Studies different forms of cultural production (film, novel, short story, critical essay) as entry-points into new settings and conditions for work in Latin America, in four sectors that have become especially salient in the region:  services, finance, agro-industry and the informal economy (particularly drug trafficking).  We will pay particular attention to how cultural production allows us to envision the coordinates of the larger, indeed global, economy into which workers are inserted. We will examine how cultural production allows us to map shifting class structures; we will also track how gender and race shape national and international divisions of labor.