Abstract
This article discusses efforts by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to promote non-Communist trade unions in Latin America during the early Cold War. A great deal of scholarship has shed light on the AFL's activities in Europe in support of anti-Communist labor organizations. This article shifts the focus to Latin America, tracing both the similarities and the differences. Although labor unions in Latin America were weaker than those in Europe, the U.S. government and the AFL still considered it essential to weaken the influence of Communism in Latin American trade union confederations. In the first decade after 1945, they provided support to labor unions that were compatible with their vision for the postwar world. The amount of funding provided to European organizations by the AFL was much larger than the money transferred to Latin American unions, but it was enough to influence the politics of labor groupings and to counter Soviet-dominated workers’ federations.