Mercado 53 Rio Blanco

The La GAM neighborhood is named for the 1907 strikers at a French-owned textile factory in Rio Blanco, Veracruz, near Orizaba. At the time, it was the biggest such factory in Latin America. Some 1,700 workers, among them 60 women, worked 12-hour days and saw their wages deducted for all manner of minor (petty) offenses. Labor unions were entirely forbidden, though the factory regularly injured and even killed workers. In 1907, they went on strike in a riotous situation eventually put down by Federal police sent from Mexico City. Conservative estimates put the dead at between 50 and 70, with hundreds more wounded. This, together with strikes in the northern state of Sonora, is considered one of the leading precedents for the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution three years later.