Latin American "free-trade unionism" and the cold War: an analysis based on educational policies

The political education of workers and their leaders was viewed as a strategic concern in the cold war period’s bipolar world. This article discusses how this issue was dealt with by Latin American reformist trade unions grouped together in the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT, for its Spanish acronym), analyzing the educational policies promoted by its Inter-American Institute for Labor Studies (IIES), focusing specifically on its educational program for trade union instructors. We argue that the nature of the education provided changed, shifting from a rationale based on explicit ideological confrontation to a more focalized technical type of training. We claim that this shift started in the early 1960s, when the Alliance for Progress was launched.Fil: Scodeller, Gabriela Noemi. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto de Ciencias Humanas, Sociales y Ambientales; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin