Books by Robert J. Alexander

Kubitschek was one of the most important political leaders of Brazil during the twentieth century. As president, he pushed decisively for the industrialization of the largest of the Latin American nations. He also provided his country with the most democratic regime it had ever experienced.

A documentary history of the origins, development and nature of the Trotsyist movement around the world.

The material in this book covers more than three decades of exchanges between Betancourt and Robert Alexander, presenting details of Betancourt's career and the evolution of his thinking. The material begins with Alexander's first meeting with Betancourt, in 1948, and continues up until the political leader's death forty years later.

.,." best suited for the undfergraduate classroom, where its coverage of basic background details and its relatively clear writing style provide a readable introduction to Bolivian politics."-American Political Science Review

?Robert J. Alexander's new book is relentlessly fair-minded. ...a detailed and scrupulous political narrative informed through reading in the periodical literature of those years, personal interviews with participants, and the author's own wide experience in Latin America.?-The American Historical Review

Robert J. Alexander traces organized labor from its origins in colonial Cuba, examining its evolution under the Republic, noting the successive political forces within it and the development of collective bargaining, culminating after 1959 in its transformation into a Stalin-model labor movement. In Castro's Cuba, organized labor has been subordinate to the Party and government and has been converted into a movement to control the workers and stimulate production and productivity instead of being a movement to defend the interests and desires of the workers.Starting with the organization of tobacco workers and a few other groups in the last years of Spanish colonial rule, Robert J. Alexander traces the growth of the labor movement during the early decades of the republic, noting particularly the influence of three political tendencies: anarchosyndicalists, Marxists, and independents. He examines the generally unfavorable attitudes of early republican governments to the labor movement, and he discusses the first central labor body, the CNOC, which was at first under anarchist influence, and soon captured by the Communists. The role of the CNOC vis-a-vis the Machado dictatorship, including the deal with Machado in 1933 is also discussed. Alexander then looks at the unions during the short Grau San Martine nationalist regime of 1933 and the near-destruction of organized labor by the Batista dictatorship of 1934-1937; the revival of the labor movement after the 1937 deal of the Communists with Batista and the establishment of the Confederacion de Trabajadores de Cuba, as well as the struggles for power within it, resulting in a split in the CTC in 1947, with the dominance of the Autentico-party controlled group. During this period regular collective bargaining became more or less the rule. He then describes the deterioration of the Confederacion of Trabajadores de Cuba under the Batista dictatorship of 1952-1959. Alexander ends with a description of organized labor during the Castro regime: the early attempt of revolutionary trade unionists to establish an independent labor movement, followed by the Castro government's seizure of control of the CTC and its unions, and the conversion of the Cuban labor movement into one patterned after the Stalinist model of a movement designed to stimulate production and productivity-under government control-instead of defending the rights and interests of the unions' members.Based on an extensive review of Cuban materials as well as Alexander's numerous interviews, correspondence, and conversations with key figures from the late 1940s onward, this is the most comprehensive English-language examination of organized labor in Cuba ever written. Essential reading for all scholars and students of Cuban and Latin American labor and economic affairs as well as important to political scientists and historians of the region.

This book consists of notes of conversations by one of America's leading Latin Americanists, as well as his correspondence with more than two dozen presidents of the Central American republics, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

Well-known Latin Americanist Alexander and his colleagues (some with reputations equal to that of their editor) provide information about Latin American and Caribbean leaders over the past two centuries.

Provides interview transcripts and letters from nearly 20 presidents of Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Some of the correspondence and interviews are spread over a considerable length of time. The introduction places the presidents in the context of their roles in the history of their countries.

In this volume, Alexander sketches the history of organized labor in the countries of Uruguay and Paraguay. He covers such topics as the role of organized labor in the economics and politics of these two countries and their relations with the international labor movement. It is based on extensive personal contacts of the author with the labor movements over almost half a century. It may seem unusual at first to have both of these countries in one volume because there does not exist anywhere else in Latin America such historical political disparity between neighboring countries as that between Uruguay and Paraguay. However in spite of the political contrasts, there are certain similarities in the history of the labor movements of these two republics.In both Uruguay and Paraguay, the earliest organizations to be founded by the workers were mutual benefit societies, rather than trade unions. But in both countries, trade unions which sought to protect their members against employers began to appear. By the early years of the 20th century, these unions began to demand that employers negotiate with them, and there were an increasing number of strikes, attempting to make these demands effective. There were soon efforts to bring together the various trade unions into broader local, national, and international labor organizations.

Traces the relative successes of Bolivia's labor unions, contextualizing their triumphs and disappointments within the history of Bolivia's tumultuous political scene. The author explains how the labor movement evolved in the framework of several political changes, including the Bolivian National Revolution which began on April 9, 1952.

Alexander traces the history of organised labour across all the countries of the English-speaking Caribbean. He also examines international affiliations of trades unions in the West Indies.

In this the third of a series of studies of the history of organized labor in Latin America and the Caribean, Alexander explores the history of the Argentine labor movement from the mid-19th century onward.Throughout most of the 20th century, Argentina had one of the largest, strongest, and most militant organized labor movements in the Western Hemisphere. While the roots of the labor movement can be traced to colonial times and the craft guilds of that era, European immigrants, particularly from Italy and Spain, who were political refugees from the unrest of the mid-19th century were key to the development of the Argentine labor movement. During much of the late 19th century, the labor movement was predominantly under anarchist influence, although during and after World War I, syndicalists, Socialists, and Communists emerged as the predominant political influences in the trade union movement. The military coup d'etat of 1943 drastically altered the nature and size of Argentina's organized labor as Juan Peron sought to utilize labor as a principal support-along with the armed forces-for the regime. During the nearly 18 years following the overthrow of Peron in 1955, the organized workers remained loyal to the fallen dictator. Peron returned to power in 1973 with the overwhelming support of the Argentine working class. After his death, the Peronista regime was again overthrown early in 1976 and a brutal seven-year military dictatorship sought to undermine organized labor. By and large successive governments have followed a similar strategy. The privatization of much of the state-owned sector of the economy and opening up Argentina's economy to foreign competition have greatly weakened the country's labor movement.Utilizing his personal contacts as well as extensive written materials, Alexander has produced a study that will be of great use to scholars, students, and researchers involved with the history and current state of labor in Argentina and the Latin American world in general.

Alexander examines the history of the labor movement in Brazil during its two key phases. First, he looks at the origins and early development of the movement from the last decades of the 19th century until the Revolution of 1930. Then he analyzes the impact of the corporate state structure that President Getulio Vargas imposed on labor during his first tenure in power, and the continuation of that structure during most of the remainder of the century.Until 1930, the trajectory of the labor movement in Brazil was quite similar to what was happening in most of the rest of Latin America. Most of the early labor organizations were mutual-benefit societies rather than trade unions. This began to change in the early 1900s. From the onset, organized labor in Brazil was involved with politics, and organized labor had to deal not only with the opposition of employers, but also with that of successive conservative governments. All this changed with the ascent of Vargas to power in 1930. He sought to win the support of the urban working class, and with the coming of the New State in 1937, the government was deeply involved in the direction of union activities. After 1945, Brazilian labor was once more influenced by a variety of different political currents, and by the 1960s the labor movement began to extend into the rural sector of the economy. The Constitution of 1988 allowed workers to organize without government control and they won the right to strike. By 1990 the Brazilian labor movement had attained the structure and characteristics it would retain into the new century. A major resource for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with Brazilian labor, economic, and political affairs.

This volume is a pioneering study of the history of organized labor in the Central American republics. It traces the history in the various countries from the early nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It also discusses why they appeared, what organizational and ideological tendencies characterized the movement in these countries, the role of collective bargaining, the economic influence of organized labor, as well as the relations of the movement in the individual countries with one another and with the broader labor movement outside of the countries involved in this volume.

The first scholarly work to focus exclusively on the roles of pan-regional and worldwide labor organizations in the labor movements across the nations of the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

The Maoist movement was the most important dissident force within International Communism in the period following World War II. Based on first-hand observation as well as the scattered research on the Maoist movements, Alexander examines the circumstances that attracted people to the movement in each country and the evolution of the movement.

Concluding a five-volume collection of documents and conversations with the leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean, this text provides material on significant political leaders of the Caribbean since World War II. Norman Manley, Errol Barrow and Luis Munoz Marin are featured.

Alexander is among the most experienced observers of Latin American politics and has been an active correspondent with major figures of the region for decades.