Newly Revealed Documents Show How the AFL-CIO Aided US Interference in Venezuela
The AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center has a long history of working hand in glove with the US government in undermining democracy and left labor movements throughout the world. The center emphasizes it has shifted away from these Cold War tactics in recent years. But newly obtained documents show that the Solidarity Center has worked closely with the US to undermine the Venezuelan government in the recent past.
President Hugo Chávez addresses his supporters during a massive rally called as a show of strength to counter an opposition-led strike that has battered the nation’s oil industry, on December 7, 2002 in Caracas, Venezuela. The strike follows the opposition’s failed coup attempt against President Chávez earlier that year, in which the US played many angles. (Miraflores / Getty Images)
During the Cold War, the United States sought to defeat communism. Key to that effort was the United States’ attempt to match and defeat the Soviet Union’s influence around the world. In many locations, though, communist and socialist movements developed not as puppet movements of Moscow, but organically — particularly student, labor, and peasant organizations.
As a result, the United States worked on multiple fronts, usually clandestinely, to stop the rise of leftist movements, often with zero concern for democracy or basic human rights. A key part of that effort included confronting and marginalizing leftist labor groups.
Across much of the world, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) acted as an international arm of US foreign policy, both before and during the Cold War. In doing so, the AFL-CIO sought to undermine left-leaning and communist groups, labor unions, and governments — with little concern for democracy and often with no compunction about using or supporting brutal violence — in Italy and France in the 1940s, Guatemala in the 1950s, Brazil in the 1960s, Chile in the 1970s, and many other countries.
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