Worker's Control in Latin America, 1930-1979

by Jonathan C. Brown

The years between 1930 and 1979 witnessed a period of intense labor activity in Latin America as workers participated in strikes, unionization efforts, and populist and revolutionary movements. The ten original essays AEMDNMOin this volume examine sugar mill seizures in Cuba, oil nationalization and railway strikes in Mexico, the attempted revolution in Guatemala, railway nationalization and Peronism in Argentina, Brazil's textile strikes, the Bolivian revolution of 1952, Peru's copper strikes, and the copper nationalization in Chile--all important national events in which industrial laborers played critical roles. Demonstrating an illuminating, bottom-up approach to Latin American labor history, these essays investigate the everyday acts through which workers attempted to assert more control over the work process and thereby add dignity to their lives. Working together, they were able to bring shop floor struggles to public attention and--at certain critical junctures--to influence events on a national scale. The contributors are Andrew Boeger, Michael Marconi Braga, Jonathan C. Brown, Josh DeWind, Marc Christian McLeod, Michael Snodgrass, Andrea Spears, Joanna Swanger, Maria Celina Tuozzo, and Joel Wolfe.

Genres: History

344 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

From the University of Texas at Austin Department of History:

Jonathan C. Brown has published four single-authored books: A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776-1860 (1979); Oil and Revolution in Mexico (1993), Latin America: A Social History of the Colonial Period (2nd ed., 2005), and A Brief History of Argentina (2nd ed., 2009). Two of these books have been translated and published in Latin America. His first book on Argentina, published by Cambridge University Press, won the Bolton Prize. Brown also edited a collection of essays on workers and populism in Latin America and co-edited books on the Mexican oil industry and on Argentine social history.

Reviews

[Nato · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one of the best labor history books I've read. A lot of middle class Marxists have an abstract concept of "workers control of the means of production" but this books gives an historical survey of the ways workers in different countries in Latin America over several decades made the concept of control real in their labor struggles. Labor movements took on fights over control of production processes and power in ways that don't neatly fit into left theories about radicalization. It also offers profound insights about the relationship with the state and how workers took advantage of political openings when they appeared. The book was published in 1997, in the depths of the free trade/neoliberal turn in Latin America and before the Pink Tide.