• CRIME: Members of Mexico’s most powerful oil workers’ union claim that a crime wave of recent years affecting a coastal area in northeast Mexico has limited their ability to perform fieldwork and has resulted in violent crimes against their families, including incidents of kidnapping for ransom.
• NORTHEAST: Comprised of approximately 1,000 workers of Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex, Section 3 of the oil workers union, has been a frequent target of numerous criminal attacks right at the border of the states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas in Mexico’s Gulf Coast.
• FEAR: “People got into debt to rescue their relatives (when they are kidnapped). Very violent things have happened, and there was no talk of it out of fear. But our Section 3 has been badly hit”, says Miguel Hernández Chávez, a unionized member.
• NUMBERS: Pemex is the tenth largest employer in Latin America, in 2018 with a total of 103,000 unionized workers, according to the most recent report presented by the company before the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). Its union is organized in 36 Sections.
