Abstract
This chapter focuses on the relationship between US organized labor, Andean trade unions, and the Organizatión Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT), the Inter-American regional organization of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).2 Scholarly literature on the so-called free trade union movement in the Americas tends to portray ORIT as an organization strongly dominated by its US affiliate, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), after the merging of the AFL and CIO in 1955.3 Particularly during the first two decades of the Cold War, ORIT was viewed—by opponent Left-wing and Christian unionists, as well as by many ICFTU leaders—as a US instrument for anti-Communist propaganda. A thorough study of the ICFTU/ORIT and the AFL-CIO archives—in particular, the correspondence between US and Latin American labor leaders—indicates that a more nuanced analysis of the dynamics within the free trade union movement in the Americas is required. I argue that ORIT’s actions reached further than pure anticommunism and that if ORIT became a Cold War tool for anti-Communist campaign in some countries, it was not in the first place due to US pressure but rather to Latin America’s own concern with Communist dissemination and other political, economic, and trade union matters.
Special thanks to Robert Waters for his help with archival sources and useful reading suggestions, and to Paul Bullard for his language corrections.
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Notes
The ICFTU was founded after the non-Communist unions within the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU, established in 1945) claimed it was dominated by Soviet unions. The ICFTU united non-Communist trade union organizations of 51 countries and territories. It was dissolved in 2006, following the foundation of the International Trade Union Confederation. In 2008, the ORIT was replaced by the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas. For a comprehensive history of the ICFTU, see Marcel van der Linden, et al., The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000).
See, for example, Laurence Burgorgue, “L’ORIT et la CLAT: deux acteurs régionaux de la competition syndicale en Amérique latine,” in Syndicalisme: Dimensions internationals, ed., G. Devin, (La Garenne-Colombes, France: Guillaume, 1990); Anthony Carew, “Towards a Free Trade Union Centre: The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (1949–1972),” in The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions;
Jon V. Kofas, The Struggle for Legitimacy: Latin American Labor and the United States 1930–1960 (Tempe, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1992);
Jack Scott, Yankee Unions Go Home: How the AFI Helped the U.S. Build an Empire in latin America (Vancouver, BC: New Star, 1978);
Hobart A. Spalding, “US Labor Intervention in Latin America: The Case of the American Institute for Free Labor Development,” in Trade Unions and the New Industrialization of the Third World, ed., Roger Southall (London: Zed Books, 1988).
Robert J. Alexander, A History of Organized Labor in Bolivia (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005); Ibid., A History of Organized Labor in Peru and Ecuador (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007); Ibid., International Labor Organizations and Organized Labor in Latin America and the Caribbean: A History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2009); Ibid., The Venezuelan Democratic Revolution: A Profile of the Regime of Rómulo Betancourt (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964); Ibid., Rómulo Betancourt and the Transformation of Venezuela (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982); Ibid., Venezuela’s Voice for Democracy: Conversations and Correspondence with Rómulo Betancourt (New York: Praeger, 1990).Alexander, a US scholar who often reported to the AFL on the labor situation in Latin American countries, conducted thousands of interviews with Latin American politicians, trade unionists, businessmen, military men, diplomats, and scholars. For an overview of his interview collection, see J. D. French, “The Robert J. Alexander Interview Collection,” Hispanic American Historical Review 84 (2004).
Serafino Romualdi, Presidents and Peons: Recollections of a Labor Ambassador in Latin America (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967).
The AFL’s rival, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, supported the CTAL as a way to end its isolation in the international arena caused by the AFL’s insistence on maintaining the IFTU principle of one affiliate per country. At first, the CTAL followed the line of Popular Front parties. It strove for a coalition of Latin American unions of different leftist trends. But the CTAL was immediately identified with the international Communist movement, and especially with Latin American Communist parties. It became very successful among Latino workers before, during, and immediately after the Second World War. J. P. Windmuller, The International Trade Union Movement (Deventer, the Netherlands: Springer, 1980), 132–134. See also Daniela Spenser, “Vicente Lombardo Toledano envuelto en antagonismos inter-nacionales,” Revista Izquierdas 3 (2009);
Lourdes Quintanilla Obregón, Lombardismo y sindicatos en América Latina (México DF: Ediciones Nueva Sociologia, 1982); Kofas, 249–287.
Luis Alberto Monge, Mirando a nuestra América (México DF: ORIT, 1953), 15;
Ian Roxborough, “The Urban Working Class and Labor Movement in Latin America since 1930,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America — Latin American since 1930: Economy, Society and Politics, ed., Leslie Bethell, 333–334, 341 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
R.D. Anderson, “Mexico,” in Latin American Labor Organizations eds, Gerald M. Greenfield and Sheldon L. Maram, 520 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1987);
M.L. Mussot López and G. González Cruz, “En la posguerra. Reestructuración de la CTM y formación de un nuevo proyecto sindical,” in Historia de la CTM 1936–1990, ed., Javier Aguilar García (México DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1990).
ICFTU archive, folder 4971: Romualdi to J. H. Oldenbroek (ICFTU), April 20, 1950; Romualdi to Oldenbroek, May 18, 1950; Romualdi to Oldenbroek, May 20, 1950; O. Molina García, El Sindicato Interamericano, 50 Anos (1951–2001) de su Acción Social y Politica, (Caracas: ORIT, 2001), 31–32.
Pedro Reiser, L’Organization Régionale Interaméricaine de Travailleurs (O.R.L.T) de la Confédération Internationale des Syndicats Libres (C.L.S.L.) de 1951 à 1961 (Geneva: Libraire Droz, 1962), 48; Romualdi, 117–118; Ben Stephansky, oral history interview, Georgetown University, October 8, 1992, 19.
ICFTU archive, folder 4999: Inter-American Regional Organization (O.R.I.T) of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (I.C.F.TU.)—Constitution, 1951, 4; ORIT—A Progress Report (Confidential); I.W.F. Brandt and W.G.’t Hart, De internationale vrije vakbeweging (IVVV en ORLT) in Latijns Amerika van 1950 tot 1960 (PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), 1979), 58–59.
At the beginning of the 1950s, Argentinean and Mexican trade unions from the CROM attempted to unite Latin American unionists who followed the Peronist opposition to both communism and capitalism. They established the Agrupación de Trabajadores Latinoamericanos (ATLAS) in 1952, but the organization failed to survive the fall of Argentinean president Juan Domingo Perón in 1955. For the history of ATLAS, see Claudio Panella, Perón y ATLAS: Historia de una central latinoamericana de trabajadores inspirada en los ideales del Justicialismo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Vinciguerra, 1996).
The MNR was a populist political party with a vague nationalist and reformist program, founded in 1941. Between 1946 and 1952, it developed a broad social coalition that offered an alternative to Marxist tendencies within the Bolivian labor movement. For a critical analysis of the MNR, see Mitchell Christopher, The Legacy of Populism in Bolivia: From the MNR to Military Rule (New York: Praeger, 1977).
ICFTU archive, folder 5359: “Datos de la CBT,” May 1951; Daza, .. bosquejo sintético para la ORIT, 3. Lechín’s ideology was very vague. In his early days as labor leader, he sympathized with the Trotskyite party Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR); after the foundation of the reformist MNR in 1941, he oscillated between the nationalist-centrism of the MNR and POR. For Lechin’s biography, see Lupe Cajías, Historia de Una Leyenda: Vida Y Palabra de Juan Lechín, Líder de Los Mineros Bolivianos (La Paz: Ediciones Graficas “EG,” 1989).
Guillermo Lora, A History of the Bolivian Labor Movement (Cambridge, 1977), 276.
Steve Ellner, Organized Labor in Venezuela 1958–1991: Behavior and Concerns in a Democratic Setting (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1993), 1–2, describes AD as a “typical Latin American populist party” with a “radical program of income distribution” but no clearly defined long-term goals. Its popular appeal during its first years of existence was to a considerable degree based on the “charismatic qualities of its jefe máximo,” Rómulo Betancourt.
See also, Ellner, “Populism in Venezuela, 1935–1948: Betancourt and Acción Democrática,” in Latin American Populism in Comparative Perspective, ed., Michael Conniff (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1982).
Ellner, “Venezuela,” in Cambridge History of Latin America — Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War, 1944–1948, eds., Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 159–161 (quotation, 161).
COG was founded in 1905 under strong anarcho-syndicalist influence. It developed later toward a more liberal-conservative position. J. Durán Barba, “Orígenes del movimiento obrero artesanal,” in Enrique Ayala Mora, ed., Nueva Historia del Ecuador vol. 6 (Quito: Corporacíon Editoria Nacional, 1988), 179.
Historiade la CEOSL: Los primeros 25 años 1962–1987 (Quito: CEOSL, 1987), 15; Patricio Ycaza, Historia del movimiento obrero ecuatoriano (Quito: Centro de Documentación e Información de los Movimientos Sociales del Ecuador, 1991), 189.
M. Aguirre, Statement to the Third Assembly of Governors of the Inter-American Development Bank, Buenos Aires, April 5–11, 1962, 2–4; La ORLT: sus programas y sus realizaciones, (Mexico DF: ORIT, 1962), 49–50.
Jorge Oviedo, “El movimiento obrero ecuatoriano entre 1960 y 1985,” in Nueva Historia del Ecuador, 232; Ycaza, 197–199; Adolf Sturmthal, “Industrial Relation Strategies,” in The International Labor Movement in Transition, eds., Adolf Sturmthal and James G. Scoville, 5 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1973); Alexander, A History of Organized Labor in Peru and Ecuador, 189.
ICFTU archive, folder 5444: Marco Hirigoyen (ORIT) Report on activities in Ecuador, June 1–15, 1964, 3; Historia de la CEOSL, 28; Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1975) provides a detailed description of the CIA infiltration not only in CEOSL but also in the Catholic labor confederation, CEDOC.
In an interview with a student of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), Matías Ulloa admitted that he was not an active trade union leader prior to the CEOSL’s foundation. His involvement with the free trade union movement and later appointment as general-secretary was in his own view, “a rare coincidence.” He had received an invitation from a Catholic inter-professional trade union to attend the CEOSL founding congress. Agee claims that Ulloa’s appointment was the work of the CIA. L. Efraín Redrován Zúñiga, “La formación del Frente Unitario de Trabajadores (1960–1975). El papel de la Confederación Ecuatoriana de Organizaciones Sindicales Libres—CEOSL,” Quito, FLACSO, 1983, 67, www.flacsoandes.org/dspace/bitstream/10469/572/4/TFLACSO-02–1983LERZ.pdf, accessed on May 3, 2012;
J. Galarza, Entrevistaa Philip Agee, Quito, Movimiento Segunda Independencia, 1976, 28, quoted in Ycaza, 197.
This section is an abstract from my PhD dissertation, Magaly Rodríguez García, Liberal Workers of the World, Unite? The ICFTU and the Defense of Labor Liberalism in Europe and Latin America (1949–1969) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010).
Victor Alba, Politics and the Labor Movement in Latin America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), 274–275.
Kheel Center for Labor Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library, Serafino Romualdi Papers 1946–1966 [henceforth, “Romualdi Papers”], Series I, box 7, folder 1: A communication from the Confederation of Workers of Venezuela (Underground), July 24, 1950. N. Valticos, International Labor Law (Deventer, the Netherlands: Springer, 1979), 31.
Julio Godio, El movimiento obrero venezolano, 1945–1964 (Caracas: Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigaciones Sociales, 1985), 103.
William E. Ratliff, Castroism and Communism in Latin America: The Varieties of Marxist-Leninist Experience (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1976), 2–4, 29.
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© 2013 Robert Anthony Waters, Jr. and Geert van Goethem
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García, M.R. (2013). The AFL-CIO and ORIT in Latin America’s Andean Region, from the 1950s to the 1960s. In: Waters, R.A., van Goethem, G. (eds) American Labor’s Global Ambassadors. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137360229_9
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