To Be a Worker

“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