The Misfortunes of the Association for Latin American Integration (ALADI), 1980–83

Abstract

During the final phase of the negotiations of the 1980 Treaty of Montevideo, the Institute of Latin American Integration (INTAL) in Buenos Aires invited me to prepare a study aimed at evaluating the Treaty once this had been signed. It was to place emphasis on the future prospects for the so-called actions of limited scope which had been established as the major guiding mechanisms for the new Association for Latin American Integration (ALADI). In that study (Wionczek, 1980) I maintained that because of the bleak outlook for the world economy and that of the region, both in the short term and for the 1980s, it was not possible for the negotiators to set similar objectives for the new stage of economic integration to those which had been established in 1960 when the first Treaty of Montevideo was signed.