To Be a Worker: Identity and Politics in Peru / Edition 1

by Jorge Parodi, Catherine Conaghan, James Alstrum

Overview

A contemporary classic in Peru, where it was first published in 1986, this book explores changes in the political identity and economic strategies of the Peruvian working class in the 1970s and 1980s. Jorge Parodi uses a case study of Metal Empresa, a large factory in Lima, to trace the surge and decline of the labor movement in Peru—and in Latin America more generally—through the successes and frustrations of the members of a once-powerful union as they coped with the nation's deteriorating economic situation.
By the early 1970s, Metal Empresa was the site of one of the most radical and aggressive unions in Peruvian industry. But as the decade drew to a close, political and economic crises soured the environment for trade unionism and rendered unions less able to produce palpable benefits for their members. Through in-depth, often poignant interviews, including an extensive oral history of one of the workers, Jesus Zuniga, Parodi shows how workers desperate to support themselves and their families were increasingly forced to seek opportunities outside the industrial sector. In the process, he shows, they began to question their very identities as workers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807848609
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	07/10/2000
Series:	Latin America in Translation/en Traducción/em Tradução
Edition description:	Translated by James Alstrum and Catherine Conaghan; Edited, with an introduction, by Catherine Conaghan
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

Jorge Parodi is former director of the Centro de Estudios de Democracia y Sociedad. He now practices psychoanalysis in Lima, Peru.

Table of Contents

Contents

Glossary of Spanish Terms
Introduction to the English Translation by Catherine Conaghan

Part I. A History about Workers, a Union, and Politics
Introduction
1. Becoming a Factory Worker
2. Standing Up for Yourself as a Worker
3. Fighting for Benefits: The Limits of the Clasista Union
4. Acting Like Workers
5. To Be a Worker Is Relative: Industry and the Limits to (Re)Producing Workers
6. Amid Frustration, Indignation, and Fear

Part II. In His Own Words: The Many Lives of Jesús Zuñiga
7. Childhood: We'd Be Winners Someday
8. Lima: The Light Seemed Like Daylight
9. Everything Was Great When I Started Out at the Factory
10. Hard Workers and Shirkers
11. The Union: We Were No Longer What We Were Before
12. Deceived by the Company, but Hopeful in the Struggle
13. Jesús and Politics
14. If This Turns Out OK, to Hell with the Company
15. Breaking Bread
16. Retirement: Political Disillusion, New Horizons
17. The Union Grauina: The President Is Also a Peruvian
18. Defending the Absent

Part III. Conclusion
19. Unstable Processes, Radical Actions, Precarious Relations, and Relative Identities
20. What Can You Hope For?: Jesús in the 1990s

Epilogue

Appendix: Selected Political Chronology of Peru, 1968-1995
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

An important contribution to the labor and business history of Latin America. . . . A vitally important work for scholars concerned with labor in Latin America as well as the business history of the region. It provides a nuanced description of the aspirations of workers and the range of strategies they employ to achieve them. It also offers new evidence as to why private enterprise failed to lift Latin American workers out of acute poverty during the twentieth century.—Harvard Business History Review



A truly innovative work . . . and an important contribution to the growing Latin American new labour history.—Journal of Latin American Studies



An imaginative and intriguing study of workers' class-consciousness, labor union activity, and the 'new left' in Peru. This book is provocative and readable in its description of a working class motivated less by solidarity than the desire for individual independence. It also contributes significantly to our understanding of the left and its weaknesses in recent Peruvian history.—John S. Gitlitz, SUNY-Purchase College



This book masterfully links changes at the macro and micro levels to explain the rapid rise and demise of the militant labor movement in Peru in the 1970s and 1980s. Through the experience of workers in one large enterprise, Parodi elucidates how the economic crisis and repressive policies—combined with the increasing resort by industrial workers to activities in the informal economy and the decay of their social identities as workers—weakened the labor movement and militant leftist groups. The book is very well written, making excellent use of oral history, which makes it very attractive for undergraduate courses in political science, sociology, history, and anthropology.—Evelyne Huber, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Editorial Reviews

An imaginative and intriguing study of workers' class-consciousness, labor union activity, and the 'new left' in Peru.

John S. Gitlitz, SUNY-Purchase College

The book is very well written, making excellent use of oral history, which makes it very attractive for undergraduate courses.

Evelyne Huber, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"An imaginative and intriguing study of workers' class-consciousness, labor union activity, and the 'new left' in Peru.

John S. Gitlitz, SUNY-Purchase College"

"The book is very well written, making excellent use of oral history, which makes it very attractive for undergraduate courses.

Evelyne Huber, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"

A truly innovative work .

"Journal of Latin American Studies"

A vitally important work for scholars concerned with labor in Latin America as well as the business history of the region.

"Harvard Business History Review"

From the Publisher