AIFLD’s Salvadoran Labor Wars

In September 1985 Reader’s Digest published an article that paid glowing tribute to the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the AFL–CIO’s labor arm in Latin America, and to its executive director, William Doherty. “Bill Doherty’s Blue-Collar Freedom Fighters” described a heroic struggle AIFLD has waged over the past twenty-three years throughout the continent against phantom elections and communist penetration in unions and for the right of labor unionists to decide their own destiny democratically.

In El Salvador, however, AIFLD has resorted to dubious tactics in the past eighteen months to prevent Salvadoran workers from making their own democratic decisions. Since mid-19...