Cooperation between labor and Catholic Church in their opposition against Neo-liberalism : the Argentine Case

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This study was initiated to analyze cooperative relationship between labor movement. and Catholic Church in Argentina in their opposition against the neo-liberal policies carried out in the 1990s. In my previous article titled "Labor Movement and the Catholic Church in Latin America," I pointed out several cases in which these two forces, which had been generally considered as antagonistic, had cooperated on several occasions to protest against neo-liberalism. My intention was to investigate further this relation But to the extent to which my study advanced, I found that the attitude of labor toward neo-liberalism varied from a frontal opposition to acceptance. On the other hand, the Catholic Church criticized it and some clergymen participated in protest movement, but its hierarchy showed so cautious an attitude in political sphere that cooperation between the two forces were realized by very limited number of clergy in specific cases. After having realized this, I decided to analyze … More the attitude of labor focusing on their relation with populism (peronism since labor constitutes its mast important segment of electoral base. From this perspective, I wrote an article on changes in the analytical frameworks to interpret classic populism and neo-populism, in which I tried to grasp labor acceptance of neo-liberal policies launched by President Menem as a kind of their subordination to neo-populism and pointed out its theoretical implications. Besides, I wrote another article on the FTAA from the perspective of Mercosur because the former is the embodiment of neo-liberalism for the whole American Continent I showed labor opposition and Churchs moderate criticism against it, but until now there is no important concrete cooperative action between them. In summary, although there is a possibility to cooperate between labor and the Church in their opposition to neo-liberalism, cooperation has been limited in number and only on several specific topics partly because the Argentine trade unions are divided concerning their attitude toward neo-liberalism and the Church tends to avoid intervening in politics except as an intermediary between Government and opposition such as labor movement. Less