Luis Napoleón Morones

Luis N. Morones in 1925

Luis Napoleón Morones (1890 – 1964) was a Mexican union boss who served as secretary general of the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana, CROM) and as secretary of economy under President Plutarco Elías Calles, 1924-1928. He is considered the "most important union leader of the 1920s...and undoubtedly decisive in Mexico's post-Revolutionary reconstruction."

Morones was born in Tlalpan, a delegación of the Mexican Federal District, and worked as an electrician. He was a member of the radical Casa del Obrero Mundial (House of the World Worker). Morones helped organize the electricians' union, Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas, which joined the COS.

During the Revolution, he supported Constitutionalist Venustiano Carranza, leader of the winning faction of the Mexican Revolution. Morones was an electrician, and joined the Casa del Obrero Munidal in 1913. He founded the "Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas" (SME, Mexican Syndicate of Electricians) locally in the Mexican Telephone and Telegraph Co. in 1915. From 1916 to 1918, he participated in political and labor organizations and congresses, and by 1920, he was head of the CROM, and helped to broker General Álvaro Obregón's accession to the presidency. In 1922, he founded the Mexican Labor Party (Partido Laborista Mexicano PLM) and its organ El Sol, and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies of Mexico, where his prime role consisted of mediating between the working class and government elites.

His cooperation brought him into conflicts with communist and socialist elements of the union factions, but Calles rewarded his loyalty by appointing him as the nation's Secretary of Economy in 1924. Calles forced Morones to resign after President-elect Obregón's assassination in 1928. After Obregón's death at the hands of a religious fanatic, Morones and CROM broke with the Obregón's Mexican Laborist Party.

Morones and leaders of the CROM had enriched themselves through corrupt practices in the 1920s. Morones possessed large property holdings in his Tlalpan neighborhood and owned a luxury hotel in Mexico City. He flaunted his ill-gotten wealth with diamond rings and expensive cars, leading to charges of hypocrisy and corruption. The influence of the CROM was weakened amongst its rank-and-file base. Unions in the confederation began deserting it. Morones lost political power in the period 1928-1932. In 1936, Morones was arrested in connection with the attempted dynamiting of a train, which the Cárdenas government took to be a conspiracy and forced to exile, along Calles and the last remained highly influential callistas in Mexico. He lived in Atlantic City, NJ, but returned to Mexico years later.