Made in El Salvador: Neoliberal Globalization and Labor Movements in Latin American Democracies

If a person from the United States checks the tags of every article of clothing that he or she is wearing, it is likely that at least one of them will have been made outside of the U.S. There is also a significant chance that one or multiple of these articles of clothing is from Latin America; in 2020, North America, out of all the regions in the world, was the top destination for textiles exported from Latin American countries. Globalization is a phenomenon that is both abstract and deeply personal. It can be difficult to visualize the scope of the increasingly interconnected global economy, even as we wear the evidence of it on our backs every day. Similarly abstracted are the individuals that grease the wheels of this global economy— the workers who sew the clothes we wear, assemble the cars we drive, pick the fruit we eat, or perform any number of activities that are essential to the function of our daily lives. Given the predominance of globalization and neoliberalism in the modern world, it is important to understand the ramifications that a capitalist global economy has for workers and their ability to organize for better conditions.