A History of Organized Labor in Argentina

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

Robert J. Alexander has been interested in Argentine labor since the late 1930s, and he is clearly the doyen of North Americans interested in Latin American labor. An examination of the extent and the variety of his writings using WorldCat reveals an extraordinarily impressive corpus. Argentina has always been of particular interest to Alexander; his first book, The Perón Era (Columbia Univ. Press, 1951), remains insightful, especially given the time when it was written and the emotions that Juan Perón stirred.One of the things that has always made Alexander’s work stand out was his access to key labor leaders and politicians. He has interviewed hundreds of labor leaders, politicians, and bureaucrats. The interviews were frequently conducted directly after the events being discussed; this makes them particularly valuable, unclouded as the subjects’ impressions are by the mists of time. Alexander has been extremely generous in sharing his interviews with others. When I was a graduate student, I wrote to Alexander about my dissertation topic. He replied, saying that if I were ever near New Jersey I should feel free to consult his collection of interviews and pamphlets. I took him up on his offer, and he allowed an unknown graduate student to consult the vast archive of materials he had in his office, even though he was not always present. This kind of generosity is extremely rare in academia.To those familiar with his other work, A History of Organized Labor in Argentina will present no major surprises in its structure and focus. It is an overview of the history of Argentine organized labor from its earliest stages until 1990, with considerable attention also paid to the Socialist and Communist Parties. The focus is on institutions and not on workers per se. Have Alexander’s views changed? The passage of time and the changing concerns of the world have made Alexander more sympathetic to the Peronists—though he is, of course, far from being one. He is also less concerned with Communism.The sources for the book are varied, as they need to be in a book covering such a wide period. The author depends heavily on the 109 personal interviews that he conducted with labor leaders, politicians of various stripes, and others. Some of these figures he spoke with more than once. He also uses a wide, if some what idiosyncratic, range of primary and secondary sources. His source material is both a strength and a weakness. Oral sources, like all types of sources, have their weaknesses, especially when they are used to comment on distant events or when they appear to be the sole source of key information. At the same time, they provide the heart of the most interesting chapters. The one that stands out in this respect is that on labor in the aftermath of the “Revolución Libertadora” that overthrew Perón in 1955. In it, Alexander argues that the ill-conceived attitudes and actions of the military government cemented and confirmed the Peronist ideology of the union movement for a generation. It is the longest chapter in relation to the period of time that is covered. Alexander’s trips to Argentina were quite frequent during that period, as he “traveled to Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean for Jay Lovestone, then the virtual ‘foreign minister’ of the American Federation of Labor” (p. x). Alexander talked to a wide range of people during and directly after this era: the president, General Pedro Aramburu, government bureaucrats, and a wide group of labor leaders (though most of the latter were not Peronists). The quantity of the oral sources and their variety give this chapter a particular depth and vigor.Robert J. Alexander’s 60-year interest in the labor relations of Argentina and the rest of Latin America has led to a vast production of books and articles. These works have been questioned by later generations of writers, who have used different approaches, ideologies, and sources. This is inevitable, but what he has also given us is a series of works based on a resource—the personal interview—that cannot be duplicated. The work under review is very much part of this legacy. It gives an overview of the history of organized labor in Argentina that strives to be fair and is heavily based on personal interviews. Alexander has observed and spoken with an impressive number of the key players. This, in many ways, makes the book a source in itself.