U.S. and Latin American Labor: the Dynamics of Imperialist Control

Abstract

Latin American labor movements do not evolve within isolated national frameworks. A host of external factors, economic and political, affect their development. This article examines one set of these by looking at relationships between United States and Latin American labor. It is divided into four parts. The first traces inter-American and, where important, intra-American labor relations until 1945 to place contemporary trends in historical perspective. The article concentrates, however, on events after the Second World War when external forces impinge upon Latin American labor in new ways. The rapid growth of an ever more centralized global economy, dominated first by the United States and later by that nation along with other advanced capitalist super-powers, initiates a period of rising interest in Latin American labor by U.S. business, labor, and government. Set within a Cold War framework, U.S. agencies and private institutions develop a variety of mechanisms aimed at controlling and manipulating Latin American labor. The second section examines these and shows their workings. It highlights the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD).' The next section presents case studies depicting imperialist agencies and institutions working together in a set geographical locale. The last part discusses the meaning of imperialist strategy for labor in Latin America.2 Several general themes emerge from the material. One is U.S. labor's continuing interest in Latin America, a relationship flowing from its past and present cooperation with U.S. foreign policy and totally consistent with its domestic practices. Almost from its founding big labor, represented by the AFL and then AFL-CIO, entered into collaboration with the government and therefore the ruling class. In brief, organized labor leadership worked under the assumption that capitalism constituted the best socio-economic system and that it could satisfy workers' needs. It saw labor as a national pressure group like any other which should seek reform of the system in its favor but not to change it. Unions existed primarily to acquire economic benefits for

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 20 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.