Arsenio Farell Cubillas (June 30, 1921 – May 15, 2005) was a

Mexican Mexican may refer to: Mexico and its culture *Being related to, from, or connected to the country of Mexico, in North America ** People *** Mexicans, inhabitants of the country Mexico and their descendants *** Mexica, ancient indigenous people ...

lawyer and politician affiliated with the

Institutional Revolutionary Party The Institutional Revolutionary Party ( es, Partido Revolucionario Institucional, ; abbr. PRI) is a political party in Mexico that was founded in 1929 and held uninterrupted power in the country for 71 years, from 1929 to 2000, first as the Nati ...

(PRI). He served as

Secretary of Labor The United States Secretary of Labor is a member of the Cabinet of the United States, and as the head of the United States Department of Labor, controls the department, and enforces and suggests laws involving unions, the workplace, and all ot ...

in the cabinets of

Miguel de la Madrid Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado (; 12 December 1934 – 1 April 2012) was a Mexican politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who served as the 59th president of Mexico from 1982 to 1988. Inheriting a severe economic an ...

and

Carlos Salinas Carlos Salinas de Gortari CYC DMN (; born 3 April 1948) is a Mexican economist and politician who served as 60th president of Mexico from 1988 to 1994. Affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), earlier in his career he wor ...

and headed the Federal Comptroller's Secretariat in the cabinet of

Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (; born 27 December 1951) is a Mexican economist and politician. He was 61st president of Mexico from 1 December 1994 to 30 November 2000, as the last of the uninterrupted 71-year line of Mexican presidents from t ...

. Farell Cubillas was born in

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

to Spanish immigrants Enrique Farell Solá and Consuelo Cubillas Gutiérrez. His brother was General Luis Farell Cubillas. He received a bachelor's, master's and doctorate's degree in law from the

National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico ( es, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) is a public research university in Mexico. It is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in Latin America, where it's also the bigges ...

(UNAM), where he also taught several courses for almost 19 years (1954 – 1973) before heading the Mexican Institute of Social Security in the López Portillo administration.Murió Arsenio Farell Cubillas
''El Universal'' (16 de mayo de 2005) He was married to Rosa María Campa Padilla.

Cultural References

Arsenio Farrell Industrial Park (in the text, the name appears with an additional letter 'r') is a fictional maquiladora which is mentioned several times in

Roberto Bolaño Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (; 28 April 1953 – 15 July 2003) was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel ''Los detectives salvajes'' (''The Savage Detectives' ...

's final novel ''

2666 ''2666'' is the last novel by Roberto Bolaño. It was released in 2004, a year after Bolaño's death. It is over 1100 pages long in Spanish, and almost 900 in its English translation, it is divided into five parts. An English-language translat ...

'', specifically, in book four, ''The Part About the Crimes.'' It has been reported that

Arsenio Farell Cubillas Arsenio Farell Cubillas (June 30, 1921 – May 15, 2005) was a Mexican lawyer and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He served as Secretary of Labor in the cabinets of Miguel de la Madrid and Carlos Sali ...

had assisted PRI's (

)

Miguel Nazar Haro Miguel Nazar Haro (26 September 1924 – 26 January 2012) was the head of Mexico's Dirección Federal de Seguridad (Federal Security Directorate) from 1978 to 1982. He started his career working for the secret-police chief Fernando Gutiérrez Bar ...

and

Luis Echeverría Álvarez Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...

to detain and torture suspected terrorists (leftists, intellectuals, etc.) during the

Dirty War (Mexico) The Mexican Dirty War ( es, Guerra sucia) was the Mexican Theater (warfare), theater of the Cold War, an internal conflict from the 1960s to the 1980s between the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI-ruled government under the presid ...

, from 1964 to 1982. In the novel, several missing female persons are discovered at, or near, the maquiladora, which is located in Santa Teresa, a fictionalized version of

Ciudad Juarez Ciudad () is the Spanish word for City Ciudad may also refer to: *La Ciudad (archaeological site), Hohokam ruins in Phoenix, Arizona *La Ciudad, district of Durango City, Mexico *''La ciudad'', novel by Mario Levrero 1970 *La Ciudad ''The City'' ...

. The plot alludes to Northern Mexico's

feminicide Femicide or feminicide is a hate crime which is broadly defined as "the intentional killing of women or girls because they are female," but definitions of it vary depending on cultural context. In 1976, the feminist author Diana E. H. Russel ...

, beginning in the early 1990s and disproportionately affecting the border city. The maquiladoras also symbolize the PRI's long-standing facade of democracy and free trade built on the backs of the working poor. It has been reported that Farell helped cancel at least 400 unions across Mexico in the early 1990s. Regardless, other sources suggest 80-90% of all Mexican unions had fallen prey to organized crime by the 1990s.''Mexico’s Labor Reform: A Workers’ Defeat—For Now'' NACLA, April 3, 201

/ref>

References

1921 births 2005 deaths Institutional Revolutionary Party politicians Mexican Secretaries of Labor People from Mexico City National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni 20th-century Mexican lawyers Mexican people of Catalan descent {{Mexico-law-bio-stub