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Ambassadors of the Working Class: Argentina's International Labor Activists and Cold War Democracy in Latin America by Ernesto Semán (review)

Ernesto Semán of the University of Richmond has produced an outstanding piece of scholarship. He has recounted the unknown story of how, in 1946–1947, Argentine President Juan Perón (1946–55) dispatched fortythree labour and union activists to Argentine embassies in thirty-eight countries to serve as labour attachés. Ultimately over five hundred of these labour diplomats would represent Argentina abroad. These labour emissaries, who attended classes in Buenos Aires that President Perón at times taught, had the mission of spreading Perón’s concept of class-based democratic nationalism and the idea of the centrality of the rights of workers. These new ambassadors for Argentina came not from the traditional Eurocentric Argentine elite of Buenos Aires. Many of the labour attachés were dark-skinned leftists and union leaders from the provinces. Their mission was to counter the influence of the United States and the Soviet Union among the working masses by promoting a Third Way between capitalism and communism. As embodied in the Argentine constitution of 1949, property had a social function. The revolution brought about by Juan and Eva Perón ‘‘had become a living challenge to the unrestrained primacy of individual property rights without ever unleashing a radical attack on capital’’ (40). The labour diplomats had the additional assignment of promoting Argentina’s role in the world and especially in Latin America. A central tenet of twentieth-century Argentine foreign policy had been to resist the establishment of US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. What these unique diplomats found, what they did, the problems they encountered, and how they evolved are the fascinating parts of Professor Semán’s study. His work is based on prodigious research. Semán has consulted archives in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Semán literally traced the steps of the labour diplomats. The author has also corresponded with or interviewed relatives of the worker attachés. Augustı́n Melo, a linotypist from a meatpacking plant in the workingclass city of Berisso in Buenos Aires Province, made his way to the United States in 1947. Melo encountered problems developing relationships with workers, because he had limited facility with the English language. He was in the United States at the time of massive labour strikes, some union radicalism, and strong anti-union sentiment from the Republican-controlled Congress that led to the Taft-Hartley Act (1947). Melo also found that the American Federation of Labor opposed Peronism, arguing that labour should eschew radical politics and focus on productivity and economic