Recent Trends in Latin American Labor Historiography

Abstract

Interest in the Latin American urban working class has rarely been higher, a significant change from a decade ago when the history of urban workers seemed lost among studies of elites, middle sectors, and peasants.A recent spate of publications, only a very few of which are considered here, suggests that labor history is slowly but surely moving into the mainstream of Latin American historiography.1 Unfortunately, the major works reviewed here display little of the conceptual or methodological innovation that characterizes the work of labor historians of Europe or the United States who, over the last twenty years, have directed their attention to the large majority of the labor force; those urban workers who never joined trade unions.Even where they have examined unionized workers, these innovative practitioners of "working class history" have done so in a broader context to define the nature, texture, and structures of working class life in attempts to link everyday activity to political action.As a result, the parameters of European and North American labor history have been significantly broadened and our knowledge of working class culture, social 167

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