Chapter II After the “Spirit of Geneva” Comes the “Spirit of Santiago
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Chapter II Afterthe “Spirit of Geneva” Comes the “Spirit of Santiago”:Early RegionalCooperation in Latin America The 1930s not onlyled the ILO to reflect on its position and its role within Eu- rope, it also prompted the organisation to reconsider its place in the world, along with the means to be developedtofortify its relations with countries out- side Europe. In his 1932 annual report,AlbertThomas thus called for strength- ening collaborations with non-European countries.¹ However,considering how little weight the demands of developing countries still had at the ILO in compar- ison with thoseofindustrialised countries – whose social policies weremore de- velopedand whose influenceonthe international scene wasmuch moresignifi- cant – it seemed the time had not yetcome for anysignificant commitment in this direction. This balance of power would onlytrulybegin shifting after the entry of the United States into the ILO in 1934 and following the first Latin Amer- ican regional conferencein1936. The regionalisation of ILO activities is one of the manifestations of the “shift in balance” that took place at the ILO in the 1930s, when LatinAmerican countries began playing agreater role internation- ally.² Before the Second World War, as it sought to build new spaces for dialogue closer to the social and economic realities of its member states,the ILO organ- ised two regional conferences in Latin America that heralded the beginning of anew practice of international technicalcooperation. Beyond particular regional trajectories,this chapter aims to analyse the ILO’sinfluenceinpromotingforms of regional technical cooperation. Doing so helps reframe the consequences of this reconfiguration in the broader context of new reflections on ways to encour- agesocial progress and the adoption of stricter social standards in less industri- alised countries.After highlightingthe limits of the participation of non-Europe- an countries in ILO activities, this chapter offers an analysis of the regionalisation process thattook place within the organisation, focusingon the case of LatinAmericancountries,which playedacentral role in promoting aLatin Americanperspective and more broadlyinfluencingthe ILO’sglobalisa- Director’sReport,ILC,1932, 879, ILOA. Director’sReport,ILC,1938, 71,ILOA. OpenAccess. © 2020 Véronique Plata-Stenger, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensedu nder the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110616323-006 62 IDevelopment as aUniversal Strategy tion process.³ This will lead me to probe the impact of this reconfiguration on ILO activities, stressingtwo main areas of collaboration: social insurance and migrationfor colonisation. 1Opposing Models: “Europeanism” vs “Universalism” The regionalisation of ILO activities was part of aEurocentric reflection on the limits of international cooperation. From 1930 onwards,criticism of the ILO’s predominantlyEuropean character became systematic. Faced with an interna- tional context plagued by rising tensions,one in which the global economic cri- sis meant the gradual closure of borders and the emergence of regional blocs, the ILO became aware of the limits of its actioninEurope and in the rest of the world. In this conjuncture,Latin America, wherethe first regional offices had opened as earlyasthe late 1920s, acted as acatalyst in the decentralisation of the ILO’sactivities away from Europe. 1.1 The EuropeanOriginsofthe ILO Although AlbertThomas, who gave the International Labour Office avital force, never ignored the importance of forging links all over the world, the social issues tackled by the Office were to alarge extent limited to European industrial soci- eties.⁴ The background of the international civil servants workingfor the Office reinforcedthe organisation’sEuropean character.⁵ In 1925,although the Office boasted 25 different nationalities among its staff, French and British nationals held the best positions, and the organisation’stwo official languages wereEng- lish and French. In 1932, of the 420employees, only18had non-European back- grounds.Outside Europe, the organisation remained little known. Office publica- tions werenot widelydistributed and the organisation had very little contact with labour movements, such as organisations not affiliated with the Interna- tional Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), whose members predominantlyrepre- AntonyAlcock was one of the first to highlightthe new importance of non-European countries to the ILO.Alcock, A. 1971. Historyofthe International Labour Organization,135.London: Mac- millan. Guérin, D. 1996. Albert Thomas au BIT 1920–1932: de l’internationalisme àl’Europe. Genève: Euryopa, 61. Plata, V. 2010. Le Recrutement des fonctionnaires du Bureau international du travail en 1920: Une approche prosopographique. Master diss., University of Geneva. II Early RegionalCooperation in Latin America 63 sented workers’ delegates to the ILO.⁶ Thus, despite its universalistic claims, the ILO,like the League of Nations, was largely dominated by European cultureand representations. As aresult, it aroused little interest outside Europe, and strug- gled to provide tangible proof of its proclaimed universalism. The low level of participation of Latin Americancountries in the works that came out of the Geneva conferences demonstrated the limited reach of its ac- tion.⁷ Between 1919 and 1933,onlyChile and Uruguaywererepresented at the conference each year,followed closelybyVenezuela and Brazil. Besides,most government delegates were postedabroad and did not necessarilymaintain close relations with their respective governments. The ability of these Latin Americandelegations to disseminate information on ILO activities is questiona- ble, as both workers’ and employers’ representativeswereoften missing.Ofthose in attendance, the workers’ representativeswerenot necessarilyspeaking on be- half of labour organisations,which were practicallynon-existent in Latin Amer- ica in the 1920sand 1930s.⁸ Although the organisation of the International La- bour Conferences (ILC) in Geneva wasinitself abarrier to these countries’ participation duetothe cost and duration of trans-Atlantic travel at this time (the return tripwould take delegates amonth and ahalf), the overall lack of in- terest in ILO activities was palpable, as the organisation wasconsidered to be far removed from the realitiesofnon-European countries. This feeling was reinforced by the fact that international conventions, con- ceivedonthe model of the world’smost industralised nations, did not reflect the economic and social conditionsofthe less developedcountries,which often failed to ratify them.⁹ The debates that arose at the beginning of the Tosstorff, R. 2010. “Albert Thomas,the ILO and the IFTU”,inVan Daele, J. et al. eds.ILO His- tories. Essays on the International Labour Organization and ItsImpact on the World Duringthe Twentieth Century,91–114. Bern: Peter Lang. Alist of Latin American countries that were members of the ILObetween 1919 and 1950:Ar- gentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Salvador (from1919 to 1939 and since1948), Gua- temala (from1919 to 1938 and since 1945), Haiti, Honduras(from1919 to 1938 and since1955), Peru, Paraguay(from 1919 to 1937 and since 1956),Uruguay and Venezuela (from 1919 to 1957 and since1958). See the database of ILOmember countries,http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/french/ mstatesf.htm. [last accessed 17.09. 2019]. Note, however,the exception of Mexicoand Argentina,where therewere central workers’ or- ganisations.RL86/0 “Relation of the ILOwith central and south America. General”,ILOA. In 1930,Latin America onlyhad light industries,despiteaninitial period of industrialisation from the latenineteenth century until the depression of the 1930s. Forageneral overview of the economic development of Latin America since1830, see the datedbut still very useful mono- graphbyLéon, P. 1969. Économies et sociétés de l’Amérique Latine. Essai sur les problèmes du développement àl’époque contemporaine, 1815–1967. Paris: Regards sur l’Histoire. 64 IDevelopment as aUniversal Strategy 1930s on the “European” natureofthe international labour Conventions bears witness to this. The corollary of this debate was the growingemphasis on the need to develop asocial policy cateringtothe conditions of less industrialised countries.Atthe 1934 ILC, several delegates echoed this concern. The ILCs werethus graduallybecomingaplace wherethis “dissociation” from Europe could be expressed, and the opposition between the ILO’suniversalist model and national and regional particularities articulated.¹⁰ 1.2 Pan-Americanism and the Creation of RegionalLabour Offices This movement was reinforced by the growinginterest in regional integration projects outside Europe, to which the 1929 pan-European project of Aristide Briand certainlygavenew impetus. While their promoters sawthem as a means of adjustingthe ILO’ssocial protection paradigms to non-Western con- texts,these projects also testify to the feeling of “collective insecurity” which then dominated international meetings and which could be explainedinpart by the rise of extreme nationalisms¹¹ and the LeagueofNation’sfailures regard- ing economic cooperation and military security.¹² In the field of social policy,new proposals for regional labour organisation wereconcretelychallenging the ILO’suniversalist discourse. The fourth Balkan Congress, which met in Thessaloniki, Macedonia, in November1933, recom- mended atext proposingadraft convention for the organisation of alabour