of monitoring of employee-employer ratios and a significant lack of control has emerged in a company as large as Pemex,” he concluded.
“Don Carlos”, “The Leader”, as he was called in numerous meetings or in reference to the oil expropriation, died this Thursday at the age of 79 after a heart attack. Even though he stayed away from the political and labor scene in his final years, his influence on Pemex remains, those who worked alongside him say, and some with less optimism argue that true union democracy will be years away reached the gates of the parastatal state.
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