The two modern general histories of the Latin American labour movements that cover the pre-1930 period in some depth are Hobart A. Spalding, Jr., Organized Labor in Latin America (New York, 1977), and Ricardo Melgar Bao, El movimiento obrero latinoamericano (Madrid, 1988). In Julio Godio, Historia del movimiento obrero latinoamericano, 2 vols. (Mexico, D.F., 1980–3), the first volume deals with the movements in Argentina, Mexico and Chile up to 1918, while the second treats communism and nationalism for the region as a whole between 1918 and 1930. Charles Bergquist, Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia (Stanford, Calif., 1986) provides four case studies informed by dependency theory. Robert Paris and Madeleine Rebérioux, ‘Socialisme et communisme en Amérique latine’, in Histoire générate du socialisme, Jacques Droz (ed.), (Paris, 1978), vol. 4, is an informative shorter survey. Pablo González Casanova (ed.), Historia del movimiento obrero en América Latina, 4 vols. (Mexico, D.F., 1984) is composed of chapters on each country in Latin America, including Puerto Rico. The authors are sometimes not very concerned with pre-1930 developments, and the theoretical approaches vary considerably from one chapter to another. Nevertheless, the collection is valuable, particularly in the case of the smaller countries, where the chapters included are sometimes the best or at least most accessible syntheses available.

The most comprehensive bibiliography remains Carlos Rama, L’Amérique latine: 1492–1936 (Mouvements ouvriers et socialistes) (Paris, 1959), also available in a later German edition: Die Arbeiterbewegung in Lateinamerica: Chronologie und bibliographie, 1492–1966 (Bad Homburg, 1967). Additional material can be found in Kenneth Paul Erickson, Patrick V. Peppe and Hobart A. Spalding, Jr., ‘Research on the urban working class and organized labor in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile: What is left to be done?’, LARR, 9/2(1974), 115–42.