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Historical Development in Latin America

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Roots of Underdevelopment

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Abstract

Some of the finest literary minds of the continent can help us approach the problem of historical persistence in Latin America. Mexican Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz, quoted above, writes about a hidden present in our modern reality and how certain elements are invariable or have variations that are so small which make them imperceptible. William Faulkner went further in Requiem for a Nun stating that, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Though set in the US South, Faulkner’s mythical territory of Yoknapatawpha County resembles that of Garcia Marquez’s Macondo somewhere in tropical Latin America and Onetti’s Santa Maria, further south into the Andes. James Baldwin forcefully added that, “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.” The economic history of a region is, in essence, that one of its people.

I thank Humberto Laudares for his many conversations about the underdevelopment of our region, which led to the creation of this book, Pedro dal Bo, Leopoldo Fergusson, and Aldo Musacchio for comments, as well as Francisco Eslava and Moises Pedrozo for research support. I take responsibility for the editorial shortcomings of this volume.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I am I and my circumstances, in translation.

  2. 2.

    I have grappled with these issues, in the urban context ever since our work with William Maloney, published in the Economic Journal, Maloney and Valencia Caicedo (2016).

  3. 3.

    Separately, Michalopoulos, and Elias Papaioannou (2020) focus on the historical legacies of African development, a model we follow here for Latin America.

  4. 4.

    I thank Stephen Haber for his reading and positive assesment of this work.

  5. 5.

    We take these topics at heart, in ongoing work on the “Bourbon Reforms and State Capacity in the Spanish Empire” in Chiovelli et al. (2021).

  6. 6.

    Still, there are a series of conferences and organizations that have been fundamental in the development and spread of these ideas, including LACEA’s Economic History Network, RIDGE’s Historical Development and Towards Sustained Economic Growth Workshops, the Stanford-LSE-Andes long-range development in Latin America conferences, the LANE-HOPE online seminar, and, UBC’s Culture and Persistence Group and the Association for the Study of Religion and Culture.

  7. 7.

    We could have covered Faulkner’s South, but we intended to keep the book Latin American. In alphabetical order, the book covers Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia (two chapters), Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

  8. 8.

    The current Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University.

  9. 9.

    Coincidentally, I wrote my first chapter along with Nancy Birdsall and Augusto de la Torre on the Washington Consensus for the “The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Economics” edited by José Antonio Ocampo and Jaime Ros (2011). This traditional view, of looking at the role of generalized policy reform for the continent, is criticized by Diaz-Cayeros in the conclusion, defending a more country specific approach.

  10. 10.

    The omission of Cuba is discussed in the concluding remarks.

  11. 11.

    Namely, the audiencia and the Tribunal de cuentas.

  12. 12.

    This mechanism is reminiscent of work for Colombia by Galán (2018) and Uribe-Castro (2020).

  13. 13.

    See, for instance, the similarities between the Punto Fijo accords in Venezuela and the Colombian Frente Nacional.

  14. 14.

    See also Eslava and Valencia Caicedo (2023).

  15. 15.

    In previous work, Rachel had already shown that in low-literacy areas, when missionaries started using the radio for their evangelizing activities, there was little impact on human capital acquisition (McCleary and Pesina, 2011).

  16. 16.

    I rather not enter a debate on whether Puerto Rico, technically an unincorporated territory of the United States, is part of Latin America or not. Beyond its cultural heritage, I thought that some of the issues and problems in the island certainly resonate with those of the continent. Being part of the United States, I must say, also means that Puerto Rico has excellent administrative records.

  17. 17.

    See Huaroto, (2022) for a novel analysis of the Pacific War.

  18. 18.

    For more information on this initiative, see https://www.pismlatamcourse.org/

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  1. Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Felipe Valencia Caicedo

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    Felipe Valencia Caicedo

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Valencia Caicedo, F. (2023). Historical Development in Latin America. In: Valencia Caicedo, F. (eds) Roots of Underdevelopment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38723-4_1

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