When I became a Delegate to the General Service Conference in 1994, I was made aware of a situation in Mexico that I had never heard a word about as an AA member. I had been active in our service structure for years and, if anyone knew about it, I would have heard, or read, something about it. As it was, it took me by complete surprise. At that time this situation had been brewing for eight years without being disclosed to our Delegates, or anyone in the general service structure. It is a story of deceit, deception, outright lies and dishonesty that I believe is unparalleled in AA history. As a result, for the first time, a group of Delegates asked the General Service Conference to Censure the General Service Board. It is a story that must be told in light of current events in AA affairs.
At the Twentieth Assembly of the Central Mexico (AA in Mexico) service structure held in 1986, eight Areas, through their Delegates, brought up an issue to be discussed. The eight Areas who brought up the issue were the ones who, through their contributions of money and work, originally supported setting up the General Services in Mexico, as well as the creation of the two service corporations. The General Service entities, over time, had become very authoritarian and had begun to regard themselves as a government for AA in Mexico, instead of a support structure for the activities of AA in that country. The Groups had never been willing to be governed and, through their "Group Conscience", they sought to change the situation. The issue was about requiring both the General Service Officer (General Service Office Manager), as well as the Board of Directors (Trustees) to abide by the Twelve Concepts for World Service, as well as the reformation of Central Mexicana By-laws. The current by-laws did not conform to the guidelines suggested by Chapter Nine of the Service Manual. This floor action was given just one hour's time on the Agenda to be debated. Since the attendees to this 20th Mexican Assembly consisted of forty-eight Delegates, fourteen members representing the Board of Directors (there was no General Service Board), plus the GSO staff, this period of time proved fatally short and no decision was reached. This issue was NOT listened to by the Assembly, but did result in a Regional Adviser (Trustee) being summarily dismissed from the Assembly. The Region he represented was the one made up of the eight Delegates who were pushing the restructuring issue. One of the eight concerned Delegates was also dismissed from that Assembly.
This, plus many more irregularities, prompted the dissident groups to stop pledging their allegiance to Central Mexicana, and vow to break away from Central. These decisions were taken, based on AA tradition, and they were the outcome of a number of Assembly meetings of the eight concerned Areas. They decided they would abide strictly by the guidelines in the Service Manual, strictly adhere to the Twelve Traditions and Twelve Concepts and adopt a philosophy of self support. This, of course, meant that they would publish and distribute AA literature at cost, declining to help support their service structure through literature sales. Adopting the slogan "Back to Basics" and naming themselves Seccion (Section) Mexico they organized themselves. In 1987, shortly before the first anniversary of the Seccion Mexico structure, they applied to AAWS for a license to print and distribute AA literature for the obvious purpose of making literature available to their AA members and groups. Their application was denied because, they were told, such a license had already been granted to the Central Mexicana structure. This proved to be false, for the license to Central was not granted until three years later, in 1990. After ten years, in 1997, Seccion Mexico was twenty-one Areas strong and covered all of Mexico. It was composed of about two thousand and six hundred AA groups with a total of about 30,000 members and there had been ten annual Conference meetings.
During that ten years Seccion repeatedly asked the General Service Board of the US/Canada Conference to intercede and help resolve the chaotic situation in Mexico. Apparently our General Service Board appointed the General Service Office Manager to represent our Conference in attempts to resolve this delicate matter without informing anyone at any General Service Conference. AA unity in Mexico was nonexistent and negotiations came to a standstill. Finally, after granting a license to Central Mexico in 1990, AAWS wrote a letter to Central Mexico that, in effect, encouraged them to file a lawsuit against Seccion for unlawfully printing and distributing copyrighted AA literature. In Mexico a copyright cannot be held valid if the author is deceased, so the person listed as author of the Big Book, on the copyright issued by the Mexican government, was actually the General Service Office Manager of GSO in New York. It is my understanding that the Manager whose name appeared as author said he was unaware that his name had been used on the application for copyright forms. To this day, the copyrights are on file in another persons name other than the true author, Bill Wilson. However, the lawsuit proceeded and, as a result, the offices of Seccion was raided and all literature confiscated. One of the members of Seccion was sentenced to a year in jail because, in Mexico, copyright infringement is a criminal, rather than a civil, offense. The leadership of Seccion decided not to pursue further legal action because, to them, it would be a violation of Tradition Ten. This decision has been costly to them.
I became aware of this situation because Seccion petitioned the 1994 General Service Conference, of which I was a member, for their grievance to be heard under Concept Five, the "Right of Appeal". They felt their rights had been violated by the refusal of their request for permission to print and distribute AA literature, which crippled their efforts to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous in Mexico. Also, they felt that the lawsuit against them, by Central Mexico, was a violation of Tradition Ten. Their petition to the Conference was based on the fact that the Conference Charter, Section 2, Paragraph 4, states "In countries where a General Service Structure exists, the United States/Canada Conference will delegate sole right to publish our Conference-approved literature to the General Service board of that structure". They had applied for such a license before a license had been granted to Central Mexico and, since they were an equal service structure, they felt their request for a license should have been approved. In any case, they felt that, under Concept Five, they deserved a hearing before the full Conference, since the Conference, by default to AAWS, had declined their request for permission to print and distribute AA literature. The Delegates to that Conference were never advised of their petition in any information sent out to the Delegates by our General Service Office. I, as a Delegate, was advised of their action only by a direct mailing of that petition sent out to all Delegates by Seccion itself. I, and several other Delegates, agreed with their position and demanded that this issue be placed on the Agenda for the Conference. Our demands, plus the petition from Seccion, were ignored by the Trustees. As a result of this I, along with the other Delegates, asked for the Conference to Censure the General Service Board for allowing this whole mess to develop. The Censure never came up for a vote at the Conference because the Committee assigned to make a recommendation on the matter stated that this was beyond the scope of that Committee and they could not make a recommendation. The Final Conference Report simply stated that the Censure was dropped because of "improved communications in the Fellowship". That statement was not true.
In 1997, a final appeal was made by Seccion for the US/Canada General Service Conference to hear their appeal. That request was never acknowledged by the US/Canada General Service Board. Seccion felt rejected by the existing service structure of Alcoholics Anonymous, that all their efforts had been ignored, their "Right of Appeal" under Concept Five had not been honored, discouraged that such dishonesty in claiming a false author for the Big Book was acceptable, that they should be charged criminally with one of their members going to jail and reconciliation was not possible with Central Mexico. As a result, Seccion decided to make a complete break with all existing AA service structures. On June 6-8, 1997, in Mexico City they held what they called the 1st A.A. World Service International Meeting/Mexico City and declared their independence as a separate, and distinct, Alcoholics Anonymous.
On January 15, 1999, a Past Trustee of the General Service Board, US/Canada, requested the Trustees Conference Committee to consider a petition from Seccion Mexico, dated November 30, 1998, asking that the 49th General Service Conference respond to a fourth plea from Seccion Mexico for permission to print and distribute Spanish-language translations of AA literature. The Trustees Committee said that similar requests had been received since the mid-1980's and discussed with three past GSO Managers, past and present Chairmen of the General Service Board and had also been offered as a Floor Action during the 1995 General Service Conference, which had declined to consider that action. The Committee decided that the petition was not appropriate for discussion during the General Service Conference. To date, this is the story of the bitter division between Central Mexico and Seccion Mexico. Only God knows what the future holds for this situation.
Jesse L., Past Delegate, Panel 44
e-mail to the author