ABSTRACT
The English-speaking reader of Victor Alba's book, Politics and the Labor Movement in Latin America, can take comfort in the fact that he is reading a volume that has gained a great deal in the translation. Many of the flamboyant paragraphs have been toned down, and some of the ideological rhetoric inherited from Spanish Civil war salad days has been similarly converted into a more reasonable, appreciative analysis of the special features of labor history in Latin America. Labor conflict in Latin America dates back to the mid-sixteenth century when the black gold miners of Venezuela organized a work stoppage against their foreign oppressors. And in 1598, Indian miners in Mexico struck to protest their work conditions. Yet, as Alba well appreciates, the organized labor movement still attracts only a small minority of the Latin American work force. Alba's book constitutes an excellent primer on the major sociological factors in the study of Latin America.
