Solidarity Under Siege
The Salvadoran Labor Movement, 1970–1990

Depicts the rise and fall of the militant labor movement in modern El Salvador.

Jeffrey L. Gould (Author)

9781108419192, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 May 2019

276 pages, 21 b/w illus. 1 map
23.5 x 15.7 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

'This book is a welcome delve into the history of social organisation in El Salvador, before and during the civil war of the 1980s. Newly available archive sources as well as interviews with survivors and exiles from that period have offered new detail and dimensions to this history. The labour movement … was much overlooked at the time; authors focused … on peasant participation in the revolutionary movement. The labour movement … has never received the academic attention it deserves. This book amply fills that void, with a careful and nuanced reconstruction of events over significant time periods that enable us to appreciate aspects of the country's labour history in relation to the struggles of other sectors … and the political projects that sought to mobilise their support … Through this book and the accompanying documentary he has made, Gould has ensured that the story will not be lost.' Jenny Pearce, Journal of Latin American Studies

El Salvador's long civil war had its origins in the state repression against one of the most militant labor movements in Latin American history. Solidarity under Siege vividly documents the port workers and shrimp fishermen who struggled yet prospered under extremely adverse conditions during the 1970s only to suffer discord, deprivation and, eventually, the demise of their industry and unions over the following decades. Featuring material uncovered in previously inaccessible union and court archives and extensive interviews conducted with former plant workers and fishermen in Puerto el Triunfo and in Los Angeles, Jeffrey L. Gould presents the history of the labor movement before and during the country's civil war, its key activists, and its victims into sharp relief, shedding new and valuable light on the relationships between rank and file labor movements and the organized left in twentieth-century Latin and Central America.

Introduction: an arc of triumph and despair
1. Tired of the abuse: gender and the rise of the Sindicato de la Industria Pesquera, 1970–9
2. The cost of solidarity: the Salvadoran labor movement in Puerto el Triunfo and greater San Salvador, 1979–80
3. The last chance: the Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierno and the impending civil war
4. Labor conflicts in Puerto el Triunfo, El Salvador, 1985
5. The far right and fraud
6. Solidarity and discord in the labor movement, 1984–9
7. The longest strike in history
Conclusion: tropical deindustrialization and its discontents
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], History of the Americas [HBJK]