Ambassadors of the Working Class: Argentina's International Labor Activists and Cold War Democracy in the Americas

In 1946 Juan Per?n launched a populist challenge to the United States, recruiting an army of labor activists to serve as worker attach?s at every Argentine embassy. By 1955, over five hundred would serve, representing the largest presence of blue-collar workers in the foreign service of any country in history. A meatpacking union leader taught striking workers in Chicago about rising salaries under Per?n. A railroad motorist joined the revolution in Bolivia. A baker showed Soviet workers the daily caloric intake of their Argentine counterparts. As Ambassadors of the Working Class shows, the attach?s' struggle against US diplomats in Latin America turned the region into a Cold War battlefield for the hearts of the working classes. In this context, Ernesto Sem?n reveals, for example, how the attach?s' brand of transnational populism offered Fidel Castro and Che Guevara their last chance at mass politics before their embrace of revolutionary violence. Fiercely opposed by Washington, the attach?s' project foundered, but not before US policymakers used their opposition to Peronism to rehearse arguments against the New Deal's legacies.


About the Author
Historian Ernesto Semán is Assistant Professor at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond and the author of five previous books, which include novels and political essays.