“Training Guatemalan Campesinos to Work Like Korean Peasants”: Taxonomies and Temporalities of East Asian Labor Management in Latin America

Abstract

This article examines East Asian and Latin American orbitals of labor management. South Korean labor management methods are refined in Latin America, implementing persistent exploitation of Guatemalan and Mexican workers in South Korean–owned maquiladoras. Embedded in the management strategies are residual elements of Japanese colonialism and affinities between U.S.-backed military dictatorships in South Korea and Guatemala, which facilitated the movement of textile industries. Close readings of labor management journals as well as articles from a North Korean periodical excavate the sedimented colonial and capitalist histories operating through contemporary management. This article thus traces management discourses emerging from colonial and contemporary Korea through the shared repressive labor strategies of Guatemalan and Korean military dictatorships and reaches back to Chollima, which charts alternative affinities with revolutionary Guatemala.