Labor's Own Empire: The AFL-CIO's Cold War in Honduras, 1950-1980

FAIN: FA-55847-11

Dana L. Frank
Regents of the University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA 95064-1077)

This project examines the AFL-CIO's Cold War intervention into the Latin American labor movement, through a case study of Honduras, the federation's most successful project. Between 1950 and 19995 the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) expended around ten million dollars in U.S. State Department and other funds, to manipulate the labor movement of Honduras in the name of anticommunism. Honduras was just one piece of the federation's work throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This project is the first book-length study of the AFL-CIO's projects in a single country, using newly available labor and State Department documents and over three dozen interviews with Hondurans. It speaks to larger questions of the Cold War in Latin America, U.S. and Honduran labor history, and the contested nature of U.S.-Latin American relations, with particular attention to Hondurans' responses to the AFL-CIO's overtures.

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