This is the second volume of a projected multivolume history of the Latin American labor movement. The first, published in 1980, covered the period up to World War I. This one concentrates upon the years from 1918 to 1930. The study is divided into three separate but related sections. The first examines the impact of the war and Soviet Revolution on the movement; the nature of Latin American societies; the University Reform and its Marxist component; and the rise of Latin American Communist parties using Argentina and Mexico as examples. This part closes with chapters on nationalism and the debate between Julio Antonio Mella and Raúl Haya de la Torre on the future course of the Latin American revolution.
The second section begins by briefly examining the rise of labor confederations and then devotes a chapter each to the Pan American Federation of Labor, the anarcho-syndicalist ACAT, and the Communist CSLA. The author underscores the failure of each to meet Latin American realities.
The last section argues that petit bourgeois oriented parties better captured the national essence than those of the left, and that José Carlos Mariátegui alone understood how to apply Marxist theory to national reality. A lengthy critical examination of the resolutions and debates at the first meeting of Latin American Communist parties (1929) ends the book.
In sum, this is not strictly a history of the labor movement but rather an interpretive and polemical work on Marxist, official Communist, and leftist strategy and tactics. In the course of his own leftist criticism of the Communists, Godio sometimes seems more engaged in a dialogue about his native Argentina in the 1960-70s than in a study of the 1920s. The use of official documents, however, often with lengthy excepts, rescues material that is now seldom read and hard to find in published form. Those interested in the key questions that faced Latin American leftists in these years (and since) will find this book challenging and controversial.
