Solidarity Under Siege

Jeffrey L. Gould is Distinguished Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington. His books include To Lead as Equals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912–1979 (1990), To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880–1965 (1998), and with Aldo Santiago, To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920–1932 (2008). He has also directed and codirected three documentary films, Port Triumph, which documents many of the events and people in Solidarity under Siege, La Palabra en el Bosque, and Scars of Memory: El Salvador, 1932.

• Introduction: an arc of triumph and despair; 1. Tired of the abuse: gender and the rise of the Sindicato de la Industria Pesquera, 1970–9; 2. The cost of solidarity: the Salvadoran labor movement in Puerto el Triunfo and greater San Salvador, 1979–80; 3. The last chance: the Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierno and the impending civil war; 4. Labor conflicts in Puerto el Triunfo, El Salvador, 1985; 5. The far right and fraud; 6. Solidarity and discord in the labor movement, 1984–9; 7. The longest strike in history; Conclusion: tropical deindustrialization and its discontents; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

'Solidarity under Siege tells the story of Puerto El Triunfo, the harrowing politics and perils of Latin America's longest running labor strike there, and the disappearance of the whole regional economy at the hands of foreign investors' complicity with the military. Gould has made Central America's tragic neoliberal turn and the ravaging of hope for state-led economic development understandable, painful and palpable.' Lillian Guerra, University of Florida