En relación a [PEN-L:1344] Argentina and the US,
el 6 Sep 00, a las 13:34, Jim Devine dijo:
>
> I don't know enough to comment on Canada (especially when there are
> Canadians watching), but I can guess at the difference between the US
> and Argentina (and I hope that Nestor corrects me or adds details).
> One difference from Argentina is
> that during the 19th century was that after 1860 or so, the US pursued
> a policy of import-substituting industrialization (protectionism).
The only country that pursued a similar policy in South America,
Paraguay, was LITERALLY burnt to ashes by a joint oligarchic
Argentinian-Brazilian-Uruguayan army openly sponsored by Great
Britain by the times of the American Civil War. In fact, it was our
own South American Civil War, and it was simultaneous with a series
of murderous military expeditions sent by Buenos Aires, the port
city, against the miners, artisans and herdsmen of the Inland
country.
> Argentina didn't do so, because it was politically dependent on the
> UK. The US had stopped being a "real British colony" in 1780 or so,
> whereas the Brits were able to get political dominance in the chaos of
> the post-Independence era of Argentina.
Not exactly this way. During all of the 19th. Century there was a
class war in Argentina, where one side was backed by Britain. But the
ironic thing here is that after the tremendous defeat of the 1860s,
the "federal" party which in fact represented the attempt to develop
a self-centered economy saw its ideas raised again by a fraction of
the winning section, in 1880. In fact, what resulted was a complex
adjustment between British interest and the local elites that made
much to help Argentina become a relatively wealthy country during
much of the 20th. Century.
[...]
> In Argentina, ... the economy was largely dominated by
> British manufactured goods, financed by selling "chilled" beef and the
> like. As the dependency theorists claim, the economy was
> externally-oriented, unlike that of the US which was self-centered.
> When things went wrong in the UK, especially after World War I, the
> dependent Argentine economy went into a tail-spin. Import-substituting
> industrialization was the response. However, the effort seems to have
> been too late (since the technological gap was larger by then) and the
> Argentine economy had less of an internal market than the US.
It was not exactly a matter of technology gap (which at any rate
could be spanned by a criterious tech import policy guided by the
state, such as in Japan of the 1860s), but of financial constraints
and control The internal market was admittedly small, but not only
due to short population, also because of horrible income
distribution. These two facts were more important in the failure of
"import substitution". On the other hand, import substitution was
attempted during the 30s under an oligarchic regime which was not at
all interested in a revolutionary modification of the dependent
status. There is a saying in Argentina, "don't take swelling for
fatness".
> So the
> success of import substitution was smaller. The resulting problems
> (which also came from the World Depression) encouraged Peronism and
> anti-Peronism, neither of which were especially good for the Argentine
> economy.
I am absolutely against the first part of this last sentence.
Peronism had an extraordinary effect on the Argentine economy. In
fact, the limits of Peronism were political and not economic. But
this would give matter to a different posting.
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
