ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on specific periods of the modernization process and also explains the background to this process. It considers the information provided by the national censuses and focuses on three moments in time: 1950, the mid-1970s, arid an intermediate milestone in the 1960s. The book analyses modernizing trends in employment in order to show how labor markets were transformed during these decades. It also analyses the development of the labor movement that had already acquired a clear trade union-based identity and direction. The book offers an interpretation of how trade unionism faced the economic and political challenges presented by the crisis. It attempts to identify the structuring logic that, having remained unalterable with the passing of time, has shaped a vulnerable world of labor in Central America.
