Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL)

The Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL), a regional labor organization, was formed by union delegates from twelve Latin American nations in Mexico City in September 1938. Vicente Lombardo Toledano, the intellectual and Marxist leader of the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), served as president throughout the life of the organization. In the context of World War II, Mexico played an important ideological role in the effort to create an international labor confederation. The CTAL sought to end exploitation of the working class, promote democracy, obtain political and economic autonomy for Latin America, and join the popular front movement against international fascism. The CTAL brought together national labor organizations of diverse political orientations, including Communists, socialists, Auténticos, and Apristas. To focus on this international effort, in 1941 Lombardo reduced his involvement with the CTM. By 1944 more than 3.3 million people in sixteen countries were CTAL members.

The CTAL's influence and hemispheric labor unity deteriorated in the postwar and incipient cold war period. Argentina's Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT) withdrew in 1944 to create a rival, Peronist regional labor organization Agrupación de Trabajadores Latinoamericanos Sindicalistas (ATLAS). The CGT's withdrawal and the heightened influence of Communists in several national labor confederations led to Marxist domination by the time of the CTAL's December 1944 Congress. The CTAL joined the leftist World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1945. Noncommunist labor groups abandoned the CTAL to join the Confederación Inter-Americana de Trabajadores (CIT), established in 1948 with support from the American Federation of Labor. More concerned with domestic issues, Mexico's CTM left the CTAL and expelled Toledano from the CTM in 1948. CTAL influence waned throughout the 1950s, and the confederation officially dissolved in 1962.

See alsoLabor Movements .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alba, Victor. Politics and the Labor Movement in Latin America (1968).

Alexander, Robert J. Organized Labor in Latin America (1965), esp. pp. 246-248.

Bernal Tavares, Luis. Vicente Lombardo Toledano y Miguel Alemán: Una bifurcación en la revolución mexicana. Mexico: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM, Centro de Estudios e Investigación para el Desarrollo Social, 1994.

Bethell, Leslie, and Ian Roxborough, eds. Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Lombardo Toledano, Vicente. Vicente Lombardo Toledano: Acción y pensamiento. Edited by Martín Tavira Urióstegui. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999.

López Portillo, Felicitas, ed. Movimiento obrero en América Latina. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1995.

Poblete Troncoso, Moisés, and Ben G. Burnett. The Rise of the Latin American Labor Movement (1960), pp. 134-139.

Spalding, Hobart A., Jr. Organized Labor in Latin America (1977), pp. 255-256.

                                      Steven S. Gillick