Trade Unionists Against Terror

Deborah Levenson-Estrada provides the first comprehensive analysis of how urban labor unions took shape in Guatemala under conditions of state terrorism. In <i>Trade Unionists against Terror</i> she explores how workers made sense of their struggle for rights in the face of death squads and other forms of violent opposition from the state. Levenson-Estrada focuses especially on the case of 400 workers at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Guatemala City who in order to protect their union successfully occupied the factory for over a year beginning in 1984 while the country was under a state of siege. According to Levenson-Estrada religion provided the language of resistance and workers who were engaged in what seemed to be a dead-end battle constructed an identity for themselves as powerful agents of change. Based on oral histories as well as documentary sources <i>Trade Unionists against Terror</i> also illuminates complex relationships between urban popular culture gender family and workplace activism in Guatemala.