Labor Law in Colombia: Emergence of a Local Socialist Perspective (1930-1945)

Abstract

This article challenges the general thesis on the origin of labor law in Colombia, explaining it as a concession given by president Alfonso
López to the workers movement for its support during the coup d’état attempt in 1944. Through a historical analysis based on the revision of primary sources, the article states that there were several academic and political currents early in the 1930’s that proposed the development of this branch of law. The article goes deeper in the critical appropriation of translational legal theories by local socialists intended to question the presumable intellectual isolation of the Colombian academicians and particularly this group. The article concludes that the labor law, understood as social right by socialists, was based at least on four sources: antiformalist currents; dialectic materialism and its expression in the Soviet law; the French social constitutionalism; and the English labor movement.