The relative prosperity which Argentina enjoyed at the beginning of the century made it a candidate to be a major economic power. Despite its abundant natural resources and skilled manpower, Argentina has consistently failed to live up to its potential. Periods of growth have either been too sporadic or political upheavals too frequent for coherent economic policies to be effective. In recent decades the Argentine economy has been characterised by a deterioration in current account,1 exchange rate,2 gross domestic product (GDP) growth,3 investment,4 and has seen inflation become an endemic phenomenon.5 These factors have exacerbated the economy's inability to tackle its mounting foreign debt.

The central paradox of Mexican liberalism was that ‘the proponents of a massive transformation of property relations refused to sanction a central executive endowed with sufficient power either to implement these aims or to resist the reaction they inevitably provoked. The liberals resolutely refused to will the appropriate means to achieve their desired ends’.1 Contemporary statesmen denounced the constitution of 1857 as impracticable and in 1861 Benito Juárez complained: ‘Under these conditions it is impossible to govern: no-one obeys me and I am not able to oblige anyone to obey’.2 In a subsequent study of this period, Emilio Rabasa pointed out that in practice Juárez governed Mexico in despite of the constitution, obtaining from Congress the grant of ‘extraordinary faculties’ which effectively allowed him to rule as dictator. The recent work of Richard N. Sinkin and Laurens Ballard Perry has confirmed the accuracy of Rabasa's diagnosis.3 During the restored republic, 1867–72, Juárez skilfully deployed the prestige and loyal following he had won by his unyielding resistance to the French Intervention to create a presidential autocracy. Public revenues were used to recruit and maintain a political machine which succeeded in imposing official candidates as congressional deputies, jefes políticos, and even state governors. All attempts to challenge the regime by armed revolt were firmly crushed by the regular army. At the same time, political opposition still continued to find public and often violent expression in the press.

Attempts to find social explanations for Peruvian economic backwardness have focused on the role of the elite's economic leadership between 1884 and 1930. Some of these studies consider the leading social class as an obstacle to economic growth. According to these interpretations the elite had, first of all, traditional ‘aristocratic’ or irrational economic behaviour.1 Secondly, the native elite's collaboration with international capital permitted foreign penetration adverse to national interests.2 Thirdly, in the 1884–1930 period, which was dominated by the export recovery after the War of the Pacific, an over-specialisation in export interests limited the elite's economic diversification, industrial capacity and financial decisions.3

The Depression in tin began in 1929 as the price fell towards £200 per ton. By the beginning of 1931 a cartel was organised which was able to reduce production to the point where by 1934 real prices and incomes had been restored to levels comparable with those enjoyed during the boom of the mid-1920s. The tin cartel has received extensive attention, which has tended to be rather critical and has focused on the impact on the largest producer, Malaya.1 Although Bolivia was the major beneficiary of cartelisation, there has been comparatively little analysis of her relationship with the cartel.2

Argentina's labour leaders make up one of the most powerful social groups in the nation's society. Their power is based on the unions' economic resources as well as on their capacity to mobilise rank-and-file workers. However, the group has developed a tendency towards bureaucratisation. On the one hand they are representative of their fellow-workers which is why they are continuously re-elected. At the same time, they have acquired technical and bureaucratic skills which ease their handling of the trade union structure. ‘As long as permanence at the head of the union becomes prolonged, the labour leader draws further away from the cultural and economic criteria of the workers who form the rank-and-file.’1 This tendency towards self-perpetuation in office maintains the acquired social status. In addition, the separation from the rank-and-file increases in order to have a relative autonomy and play the role of intermediary between the worker and the employer. In this sense, the corporativism and verticalism inherent in the Peronist doctrine, as a form of selecting leaders, increases the tendency towards bureaucratisation in the trade union leaders, marking a breach with the historical tendency of the Argentine labour movement previous to 1946–7.

One important cultural factor which has contributed to inhibiting regional cooperation and integration in Latin America lies in the intense territorial nationalism prevailing in several of the Spanish-speaking countries. This frequently underrated phenomenon is an outgrowth of the great number of territorial disputes still to be found in the region and the indoctrination of public opinion through the educational systems and the mass media that often accompanies them.1 At least the following disputes can be considered as having greatly affected the international relations of these countries in recent years:

Argentina vs. Chile. The core of the problem (the dispute over three tiny islands in the Beagle Channel) was solved with the Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed in 1984 and ratified in 1985, but it almost led to war in 1978 and was an excuse for intensive nationalistic indoctrination over several years. It generated arms races and military mobilisation, concomitantly frustrating a natural potential for economic complementarity and integration. The territorial disputes yet unsolved are very minor, but distrust will probably linger on for many years.

The importance of the years of political and social upheaval immediately following the end of the Second World War and coinciding with the beginnings of the Cold War, that is to say, the period from 1944 or 1945 to 1948 or 1949, for the history of Europe (East and West), the Near and Middle East, Asia (Japan, China, South and East Asia), even Africa (certainly South Africa) in the second half of the twentieth century has long been generally recognised. In recent years historians of the United States, which had not, of course, been a theatre of war and which alone among the major belligerents emerged from the Second World War stronger and more prosperous, have begun to focus attention on the political, social and ideological conflict there in the postwar period – and the long term significance for the United States of the basis on which it was resolved. In contrast, except for Argentina, where Perón's rise to power has always attracted the interest of historians, the immediate postwar years in Latin America, which had been relatively untouched by, and had played a relatively minor role in, the Second World War, remain to a large extent neglected. It is our view that these years constituted a critical conjuncture in the political and social history of Latin America just as they did for much of the rest of the world. In a forthcoming collection of case studies, which we are currently editing, the main features of the immediate postwar period in Latin America, and especially the role played by labour and the Left, will be explored in some detail, country by country.1 In this article, somewhat speculative and intentionally polemical, we present the broad outlines of our thesis.