Abstract
This article will attempt to "map" the class structure of Latin American societies on the basis of several recent empirical studies and statistics provided by such organizations as the International Labour Office (ILO), the Regional Employment Program for Latin America (PREALC), and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). This formal exercise should help clarify existing class structures by reducing a large and complex list of designations to a manageable number. On the basis of this classification, changes in class composition and struggles during the last two decades will then be examined. The article is thus divided in two parts, one dealing with class structure and the other with class dynamics. An initial objection to this task is that Latin American societies have become increasingly differentiated, and hence it is not possible to generalize about all of them. Statements that are true for Argentina will not hold for Brazil, and those applicable to the larger countries have little empirical validity in smaller ones. Although it is obvious that significant differences exist among countries, differences that merit detailed analysis, it is also true that a basic similarity characterizes the position of these countries in the international economic system and their historical development. As Brazilian sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1979) has noted, dissimilarities in Latin American political regimes and other variables should not obscure the fact that all these countries, with the exception of Cuba, are capitalist and occupy a subordinate position in the international economic order. This shared position as dependent capitalist societies is reflected in a series of internal social, cultural, and