Latin American Labor Studies: National Contexts and Lived Realities

The history of Latin America cannot be understood without analyzing the role played by labor movements in organizing formal and informal workers across urban and rural contexts.This chapter analyzes the history of labor movements in Latin America from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. After debating the distinction between “working class” and “popular sectors,” the chapter proposes that labor movements encompass more than trade unions. The history of labor movements is analyzed through the dynamics of globalization, incorporation waves, revolutions, authoritarian breakdowns, and democratization. Taking a relational approach, these macro-dynamics are studied in connection with the main revolutionary and reformist strategic disputes of the Latin American labor movements.

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Where Do New Ideas (About Class) Come From?

International Labor and Working-Class History ◽

10.1017/s0147547900212702 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 57 ◽

pp. 53-59 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Barbara Weinstein

Keyword(s):

North America ◽

Latin American ◽

Western Europe ◽

Labor History ◽

Careful Consideration ◽

The State ◽

The Political ◽

Working Class History ◽

New Ideas ◽

American Labor

In my comment I raise two main questions about the Eley/Nield essay. First, I express some doubts about whether the issues discussed in their essay can be unproblematically transposed to historiographical debates in areas beyond Western Europe and North America. Certain themes, such as the need to reemphasize the political, are hardly pressing given the continual emphasis on politics and the state in Latin American labor history. Closely related to this, I question whether the state of gender studies within labor history can be used, in the way these authors seem to be doing, as a barometer of the sophistication and vitality of labor and working-class history. Despite recognizing the tremendous contribution of gendered approaches to labor history, I express doubts about its ability to help us rethink the category of class, and even express some concern that it might occlude careful consideration of class identities. Instead, pointing to two pathbreaking works in Latin American labor history, I argue that the types of questions we ask about class, and primarily about class, can provide the key to innovative scholarship about workers even if questions such as gender or ethnicity go unexamined. Finally, I point out that class will only be a vital category of analysis if it is recognized not simply as “useful,” but as forming a basis for genuinely creative and innovative historical studies.

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Organizing Workers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico: The Authoritarian-Corporatist Legacy and Old Institutional Designs in a New Context

Theoretical Inquiries in Law ◽

10.1515/til-2016-0006 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Graciela Bensusán

Keyword(s):

Latin American ◽

Labor Movement ◽

Historical Institutionalism ◽

Organizational Dynamics ◽

Political Factors ◽

Distinctive Features ◽

Labor Institutions ◽

American Labor

In what way do the corporatist and authoritarian legacies that modelled some Latin American labor institutions influence the opportunities for and restrictions on organizing workers in a new context? To what extent did institutional designs, together with other economic and political factors, influence the characteristics that currently distinguish the union organizations in the countries of the region? Taking into consideration the existence of a broader debate about the consequences of globalization and political democratization for unions, the contribution of historical institutionalism and previous research, in this Article I compare the institutional and organizational dynamics of unions in four countries with authoritarian legacies and corporatist traditions (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico). The Article argues that in spite of these shared traditions, the differences in the institutional designs — which have scarcely been considered in the specialized literature — have historically imposed distinctive features on the associational power of workers and unions. These features not only persist to the present day, but also translate into dissimilar trajectories of the labor movement and opportunities for organizing workers in the last decade.

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