Interest in the early history of industry in Latin America emanates from three distinct approaches, all of which may be depicted as challenges to liberal orthodoxy. The first, promoted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (Comisión Económica para América Latina), emerged during the 1950s and was consolidated in the 1960s as policies of import-substituting industrialization held sway as the solution to the continent’s post-1940s economic problems. The second, associated with the dependency debate of the 1960s and the 1970s, was to some extent provoked by perceived flaws in ECLA (CEPAL) structuralist historical analyses and policy prescriptions. The most recent, most tentative approach is linked to the discussion about late (or rather very late) development elaborated from the Gershenkronian concept of institutional substitutability during the early stages of industrialization in backward economies.

Celso Furtado’s Economic Development of Latin America: Historical Background and Contemporary Problems, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Eng., 1977) remains the most succinct statement of the cepalista hypothesis. Establishing the primacy of the 1930s as a departure point in Latin America’s process of industrialization, Furtado absorbs part of the revisionist challenge to this chronology and demonstrates the achievements of industry in the larger economies by 1929. This text reflects the centrality of the emphasis upon industrialization in ECLA approaches to development, a focus which also dominates comprehensive national historical studies of the same school: A. Ferrer, The Argentine Economy (Berkeley, 1967); C. Furtado, Economic Growth of Brazil (Berkeley, 1965); A. Pinto, Chile: Un caso de desarrollo frustrado (Santiago, Chile, 1962).