Abstract This article discusses efforts by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to promote non-Communist trade unions in Latin America during the early Cold War. A great deal of scholarship has shed light on the AFL's activities in Europe in support of anti-Communist labor organizations. This article shifts the focus to Latin America, tracing both the similarities and the differences. Although labor unions in Latin America were weaker than those in Europe, the U.S. government and the AFL still considered it essential to weaken the influence of Communism in Latin American trade union confederations. In the first decade after 1945, they provided support to labor unions that were compatible with their vision for the postwar world. The amount of funding provided to European organizations by the AFL was much larger than the money transferred to Latin American unions, but it was enough to influence the politics of labor groupings and to counter Soviet-dominated workers’ federations.

Abstract This article assesses the police-building program designed by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) for Guatemala in 1986–1991. By drawing on interviews and declassified archival evidence collected in Germany, Guatemala, and the United States and applying analytical insights from recent literature in International Relations regarding “transnational fields,” the article shows that the FRG's police-building program was shaped by the contingent convergence of international and domestic political conditions in the FRG and Guatemala, mediated by the agency of various Guatemalan actors. The resulting interactions determined the project's trajectory, leading to many adaptations and revisions of the program to suit the agency of Guatemalan actors. Over time, the cumulative weight of these modifications kept the program from succeeding.