Deborah Levenson-Estrada provides the first comprehensive analysis
of how urban labor unions took shape in Guatemala under conditions
of state terrorism. In
Trade Unionists against Terror, 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,
Trade Unionists against Terror also
illuminates complex relationships between urban popular culture,
gender, family, and workplace activism in Guatemala.
