The Great Depression in Latin America
Edited by Paulo Drinot and Alan Knight
2014, Duke University Press
362 pages, paperback
IT IS A measure of how far Latin America has come that the financial crisis which erupted in 2007 has not turned the region on its head and transformed its politics as did the Great Depression of the 1930s. Globalisation and economic liberalisation have undoubtedly been far more significant forces in the transformation of the region since the 1980s. But as Paulo Drinot points out in his introduction to The Great Depression in Latin America, the recent global crisis has offered a vantage point from which to reassess the history of the deepest economic crisis of the modern era. The collapse of the 1930s, and occasionally its impact on Latin America, have also been conjured up from time to time as offering lessons for the present. The Great Depression, it would seem, remains an essential source of the debates that we are still having about the role of the state in the economy and monetarism. This book, therefore, is of real value to students and teachers of Latin American history. The collection offers a full picture of the impact and consequencesof the Depression across much of the region, with chapters focusing on individual countries, from Mexico to Argentina.
