Latin America: Tragedy and Prospect

Before 1930 a passable history of Latin America might have been written without any reference to its labor movement. Today this would be impossible. Peronist demagogy and its equivalents throughout the continent have inadvertently succeeded in drawing the working class into political life, where it now begins to constitute an influential, if not determining, force. Having acquired a taste under the Peronist demagogues for being taken into some account, the workers would resist the relinquishment of what only yesterday had seemed a rare and barely attainable privilege.

For this very reason, by virtue of the curiously mixed development of Latin America, the labor movement now faces new possibilities and responsibilities. Foremost of...