Working Class Politics and Labour Internationalism in Latin America: An Overview of Labour International Organisations in the Region During the Interwar Period (1919-1939)

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, 1919 was a critical year with regards to the development of international labour organizations. Both friends and foes of the new revolutionary regime set out to establish new transnational associations, many of which would have a lasting influence in the global labour movement. Shortly after the reconstruction of the Second International in Bern, in February, the Communist International was created in Moscow, in March. A couple of months later, the International Federation of Trade Unions was founded in Amsterdam, in July, and the International Labour Organizations was established in Washington in October. And still other international organizations came to existence shortly afterwards, such as the Profintern, or Red International of Labour Unions, created in Moscow in July, 1921, and the revolutionary-syndicalist International Workingmen?s Association, established in Berlin in December, 1922. This article addresses the development of these competing international organizations in Latin America. It shows that global trends and alignments played a key role in shaping labour politics in the region, but at the same time it argues that there were specific particularities that need to be taken into account to properly understand the development of labour internationalism in Latin American countries. As a matter of fact, regional organizations soon appeared, such as the Pan-American Federation of Labor, founded in Texas in 1919 under the leadership of Samuel Gompers, the Asociación Continental Americana de Trabajadores (ACAT), oriented towards anarcho-syndicalism and established in Buenos Aires, in 1929, or the Confederación Sindical Latinoamericana (CSLA), affiliated to the Profintern, and active in the region between 1929 and 1936. Drawing upon a variety of sources, this article aims to provide a general overview of the institutional and political development of international labour organizations in Latin America in the interwar period, paying attention to their relative influence in the working classes and to the way in which they addressed key political issues of the time.