[1][2] COM served as a cultural institution promoting worker's education and social transformation through a rationalist, socialist orientation, and as the headquarters for a number of syndicates and unions on a mutual aid basis.
[3] The Casa del Obrero Mundial was founded in the capital in July 1912, during the presidency of Francisco I. Madero; its founders included Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama, Manuel Sarabia, and Lázaro Gutiérrez.
At the time, the Mexican labor movement was relatively advanced, and though it was not a predominantly industrial economy its non-peasant workers were fairly conscious of popular struggle and their weight in society.
In a heavily agriculture-based economy, however, its alliance with Mexican campesinos was crucial to its success, but in this aspect it failed, and, through the convoluted situation of the revolution, allied itself with Carranzista forces and formed Red Battalions to fight its supposedly counter-revolutionary enemies, namely the rural-based Zapatistas.
Its regional offices and armories were also seized, and Carranza authorized use of force to arrest other strike participants.