In this volume, Alexander sketches the history of organized labor in the countries of Uruguay and Paraguay. He covers such topics as the role of organized labor in the economics and politics of these two countries and their relations with the international labor movement. It is based on extensive personal contacts of the author with the labor movements over almost half a century. It may seem unusual at first to have both of these countries in one volume because there does not exist anywhere else in Latin America such historical political disparity between neighboring countries as that between Uruguay and Paraguay. However in spite of the political contrasts, there are certain similarities in the history of the labor movements of these two republics. In both Uruguay and Paraguay, the earliest organizations to be founded by the workers were mutual benefit societies, rather than trade unions. But in both countries, trade unions which sought to protect their members against employers began to appear. By the early years of the 20th century, these unions began to demand that employers negotiate with them, and there were an increasing number of strikes, attempting to make these demands effective. There were soon efforts to bring together the various trade unions into broader local, national, and international labor organizations.

The first-ever English translation of one of the legends of the Latin American left Rafael Barrett was born into the Spanish elite, but in the six intense years that he spent in Paraguay, he shed his past to become one of the most notable voices speaking out against the rampant imperialism gripping Latin America. Arriving in a nation constructed upon a foundation of bones following the Triple Alliance War of 1864-1870, Barrett was thrown by chance into the “Paraguayan sorrow” that haunted that landlocked nation in the heart of Latin America. More than half the population had been wiped out in the merciless conflict. A ferocious pattern of capitalist imperialism had taken hold. The apocalyptic war had ended a period of relative economic independence, and—as competing elites allied with foreign interests squabbled over rulership—Paraguay’s poor workers entered a long descent into utter degradation. All that Barrett witnessed prompted him to discard the vestiges of his past as an upper-class liberal dandy in Madrid, shifting his politics rapidly to the left and becoming a key ally of the growing Paraguayan anarcho-syndicalist movement. As skirmishes between Paraguay’s national elites pushed the country from one military uprising to the next, Barrett’s prolific articles in the capital city’s press broke the silence on deep social, economic, and political problems playing out in urban and rural areas. Barrett transformed into one of Paraguay’s most vivid commentators, denouncing private property and the state, and one of the most vocal defenders of the heavily marginalized culture, language, and landscapes of the Paraguayan popular classes. He paid the ultimate price for his metamorphosis, ultimately facing banishment from the nation’s intelligentsia, poverty, exile, and a tuberculosis infection that would soon end his life. Despite Barrett’s position as a legendary figure in Paraguayan, Uruguayan, and Argentinian leftist circles, especially among anarchists, his work has endured long periods of relative obscurity since his death. Among Barrett’s wide-ranging texts, he is often remembered for a brave exposé of the horrors committed against Paraguayan workers by powerful international companies that extracted the leaf of the yerba mate tree from the depths of enormous enclaves of forest they controlled. Barrett’s attack on this state-backed system of debt slavery would position him as a forerunner of anti-neocolonial writing in Latin America. This edition of his striking book Paraguayan Sorrow (1911), which includes his writing on the yerba mate forests, forms part of a wave of renewed interest in a striking body of writing covering an enormous number of disciplines and geographical regions. With its vivid landscapes, precise analysis, and bold denouncements, this first-ever English translation of Paraguayan Sorrow brings us a relevant and inspiring resource for the analysis of imperialism in Paraguay, Latin America, and across the globe.

In this the third of a series of studies of the history of organized labor in Latin America and the Caribean, Alexander explores the history of the Argentine labor movement from the mid-19th century onward. Throughout most of the 20th century, Argentina had one of the largest, strongest, and most militant organized labor movements in the Western Hemisphere. While the roots of the labor movement can be traced to colonial times and the craft guilds of that era, European immigrants, particularly from Italy and Spain, who were political refugees from the unrest of the mid-19th century were key to the development of the Argentine labor movement. During much of the late 19th century, the labor movement was predominantly under anarchist influence, although during and after World War I, syndicalists, Socialists, and Communists emerged as the predominant political influences in the trade union movement. The military coup d'etat of 1943 drastically altered the nature and size of Argentina's organized labor as Juan Peron sought to utilize labor as a principal support—along with the armed forces—for the regime. During the nearly 18 years following the overthrow of Peron in 1955, the organized workers remained loyal to the fallen dictator. Peron returned to power in 1973 with the overwhelming support of the Argentine working class. After his death, the Peronista regime was again overthrown early in 1976 and a brutal seven-year military dictatorship sought to undermine organized labor. By and large successive governments have followed a similar strategy. The privatization of much of the state-owned sector of the economy and opening up Argentina's economy to foreign competition have greatly weakened the country's labor movement. Utilizing his personal contacts as well as extensive written materials, Alexander has produced a study that will be of great use to scholars, students, and researchers involved with the history and current state of labor in Argentina and the Latin American world in general.

This book takes on the challenge of conceptually thinking Paraguayan cultural history within the broader field of Latin American studies. It presents original contributions to the study of Paraguayan culture from a variety of perspectives that include visual, literary, and cultural studies; gender studies, sociology, and political theory. The essays compiled here focus on the different narratives and political processes that shaped a country decentered from, but also deeply connected to, the rest of Latin America. Structured in four thematic sections, the book reflects upon authoritarianism; the tensions between modern, indigenous, and popular artistic expressions; the legacies of the Stroessner Regime, political resistance, and the struggle for collective memory; as well as the literary framing of historical trauma, particularly in connection with the Roabastian notion of la realidad que delira [delirious reality].

Organized labor is about the collective efforts of employees to improve their economic, social, and political position. It can be studied from many different points of view—historical, economic, sociological, or legal—but it is fundamentally about the struggle for human rights and social justice. As a rule, organized labor has tried to make the world a fairer place. Even though it has only ever covered a minority of employees in most countries, its effects on their political, economic, and social systems have been generally positive. History shows that when organized labor is repressed, the whole society suffers and is made less just. The Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor looks at the history of organized labor to see where it came from and where it has been. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, a glossary of terms, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on most countries, international as well as national labor organizations, major labor unions, leaders, and other aspects of organized labor such as changes in the composition of its membership. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about organized labor.

The first scholarly work to focus exclusively on the roles of pan-regional and worldwide labor organizations in the labor movements across the nations of the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. With a career that covers over a half century, Robert J. Alexander is perhaps our foremost authority on Latin American history and politics. In International Labor Organizations and Organized Labor in Latin America and the Caribbean: A History, Alexander explores one of the most fascinating and often overlooked aspects of the Latin American labor scene he has so meticulously chronicled: the relationships between labor unions within specific nations, region wide organizations, and organized labor around the world. Alexander has written many of the cornerstone works on labor movements within the nations of Latin America, and this is his first volume to focus on the impact of international unions on Latin American labor issues. Coverage includes the AFL-offshoot Pan American Federation of Labor and the CIA-backed AIFLD; the role of the Russian Union, Profintern; European-based unions like the anti-Communist/anti-Fascist Postal Telegraph and Telephone International; and intraregional organizations like the Confederacion de Trabajadores de America Latina (CTAL)—the first attempt to form a multinational labor organization exclusively for the region.

A Cold War-era study of Latin American anarchism in action. Araiza Kokinis's study of the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU) broadens our understanding of the Cold War-era political landscape beyond the capitalism-communism and Old Left-New Left binaries that dominate the historiography of the epoch. Arguably the most impactful anarchist organization globally in the Cold War era, the FAU viewed everyday people as revolutionary protagonists and sought to develop a popular counter-subjectivity through accumulating experiences directly challenging the market and the state. The FAU argued that everyday people transformed into revolutionary subjects through the regular practice of collective direct action in labor unions, student organizations, and neighborhood councils. Their slogan was "create popular power," and their praxis differed from nationalist strains of Marxism at the time. The strategies and tactics promoted by FAU, ones in which everyday people took on roles as historical protagonists, offered the largest threat to maintaining social order in Uruguay and thus spawned a military takeover of the state to dismantle and deflate their vibrant popular revolt. With less than 80 militants, FAU played a key role both sparking and networking popular protagonism in workplaces, neighborhoods, and on campuses. The FAU worked in coalition with the Communist Party (PCU), MLN-Tupamaros (MLN-T), and other Left organizations to support a unified Left project while simultaneously challenging hegemonic strategies, tactics, and discourses. Unlike other anarchist groups worldwide, which took to individualism and counterculture in response to Marxism’s popularity throughout the sixties, the FAU embraced Third Worldism and a class struggle strategy that made them a relevant force amongst popular social movements. Throughout the constitutional dictatorship (1967–73), the Tendencia Combativa, a coalition of dissident labor unions spearheaded by FAU, controlled one-third of the nation’s unions in some of the most lucrative industries, especially in the private sector. By the time of June 27, 1973, military coup, a majority of Uruguayan industrialists recognized organized labor as the most serious threat to national security. Moreover, communications between US Ambassador to Uruguay Ernest V. Siracusa and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, showed the dictatorship’s primary concern was to repress the surging labor movement rather than confronting a waning Tupamaro guerrilla movement. The FAU’s anarchist activism within this broader climate of worker revolt threw a wrench in the 1970s neoliberal experiments in Latin America that later migrated north to impoverish American workers from the 1980s until today.

How the CIA used American unions to undermine workers at home and subvert democracy abroad Blue-Collar Empire tells the shocking story of the AFL-CIO’s global anticommunist crusade—and its devastating consequences for workers around the world. Unions have the power not only to secure pay raises and employee benefits but to bring economies to a screeching halt and overthrow governments. Recognizing this, in the late twentieth century, the US government sought to control labor movements abroad as part of the Cold War contest for worldwide supremacy. In this work, Washington found an enthusiastic partner in the AFL-CIO’s anticommunist officials, who, in a shocking betrayal, for decades expended their energies to block revolutionary ideologies and militant class consciousness from taking hold in the workers’ movements of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.