Reduced Inequalities

In several earlier works —PREALC (1981), Tokman (1982) and Garcia (1982)— the authors analysed and interpreted the main long-term trends of employment, underemployment and unemployment observed in Latin America.

The authors criticize the fallacious concept of an antinomy between import substitution policies and policies to promote the export of manufactures. To regard these as mutually exclusive alternatives poses options geared only to part of the problem, and incapable of providing an adequate answer to development needs. Substitution without exports, carried out within the narrow framework of each national market, leads to inefficiency and high costs. The export of manufactures without substitution maintains the current backwardness in the production of capital goods and essential intermediate goods which is a bar to less dependent and more rapid development and helps to account for Latin America’s present unsatisfactory position in the world economy. The authors show that, in developed economies, the larger the market, the farther industrial development can be taken without any loss of efficiency. In the light of this object lesson, they suggest that if import substitution policies and policies for the export of manufactures were combined through co-operation between the countries of the region, Latin America would attain a better position in the international economy and a much higher level of development.

On the basis of a body of empirical research, the authors explore the relationship between agrarian structure and population.

The North-South dialogue is currently passing through a prolonged period of stagnation which has given rise to some pessimism regarding the possibility of securing a change in international economic relations through dialogue and mutual understanding between the parties involved.

Until a short time ago, the view was frequently held that the worst was over in relation to the external debt of the developing countries: interest rates would fall and a revival of trade was just around the corner.

In this article the author works out an interpretation of the present crisis which attempts to understand its deep-seated causes and therefore make it possible to influence its course successfully.

In spite of the growing importance assigned by Latin American governments in recent years to regional planning, due attention is still not given to the national and international historical processes which set in motion the spatial dynamics and shaped the particular spatial structures of each country.

From 1974, under pressure from the new trends in the world economy, international public financing began gradually to lose its relative importance for the Latin American countries. The growth of international monetary liquidity gave the international banking system an unfamiliar weight in absolute and relative terms. However, the world recession persisted, and it became evident that our countries must again seek a response to their needs in bodies such as the InterAmerican Development Bank.

As is customary, at the end of 1984 the Executive Secretary of ECLAC presented a review of developments in the Latin American economy during the past year, and the text of this review is reproduced in the present article.

This study looks at education in Latin America from the angle of the counterpoint between social participation and élitist exclusiveness. It alludes first to the educational model proper to the colonial system and to its perpetuation as reflected in an exclusion from culture and knowledge which is described as a distinguishing feature of the situation in Latin America up to the middle of the present century.

Our purpose in organizing this meeting is to hold an informal exchange of views on the recent evolution and future prospects of the Latin American economy, taking into account the effect of the external debt. It is not our aim that this meeting should give rise to commitments or consensuses, but simply that this exchange of views should help us to understand better the challenges faced and the possible options available for responding to them.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the more salient features of the performance and evolution of foreign capital in the Argentine economy during the military government which was in power from 1976 to 1983. In the introduction, a brief summary of the long-term situation is given, with emphasis being placed on the fundamental role which foreign capital has played in the economic development of Argentina throughout its history. Section One contains a discussion of the evolution of foreign investments authorized to establish themselves in the country, special aspects of their capital contributions and their distribution by sector and country of origin and, finally, an analysis of those investments which were channelled to the financial sector and those which originated in the United States.

One of the central aspects of development is the process whereby the penetration of technical progress into primary activities expels manpower, most of which has to be absorbed by urban economic activities.

The author examines the situation of young people within the framework of the deep changes that have occurred in Brazil in recent decades. There are three aspects that interest her most. First, she addresses employment and, in this context, the evolution of employment and wages and the effect the crisis has on them. In this regard, the most outstanding observation is that the urban economically active population has become younger since the 1970s as a result of the increased rate of young people’s participation, contrary to conventional assumptions that modernization will have the opposite effect. Second, she examines education and stresses that educational levels in Brazil are lagging well behind the observed economic progress. In fact, the proportion of young people with no instruction or only a few years of schooling is very large, particularly in rural or relatively less-developed areas, such as the North-East. Finally, she deals with the family, which has been greatly affected by changes in other spheres of society, and with young people’s relations with their families, which has given rise to a complex interplay of solidarity and conflict.

This article is dearly divided into two parts. The first reviews the controversy on unemployment and underemployment problems in Latin America, their nature and causes, and the measures which should be applied to eradicate them.

From the end of the Second World War to the close of the 1960s, the idea prevailed in Latin America that educational development was an indispensable requisite for the successful promotion of economic growth and distributive justice. Although opinions differed as to the level that should be given priority —primary, secondary or higher— all agreed that through the expansion of the formal education system a state of affairs would be reached that resembled the picture presented by the developed countries which served as models.

In the last years of the 1960s it was common practice for students of social conditions in Latin America to present university youth as one of the key agents in the processes of change. The story of its demands and the results of its actions since the Côrdoba movement form a very important element in the region’s socio-political history. However, the systematic study of the condition of the university student movement has not been brought up to date and its role in the processes of change in the region is one of the least known areas of social analysis. And this is why at the present time, given the dizzying transformation of socio-economic and political structures which the region has undergone, it maybe wondered to what extent such a capacity and potential exist.

The penetration of scientific and technical knowledge from the developed into the underveloped countries has often led to the latters’ acceptance of theories and techniques which are totally remote from their realities and interests, and are of no use to them as tools of interpretation or transformation.

The present development of Latin American mining depends on several factors, including the existence of natural resources, the geological knowledge of these resources in the countries, political stability to obtain long-term investments and, of course, the capital needed to stimulate this development. The author deals with all these aspects, but he concentrates on the need for capital —the importance of which is increasing in view of the current economic crisis— and above all, on the conditions that would increase the likelihood of obtaining foreign investments, since public and private national enterprises might not be able to cover this need by themselves. He thus suggests the design and application of formulas that take account of both foreign investment and the national interest, although it is recognized beforehand that such formulas are not easily transferable from one country to another.

The devastating effect of the financial crisis has rekindled the debate in Latin America on development strategies. The short-term logic of the recessionary adjustment has proven to be unw orkable, and in order to find a solution the form ulation of a new kind o f thinking aim ing at structural change is now required.

A major concern ro the developing countries in the commodity area has been their insufficient participation in the marketing of export commodities and the resulting low share of the final consumer pricesretained by them. In the light of the general assessment that international trade is conducted in a tightly controlled market environment, especially by transnational corporations, the paper attempts to bring to light some major features of commodity marketing, by examining the intra-firm trade in the said sector, with special reference to Latin America.

The writings of José Medina Echavarria made a decisive contribution towards enabling a whole generation of social scientists, in the broadest sense of the term, to gain a more thorough grasp of the intricate realities of Latin America.

The crisis of the 1980s was preceded in Peru by five years of economic stagnation which accentuated its effects. Gross investment fell sharply, as did industrial and farm production and construction. However, this fall was due mainly to activities connected with domestic demand, for activities responding to the international market did not have the same results.

In its article the author reviews a number of the main problems posed by long-range development planning and outlines his own views concerning them. He starts out by discussing the political aspects of planning and stresses that planning is part of a power-based decision-making process in which decision-makers’ mental images play an important role. His examination of the relationship between planning and them arket in mixed econom ies leads into a discussion of the “planning object” which, in the author’s opinion, should be regarded as a “multiorganization” composed of enterprises, political bodies, social organizations and movements, etc. In exploring the concept of the planning object, he identifies various types of economies (élite, formal and total) and the problems posed by each.