Webinar Summary – The World that Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era
On September 26, 2023, the Boston University Global Development Policy (GDP) Center hosted Margarita Fajardo, Professor of History at Sarah Lawrence College, to discuss her new book ‘The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era.’ In the book, Fajardo draws on various personal and institutional archives across Latin America, Europe and the United States to capture how an intellectual movement became hegemonic. The book offers an “outside-in” perspective on how, between 1940-1960, the so-called cepalinos created an intellectual movement that displaced the ideas of more powerful actors from the Global North. The talk, the second installment of the Fall 2023 Global Economic Governance Book Talk Series, was moderated by Rebecca Ray, Senior Academic Researcher at the GDP Center, and cosponsored by the BU Center for Latin American Studies.
Fajardo opened the conversation by describing the three ways the book can be read. First, she noted that it documents the history of how governance practices in the Latin American region impacted and influenced the body of knowledge on global governance, with a focus on the cepalinos, who were members of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC; the Spanish and Portugese acronym, CEPAL). Second, it documents the public life of these experts and their economic ideas. Fajardo was interested in how cepalinos became a part of the most important political projects of Latin America during the second half of the 20th century, such as the state developmentalism of Brazil, the Cuban revolution and the Argentine military regime. Finally, the book is an intellectual history of capitalism because it captures how ideas about the global economy emerged.
In her own words, Latin American experts and their ideas are the protagonists of this book. Therefore, Fajardo set out to humanize the cepalino movement by diving deep into the personal stories of the individuals who made up the movement. This emphasis on relating the professional lives of these experts prompted Ray to ask Fajardo whether there was a character that stood out. Fajardo responded that two in particular were a challenge to historicize. The first was Juan Noyola, a lesser-known Mexican economist. Fajardo saw him as a rebel because of his resistance to Raúl Prebisch, the Executive Secretary of ECLAC in the 1950s and 60s, and in particular, his ideas regarding inflation. Noyola also eventually decided to leave ECLAC on the grounds that the institution was not providing what he deemed necessary support to Cuba. The second was Fernando Henrique Cardoso – one of the pioneers of dependency theory, who became Brazil’s president in 1995. Fajardo was fascinated by his transition from being academically oriented to taking on a political role.
A discussion of main characters is incomplete without discussing Prebisch, whose ideas shaped the cepalino project and its relation to the West. A core theme of the book is the tension between the best interests of the Latin American region, which was still reeling from the aftermath of World War II, and the West, which included the US, foreign investors and other high-income countries. The Latin American region to date faces pressures of commodity price-driven business cycles, or periods of economic expansion and contraction that depend on the international prices of commodities that make up the majority of the export income of a country. There was an expectation that the West would provide aid and cooperation to attenuate the instability caused by commodity price volatility and the resulting fiscal pressures. However, it was clear early on that the West would not meet this expectation. Fajardo noted that the original cepalinos, in the aftermath of World War II, were deeply motivated by a promise of cooperation in order to avoid another war at all costs, and thus, a sense of optimism persevered even in the face of lack of support from the West. For the new generation of cepalinos, though they were disillusioned by the lack of cooperation, they could also not come up with a viable alternative to internationalism and cooperation; the alternative of revolution was unacceptable.
Moving on to another core theme of the book, Ray questioned whether there may have been a geographical division between the structuralists of the cepalino project – who mainly originated from Argentina, Brazil and Chile – and the “dependentistas” that critiqued them and ascribed to the dependency theory emerging in the Caribbean region. Dependency theory suggests that the national industrialization and international economic cooperation that the cepalinos championed would result in further dependence between the core (developed industrial countries) and the periphery (developing counties). Furthermore, Fajardo proposed whether the types of commodities traded in these regions and the nature of corresponding foreign investor relationships could explain this division, particularly whether remnants of colonial extractive practices influenced the seeming geographic divisions in some regions and not others. In response, Fajardo pointed out that there were significant macroeconomic differences between the countries that Ray groups together, such as Brazil and Chile. Fajardo stressed that these macroeconomic conditions, such as the period of state developmentalism in Brazil and the ‘stagflation’ in Chile, were more pervasive in determining the intellectual dialogue rather than any type of geographic division.
On building intellectual hegemony, Fajardo commented that creating policy leverage involves establishing a strong network of connections throughout the region and developing and disseminating an evidence-based development theory. The book follows the experts as they travel through Latin America. Fajardo pointed out that Prebisch’s agency in creating this network of alliances and collecting evidence through country case studies – either conducted by affiliated national experts or by traveling to these countries and connecting directly with government institutions – was crucial for the movement’s success. Another critical aspect was what came to be known as the “technique of programming,” or a set of training courses that specialized in development economics created by and for developing country economists and personnel. Furthermore, the cepalinos positioned themselves as crucial players and agenda-setters for regional conferences, becoming national and international experts whose opinions carried significant weight in regional matters.
In the Q&A portion of the discussion, Fajardo fielded questions about lessons learned from the cepalino movement and the eventual fall in popularity of the cepalino ideology. In terms of lessons learned, Fajardo spoke of present day cooperative groups, such as the Group of 77 (G77) and the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) bloc. Fajardo says that the Global South is better poised to cooperate beyond goodwill statements and pledges made at high-level meetings that stop short of taking action. This is because major players of the Global South are more willing to cooperate with each other than in the past. Nevertheless, she also acknowledged that questions remain about how international and regional institutions can actualize real, meaningful change.
In response to the question about why the cepalino ideas lost popularity, and what some may think of as a triumph of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ideology, Fajardo said that the region’s hostile political conditions and its physical isolation in the 1970s may have contributed to this decline. In addition, cepalinos may have questioned whether leaving out factors such as capital flows and financial aspects of development left them unable to explain certain aspects of their economies, which eventually led to a rapprochement with the IMF.
Fajardo closed with advice to researchers of history. She stressed the need to go beyond the textbook by doing more archival work and encouraged researchers to pursue initial hunches and to maintain initial connections with personel on the field since these connections would prove vital in telling the complete story.
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