Gold in Latin America: What the Gold Standard Meant in Brazil and Mexico at the Beginning of the 20th Century

Abstract

This chapter seems a bit of an outlier among these studies of the world gold market, because it discusses gold in two major Latin American countries, Brazil and Mexico, which in the past were often considered underdeveloped or marginal to the centre of the world economy.1 Moreover, it looks at gold not as a commodity but rather as an idea that undergirded the concept of the gold standard. It explores the appeal of the gold standard even for countries that produced little gold. Gold was not just a precious metal. It was also a discourse, a tradition, a marker of modernity and a sign of cosmopolitan (European?) urbanity. In Brazil and Mexico, the battle over the gold standard was fought on internal political issues and was shaped by pressures from the world economy and foreign bankers. A series of ideological directives and reactions to unexpected crises brought two countries with very different 19th century currency experiences to convergence in 1905 and 1906. This is the story of how that came about.