Labor Movement in L atin A merica

Abstract

Abstract During the twentieth century, the labor movement profoundly affected the politics and societies of Latin America, the region including Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. The labor movement is here defined as workers' organizations with the capacity and willingness to engage in collective action. While labor protest dates back to slave brotherhoods and artisan associations formed after Spain and Portugal's fifteenth‐century colonization of the region, this entry focuses on the twentieth century, when trade unions were formed in many countries. Scholarship on the labor movement goes back at least to the 1920s, though it developed in earnest after World War II. Scholarly frameworks adopted in the study of the labor movement include modernization theory (Germani 1965), Marxism and dependency theory (Spalding 1977), social and cultural history (Levenson‐Estrada 1994), comparative politics (Collier and Collier 1991; Murillo 2001; Burgess 2004), and social movements theory (Kay 2005; Almeida 2008).