ABSTRACT
As early as the 1860s, Latin American affiliates of the International Workingmen's Association existed. Only a small percentage of the working class and the peasantry of Latin America are organized. Perhaps 31 million or 10 percent of the estimated Latin American population of 307 million in 1976 are claimed as members of confederations, sindicatos, ligas, cooperatives, and other groups affiliated with or guided by Democratic Leftists, Christian Democrats, Communists, Socialists, and other groups. Organized labor and organized peasant groups have been highly political from their beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century, when immigrants brought anarcho-syndicalist, socialist, and later Communist-Bolshevik ideas from Great Britain, France, Spain, and Italy. Frequently they organized the early trade unions of many countries. Efforts by different ideologically inspired groups to create international confederations have been made on many occasions since 1907, when the Federación Obrera Regional of Argentina sought to do this.
