General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP)

The General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (Confederación General de Trabajadores Peruanos, or CGTP) was a group of labor unions under the influence and control of the Peruvian Communist Party. Communist labor organizers had been active in Peru since the late 1920s. However, they were able to considerably expand the formation and control of unions beginning in the 1950s, especially during the regimes of civilians Manuel Prado (1956–1962) and Fernando Belaúnde Terry (1963–1968) and among the modern industrial working sectors. In the 1970s the official Communist Party's policy of "critical support" to the military regime afforded it the political space to continue to expand the labor organization. The CGTP was able to displace both the Aprista-dominated Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CTP) and the corporatist Confederation of Workers of the Peruvian Revolution (CTRP). In 1977 the CGTP successfully staged a general strike that was one of the cornerstones of the popular demand for the return of democracy, which occurred in 1980. Since then, the strength of the CGTP has declined considerably.

See alsoPeru, Political Parties: Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP/APRA) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

David Chaplin, The Peruvian Industrial Labor Force (1967).

Denis Sulmont, Historia del movimiento obrero en el Perú, de 1890 a 1977 (1977).

Additional Bibliography

Alexander, Robert Jackson, and Eldon M. Parker. A History of Organized Labor in Peru and Ecuador. Westport: Praeger, 2007.

Cameron, Maxwell A., and Philip Mauceri, eds. The Peruvian Labyrinth: Polity, Society, Economy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

Lévano, Manuel, Delfín Lévano, César Lévano, and Luis Tejada. La utopía libertaria en el Perú: Obra completa. Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2006.

                                     Alfonso W. Quiroz