With no prior warning, and only a brief video call announcement, Nissan Mexicana confirmed it will close its Jiutepec, Morelos facility. Framed as a “strategic reorganization,” the decision affects more than 2,400 workers who have kept production going for decades at the CIVAC plant — the first factory Nissan opened outside Japan, back in 1966.
Instead of presenting a clear plan for relocating employees or fully honoring labor rights, the company has simply said it will “keep in touch” with unions and that each worker will be informed “in due time” about “next steps.” In reality, the blow has already landed: thousands of families are losing their main source of income, and a regional economy built on the auto industry is being dismantled.
The closure is part of Nissan’s so-called Re:Nissan plan, a sweeping corporate overhaul aimed at cutting its global factories from 17 to 10 in the name of 100 percent production efficiency. In other words: mass layoffs to boost profits. Production of models like the Versa and the Frontier pickup will be moved to the company’s Aguascalientes complex, where Nissan is increasingly concentrating its operations.
The company boasts that the CIVAC plant has produced more than 6.5 million vehicles, but never mentions that this was only possible thanks to the underpaid, day-to-day labor of thousands of workers. Many learned of the closure through workplace rumors — rumors that were denied just days earlier by state officials, including Morelos’s Secretary of Economic Development, who claimed Nissan was planning to produce “new models” there.
The official reaction from the state government, led by Margarita González Saravia from the Morena Party, and from federal authorities has been limited to vague statements of support and meetings with executives. Meanwhile, the Independent Union of Nissan Mexicana Workers has called an extraordinary assembly, though with no clear plan for action. Among the rank and file, silence, uncertainty, and fear prevail.
Beyond the immediate damage — over 800 million pesos in lost annual wages and 4,000 indirect jobs at risk — this closure once again exposes the deeply anti-worker nature of Mexico’s maquiladora industrial model: a system where global corporations decide the fate of entire regions without answering to anyone, and where workers are treated as disposable.
The CIVAC shutdown is no isolated case. It’s the product of an economic model that prioritizes foreign investment and global supply chains while reducing labor rights to little more than words on paper. In the face of this reality, the need for independent worker organization, active solidarity, and the fight for a dignified life for all working people is more urgent than ever.
Today, the plant goes dark — but the fight for labor justice is only beginning.
Originally published in Spanish on July 31 in La Izquierda Diario Mexico
