Labor and Development in Twenty-first-Century Latin America: Two Political Options

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18806592
• Author: María Piñón Pereira Dias,Jana K. Silverman,Laura Carla Moisá Elicabide
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Date: 01 November 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 229, Vol. 46 No. 6, November 2019, 25–41

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18806592

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

25

Labor and Development in Twenty-first-Century

Latin America

Two Political Options

by

Laura Carla Moisá Elicabide, Jana K. Silverman,

and María Piñón Pereira Dias

Translated by

Margot Olavarria

An analysis of the results of social and labor policy in two Southern Cone countries

(Uruguay and Brazil) and two members of the Pacific Alliance (Mexico and Colombia)

between 2000 and 2012 focused on minimum wage policy, state intervention in labor

market regulation and supervision, and relations between governments and social and

political actors, especially unions, indicates that, in contrast to the situation in the pro-

gressive countries, the neoliberal policies adopted by Mexico and Colombia maintained

social divisions instead of reducing them in this period.

Un análisis de los resultados de la política social y laboral en dos países del Cono Sur

(Uruguay y Brasil) y dos miembros de la Alianza del Pacífico (México y Colombia) entre

2000 y 2012 enfocado en la política de salario mínimo, intervención estatal en regulación

y supervisión del mercado laboral, y las relaciones entre los gobiernos y los actores sociales

y políticos, especialmente los sindicatos, indica que, a diferencia de la situación en los

países progresistas, las políticas neoliberales adoptadas por México y Colombia mantuvi-

eron las divisiones sociales en lugar de reducirlas en este período.

Keywords: Latin America, Social and labor policy, Wage regulation, Social actors

At the beginning of the twenty-first century in Latin America, a series of new

center-left and left governments emerged that challenged the neoliberal reforms,

dominated by the United States and finance capital, of the 1980s and 1990s.

Contrasting with this bloc (including Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador,

Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and, for a time, Paraguay) was a bloc of Pacific

Alliance countries (Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile). Identification of these

two blocs does not mean that the processes within them were homogeneous; on

the contrary, their historical, institutional, and political trajectories differed sub-

Laura Carla Moisá Elicabide holds a Ph.D. in economic development from the Universidad

Estadual de Campinas and is a professor of economics at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia

in Medellin. Jana K. Silverman holds a Ph.D. in economic development from the Universidad

Estadual de Campinas and is country programs director for Brazil and Paraguay at the AFL-CIO

Solidarity Center in São Paulo. Maria Piñón Pereira Dias is a Ph.D. candidate in the development

economics program at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Margot Olavarria is a translator

living in New York City.

806592LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18806592Latin American PerspectivesMoisá, Silverman, and Piñon / LABOR AND DEVELOPMENT IN LATIN AMERICA

research-article2018

26 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

stantially. We classify them as such simply to mark the structural differences

between the two groups of countries, which might be considered to amount to

different development models.

The different trajectories of the two groups began in the early 2000s, but

since the rejection by the Mercosur countries and Venezuela of the “open

regionalism”1 project framed in the Free Trade Area of the Americas in

November 2005 the differences between them have deepened. Some countries

signed “subordinate integration” agreements2 (Pomar, 2014: 109)—for exam-

ple, bilateral (Chile, Colombia, Peru) or multilateral (Mexico) free-trade treaties

with the United States—during the second half of the 1990s and the first decade

of the new century. With these antecedents, in 2011 Chile, Colombia, Peru, and

Mexico formed the Pacific Alliance to pursue two main geopolitical strategies:

strengthening their position with regard to the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic

Partnership Agreement and confronting the advances of the countries with left

and center-left governments. At the same time, the progressive governments

emerged in response to the social problems generated by the neoliberal reforms,

among them high poverty levels, labor insecurity, the destruction of the pro-

ductive and industrial matrix, and rising levels of inequality. For Luna (2010),

the leftist governments of various Latin American countries had three elements

in common: economic and political problems caused by corruption in the tra-

ditional parties and by the regional economic crisis (1998–2002), the mobiliza-

tion of voter groups in fragmented civil societies, and the emergence of

charismatic political leaders within and outside the historically constituted

political parties. Murillo, Ronconi, and Schrank (2011: 802) argue that the

region’s left and right differed not only in their discourse but in their policies

vis-à-vis labor regulation: “Right-of-center governments are substantially more

likely to liberalize, and less likely to regulate, their labor markets than their

left-of-center counterparts.”

The turn in economic policy in Latin America generated a substantial shift

in the negative trend of social indicators since the 1980s. Deliberate policy deci-

sions led to the distribution of the benefits of growth, to a degree, to the major-

ity of the population. However, this policy shift did not occur in all the region’s

countries, nor was it homogeneous. In this article we contrast the results of

social and labor policy in two Southern Cone countries (Uruguay and Brazil)

with those in two countries of the Pacific Alliance (Mexico and Colombia).The

2000s was a period of strong social policy in the Southern Cone, while in the

countries of the Pacific Alliance policy makers opted to perpetuate policies of

labor flexibilization, liberalization of goods and capital markets, and the polit-

ical exclusion of workers, peasants, and indigenous people—policies that

maintained the social divisions in those societies.

We begin by describing the context of the period and then the social and

labor policies that distinguished the two blocs. We show that the lack of evi-

dence of structural change in economic matrices makes the favorable economic

climate at the beginning of the new century insufficient to explain the positive

results on labor issues in the countries of the Southern Cone. In defense of our

thesis we focus on three aspects: minimum wage policy, state intervention in

labor market regulation and supervision, and the relationship between

governments and social and political actors, especially unions. We argue that the