MEXICO- Lovers of coming and going across the border; owners of casinos, but also of reed huts; nomadic farmers, lovers of ancestral rituals and gambling managers, The Kikapúes, an ethnic group with binational roots between the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas, are moving in recent days to save the multimillion-dollar steel industry in Mexico.
After the bankruptcy of Altos Hornos de México (AMHSA) which for more than three decades was in the hands of the controversial businessman Alonso Ancira, the company passed into the hands of the American Argentem Creek and it requested an initial loan of approximately $200 million from the traditional Texas-Mexico tribe.
The money will be part of a total sum of more than 1,000 million dollars for AHMSA to restart operations after going into a tailspin and go from a symbol of prosperous Mexico to the most acute financial crisis in recent years to which the drop in prices contributed and after eight decades of producing steel.
In December 2022, the Mexican steel company, which was one of the most important in Latin America, stopped its production completely.suspended electricity and gas services due to non-payment and left more than 17,000 workers, the majority in a single city (Monclova) and its mayor with his soul in a thread in the face of constant threats of looting and social uprisings.
AHMSA began to postpone salary payments until finally, in April of this year, it suspended the payment of salaries and benefits to its entire worker base, creating an economic crisis for families that depend directly on the company.
On April 17, the beginning of the bankruptcy process for Altos Hornos de México was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation.
BINATIONAL DOLLARS
Until now None of the Kikapú leaders have commented on the investment. Anthropologists such as José Luis Moctezuma, an expert on the ethnic group, describe them as one of the first groups with a “totally binational” heart.
With an economy fueled by a casino in Texas and with its religious sanctuary rooted in Coahuila, The Kikapúes are the only indigenous people with the privilege of dual nationality of Mexico and the United States.
“They are a symbol of binationalism; They are recognized with the same rights by both countries,” she describes.
In 1850, a part of the Kikapúes (in Spanish) or Kickapoo (in English) embraced Mexico as their country after emigrating from Canada and settling in what is now Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas in the United States and in Múzquiz, Coahuila. .
For more than 150 years they moved freely with the privileges as a binational ethnic group. They spent summers in their reservations in Texas and winters in Coahuila, with a culture and religion evident in the homes they inhabit depending on where they are.
In the United States, the Kikapúes have houses built with durable materials to spend the summer, and in Coahuila they are famous for their round winter huts, which they also use as religious temples.
In the 90s of the last century Their situation changed when they opened a casino in Texastheir economic strength was consolidated, and they became an attraction for young people who stopped being agricultural workers to obtain jobs linked to the gaming center.
“The lives of the Kikapúes changed with the casino (Lucky Eagle in Eagle Pass). Their young people spend more time in the United States and their old people stay in the sanctuary, with which they keep deep family, religious and cultural roots,” says Moctezuma.
They are the investors that AHMSA expects and who make decisions through councils or assemblies.
The possible investment has generated hope and skepticism among workers. The delegate of the mining union in Monclova, Manuel Prince, said that the investment is a fantasy of Alonso Ancira “King of Steel.”
LONG STORY
Manuel Prince says that it was all Ancira’s fault, who felt empowered and left the company “in the wrong hands” to go as a “gigolo” around the world; but there are more complicated explanations.
Altos Hornos de México was a parastatal company until 1991, when then-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari sold it to the Ancira family and the National Mining Union took political power with Napoleón Gómez Urrutia at the head until In 2009 he was accused of various crimes and had to go into exile in Canada.
Subsequently Ancira was accused of creating an employers’ union (charro) that stopped paying utilities and other benefits. The new organization was endorsed by the then governors Humberto and Rubén Moreira, as well as by the labor authorities during the Calderón and Peña Nieto administrations.
Already in the present six-year term, Ancira was persecuted for being part of a fraud against Pemex for the sale of the Agronitrogenados company – and the businessman fled to Spain, from where he was extradited in 2021 and spent two months in jail. From then on he began to stagger.
The workers say that since 2022, AHMSA paid intermittently and by the end of December “there were no more salaries” no support for housing or health services; 700 workers were forced to sign their resignations without settlement and benefits to the widows of miners who died in work accidents were stopped.
Due to the disaster in working conditions, they claim that two miners died, one was left blind in one eye, a deformed girl was born and there was even a suicide of desperation. “There are records of the death of two colleagues,” José Luis Romero, one of the workers, told the local press.
Last March, Alonso Ancira stepped down as president of AHMSA and Eugene Davis of Argentem took his place as part of the process of entering new share capital, according to a company report in a statement to the Mexican Stock Exchange BMV.
Later there was talk of the kikapúes’ investment.
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