Integración económica latinoamericana: Proceso ALALC/ALADI, 1950 – 2000, vol. 3

Abstract

The last tome of Gustavo Magariños’s three volumes examines efforts to promote economic integration in Latin America. In this volume, Magariños amplifies his focus dramatically; whereas the prior studies were characterized by curt observations, his analyses in the third are expanded as he surveys the political and economic crises that hit the movement throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He discusses Cuba, the election of Salvador Allende, and the strains that these developments placed on the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA), known as ALALC in Spanish. The author argues that the integration process ultimately failed due to lack of political will. He maintains that politicians disowned the integration movement from the very beginning by leaving it in the hands of technocrats responsible for negotiating trade concessions via industrial sectoral commissions. LAFTA thus died a slow death, officially expiring in 1980. During LAFTA’s existence, legislators and presidents (civilians or generals) were nowhere to be seen, a reflection of their ambivalence and hostility to the process.Economic integration was part of a larger public debate concerning economic growth, which became the victim of a rivalry between foreign or domestic commercial interests seeking to protect their internal markets, however limited, and those that favored broader regional development. Commercial interests eventually prevailed in the encounter because of their control of the sectoral commissions, which were tasked with determining tariffs concessions to be made by each national industry, such as automobiles, petrochemicals, electronics, and so on. As an example of this struggle, Magariños cites the duplicity of Eduardo Frei. While claiming commitment to LAFTA, Frei worked behind the scenes to create the rival Andean Community (AC) in 1968, which continued to serve officially as an organization within LAFTA. The AC’s objective was to protect domestic industry from foreign competition regardless of its point of origin. It soon became clear in this dual world of technocracies that the AC was the liege lord for member states. Globalization figures prominently in the post-1980 Latin American states as they sought to expand trade via bilateral agreements in the new Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración (ALADI), which took over from LAFTA. Significantly, ALADI invited Cuba to join the organization in 1980. Magariños argues that a major problem of LAFTA/ALADI was that a “strong element of regional autarky sought to strengthen resistance to a long period of dependency,” thus hindering integration by promoting import substitution against other Latin American states. Though Latin American states might balk at tariffs concessions with each other, they could only buy time. Eventually, international competition forced Latin American states to embrace integration as the raison d’être.This Spanish-language work requires the reader to have an above average command of the language due to the writer’s elegant literary manner. The book is well documented with extensive Spanish-language primary and secondary sources. The author is reluctant to deal with the personalities involved in the process; hence, we have little insight into the dynamics between individual negotiators. Adding this approach would have allowed the author and reader an opportunity to highlight the many complex issues in the integration process. This is not an oversight, as the author clearly believes it is the process and issues that merit consideration rather than individuals. This makes for a rather dry and tedious study. Nevertheless, Magariños’s book is indispensable for understanding the globalization process in Latin America. Readers will conclude that economic integration is too important to be left to technocrats and politicians. The author is to be commended for his important contribution to our understanding of a complex and often ignored process.