Harvesting Counter-Revolution: Women Workers in the Chilean Fruit Sector

Over a 40-year period, agrarian reform and counter-reform, state subsidies and neoliberal restructuring in Chile have combined with global technological advances and shifting food tastes to fuel the growth and maturation of a highly profitable fresh fruit sector. The great majority of its work force has been comprised of young and middle-aged women whose situation has changed considerably since their initial portrayal in the 1980s as prototypical victims of neoliberalism.

W. L. Goldfrank is a professor of Sociology and Latin American & Latino Studies at UC Santa Cruz, where he has taught for 35 years. His research has focused on the Mexican Revolution, fascist movements and regimes in the interwar period, global hegemonic transitions and the development of the Chilean fruit sector. From 1993-96 he directed a collaborative project on social and ecological change in the Aconcagua Valley. He is currently co-editor of the on-line Journal of World-Systems Research.