Fidel Velázquez
Fidel Velázquez Sánchez (24th April 1900) is the current General Secretary of the Confederation of Mexican Workers having served since his inauguration in 1941 and 1950. Fidel Velázquez is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Early Life
Like many of his PRI compatriots, Fidel was born during the Porfiriato into a poor family. As a child he was a laborer in the fields, he learned carpentry and worked a variety of jobs, after he finished elementary school he would never continue his education.
Right before the Mexican Revolution as a 11 year old he entered union politics by trying to convince his fellow Hacienda workers to join a syndicate, predictably he was fired from his job due to this insubordination. During the Mexican Revolution he continued in union politics while moving around trying to avoid the conflict or swearing loyalty to any army or warlord. Around a decade after the start of the war he would return to his hometown and former Hacienda and succesfully managed to unionize the workers to form a Syndicate he affiliated with the nascent Regional Confederation of Mexican Labourers (CROM), the very first large scale union of the Revolutionary period.
While he faded into obscurity during the 1920s and early 1930s, he participated in many remarkable feats of union activism and with the syndicalist activist Vicente Lombardo Toledano would form the Confederation of Mexican Workers in the year 1936.
Political Career and the CTM
While initially being a unionist and affiliated with socialist groups, sometime along the way Fidel would abandon ideological politics and moved towards opportunism, during the Cardenas presidency he would be a major official in the CTM that would advocate for further alignment with the government.
As the Camacho presidency and the 1940s began, Fidel began to make the moves that would place him as a titan in Mexican politics, his first period as General Secretary of the CTM would begin in 1941 after he succesfully displaced his co-founder [Vicente Lombardo Toledano]], alongside Camacho he began making moves to weaken the ideological socialist wing of the CTM and align with the PRM in exchange for a larger more powerful role in national politics.
During his time as secretary he would introduce the concept of Charrismo and finished consolidating the entire Union scene into the CTM and the Corporatist system, after his retirement in 1947 he prepared to enter the legislature, however he would be unsastified with the tenure of his succesor Fernando Amilpa, considering him incompetent he would fire his own succesor and return to lead the CTM after 1950, now deciding to hold onto it for the rest of his life.
As he controls the CTM he has become it´s main ideologue and source of power, and with that comes control over millions of Mexicans and large swaths of the economy, he is known for his opportunistic moves and while he could be president, he has preferred to control politics from the shadows and the sidelines rather than step up to leadership for a mere six years.