To Be a Worker: Identity & Politics in Peru

by Jorge Parodi, trans. James Alstrum and Catherine M. Conaghan vii + 177 pp.

To Be a Worker: Identity & Politics in Peru. By Jorge Parodi. Trans. James Alstrum and Catherine M. Conaghan. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Pp. vii + 177. Glossary, epilogue, appendix, notes, index. $17.95 paper.

To Be a Worker: Identity & Politics in Peru offers an historical analysis of the identity and politico-economic struggles of the Peruvian working class in Lima. Parodi traces the enculturation of the worker in the 1960s and 1970s at a metal factory in Lima, incorporating a good deal of interview data to flesh out his points. He notes that becoming a skilled factory worker represented a dream of upward mobility. Parodi goes on to analyze the cultural differences between workers: while those from Lima had the advantage of a better education and made use of personal connections with bosses to advance their standing, the migrant worker relied on hard work and a more submissive attitude toward authority.

Parodi describes the way that "despotic treatment" (p. 23) on the part of management toward the workers laid the foundation for union organization. To explain the shift from individual relationships to collective bargaining, Parodi posits that terrible working conditions alone do not suffice to explain the transition; rather, he argues that workers "had to recognize . . . that they were all equally affected by the inhumane practices of factory life" (p. 27), and that their labor made possible the company's large profits of which they were not reaping a fair share.

Later in this first half the author analyzes the mechanisms of unionization and its outcomes. Parodi points out that the union leaders' clasista ideology of gaining concessions through la lucha (the fight) was aimed at making workers share the conviction that at times they had to be ready to resort to strikes to assure their success. Through union membership, workers internalized the ideology of clasismo, the idea that efforts to stop worker exploitation necessitated political change. Workers were mobilized to participate in political protests well outside of their strict union interests. During the 1970s, however, as wages dropped and the relative stakes of strike participation increased, workers became less willing to be involved.

The author then explores the effects of decreased job security and increased efforts to supplement falling wages on unionization and class identity. Ultimately, the author argues, the business situation of the factory caused workers to constantly fear for their job security and "dampened the enthusiasm for making demands on the company" (p. 91). Parodi concludes this section by arguing that "[u]nder these circumstances, the social and political identity of the workers that was born in the 1970s persisted as a kind of passive clasismo. Working-class consciousness revolved around resentment, rage, and blaming the powerful" (p. 96).

The second half of the book presents the life history of Jesús Zúñiga, in his own words. Parodi lets this migrant-worker-turned-union-leader tell his own story, from his childhood in a tiny village in the department of Apurímac, to his emigration to Lima. Zúñiga's story encapsulates the themes discussed by Parodi in the first half of the book: the perceived tie between Serrano ethnic identity and success in the factory, the enculturation of the worker into Leftist ideology, and eventual disillusionment with the union as a vehicle for social and economic change.

The book, originally published in Spanish in 1986, concludes with an updated Epilogue in which the author discusses changes in Perú in the past decade-and-a-half and their effects on the working class.

Natalie Underberg