Latin American "Free Trade Unionism" and the Cold War - An Analysis Based on Educational Policies

SCODELLER, GABRIELA

Labor History

Routledge

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2017 vol. 58 p. 327 - 349

1469-9702

The political education of workers and their leaders was viewed as a strategic concern in the Cold War period?s bipolar world. This article discusses how this issue was dealt with by Latin American reformist trade unions grouped together in the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT, for its Spanish acronym), analyzing the educational policies promoted by its Inter-American Institute for Labor Studies (IIES), focusing specifically on its educational program for trade union instructors. We argue that the nature of the education provided changed, shifting from a rationale based on explicit ideological confrontation to a more focalized technical type of training. We claim that this shift started in the early 1960s, when the Alliance for Progress was launched.