Latin America in the 1930s

Abstract

Latin American development experienced a turning-point during the 1930s. The contrast between ‘before and after 1929’ may often be exaggerated, but there is little doubt that the decade witnessed a closing toward international trade and finance, and a relative upsurge of import-substituting activities, primarily but not exclusively in manufacturing. Other trends visible before 1929, such as urbanisation and a growing interest by the State in promoting economic development, continued into the 1930s and accelerated in some countries. Memories of the 1930s have profoundly influenced the region’s attitude toward international trade and finance; per capita foreign trade indicators reached by the late 1920s were not surpassed in many nations until the 1960s.

This essay both expands and abstracts who earlier ones (Diaz Alejandro, 1980 and 1981). All tables have been omitted; interested or sceptical readers are referred to those papers, others in the references, and the Statistical Appendix to this volume for fuller, albeit still incomplete, documentation. Workshops organised by Rosemary Thorp at St Antony’s College Oxford during September 1981 and in Manchester during September 1982 were very helpful for the preparation of this essay. I am grateful to her and to other participants in those workshops for many useful comments. Those of Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Enrique Cárdenas, José Antonio Ocampo, Arturo O’Connell and Gabriel Palma were especially influential in making me rethink a number of points. Virginia Casey edited and typed these pages in the cold from a sticky manuscript completed in the tropics. Sabbatical leave from Yale University and the joyful and stimulating hospitality of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro are gratefully acknowledged. Two Rio colleagues, Edmar Bacha and Winston Fritsch, were particularly generous in sharing with me their reflections on the 1930s. The Ford Foundation kindly made possible both the trip to Oxford and the stay in Rio. The Social Science Research Council of the United States financed the Manchester trip. The usual caveats should apply.