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The Internal Frontier and Technological Progress in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

James H. Street
James H. Street*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Two recent events originating outside Latin America have had powerful negative effects on the growth process under way in most countries of the region. These were the OPEC oil crisis of October 1973 and the ensuing economic decline in the industrial world in 1974 and 1975—the worst international recession since World War II. If the trends represented by these events continue, they threaten to render unmanageable the acute short-term problems they have imposed on countries that were already in difficulty, such as Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Moreover, emergency measures undertaken by several governments have tended to distract attention from long-term pressures that are inexorably building up in the region and may even aggravate these pressures before they are recognized as requiring a concerted regional response.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , 1977 , pp. 25 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. Venezuela and Ecuador did not join the other OPEC countries in imposing the oil embargo.

2. Latin America in the World Economy (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 1975), p. 41; Bank of London & South America Review 9 (April 1975): 206.

3. The data are for nineteen oil-importing countries, excluding Cuba and Surinam, for which data are not available. E. Walter Robichek, “Demand and Balance of Payments Management in Latin America and the Caribbean,” paper presented at a meeting of the American Economic Association, Dallas, Texas, 30 December 1975, p. 1.

4. As of 30 June 1976, the four largest borrowers under the International Monetary Fund's special oil facility were Chile, SDR 244 million; Uruguay, SDR 95 million; Argentina, SDR 76 million, and Peru, SDR 53 million. Total borrowings of all Latin American countries under the oil facility reached SDR 618 million. International Financial Statistics 29 (August 1976): 9. The oil facility went out of existence in March 1976.

5. “Venezuela—Loans to Less Developed Nations,” Keesing's Contemporary Archives 22 (1976): 27681 B.

6. Economic and Social Progress in Latin America: Annual Report 1975 (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 1976), p. 95.

7. Leonard Silk, “The Problem of Enormous Buildup of International Debt,” New York Times, 11 November 1975, p. 60.

8. Growth data are from Economic and Social Progress, 1975, and World Bank Annual Report 1976. Figures for 1975 are preliminary.

9. Albert Fishlow, “Brazilian Size Distribution of Income,” American Economic Review 62 (May 1972): 391–402; C. G. Langoni, Distribuição de Renda e Desenvolvimento Econômico do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Espressão e Cultura, 1973). Other income studies for Argentina, Mexico, and Puerto Rico are summarized in Richard Weisskoff, “Income Distribution and Economic Growth in Puerto Rico, Argentina, and Mexico,” Review of Income and Wealth 16 (December 1970): 303–32. See also Hollis Chenery et al., Redistribution with Growth (London: Oxford University Press, 1974).

10. David Felix, “Trickling Down in Mexico and the Debate over Long Term Growth-Equity Relationships in the LDCs,” mimeographed. See also Ifegenia M. de Navarrete, “La Distribución del Ingreso en México, Tendencias y ‘Perspectivas,‘” in El Perfil de México en 1980 (México: Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1970), 1: 15–72.

11. Juan de Onis, New York Times, 6 March 1976, p. 6; 11 March 1976, p. 14.

12. For an account of recent experience with wage policy in relation to inflation in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, see Walter Krause, “Indexing: Lessons from Latin American Experience,” paper presented at a meeting of the Association for Evolutionary Economics, Dallas, Texas, 30 December 1975.

13. This analysis of long-term forces draws heavily on the work of Osvaldo Sunkel and other structuralists who first called systematic attention to such factors in Latin American development. See, for example, Sunkel, “The Structural Background of Development Problems in Latin America,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv (Kiel) 97 (1966): 45–47.

14. United Nations, Demographic Yearbook 1973, p. 81.

15. “1975 World Population Data Sheet,” Population Reference Bureau (Washington, D.C., March 1975), p. 1.

16. Joseph E. Gholl and K. C. Zachariah, “Toward the Year 2000,” Finance and Development 10 (December 1973): 23; Robert W. Fox, Urban Population Growth Trends in Latin America (Washington, D. C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 1975), pp. 26–38.

17. For a review of the extensive literature on population policy in Latin America, see Robert Schlau, “Patterns of Population Policy Adoption in Latin America,” a paper presented at a meeting of the International Studies Association, Toronto, Canada, 27 February 1976.

18. Leonard F. Chapman, Jr., commissioner of the Federal Immigration and Naturalization Service, has estimated that there are six to eight million illegal aliens in the United States, with another 500,000 to one million arriving each year. A considerable number of these are from Latin America. Address before the San Diego World Affairs Council, San Diego, California, 3 November 1976, pp. 2, 7.

19. Rawle Farley, The Economics of Latin America: Development Problems in Perspective (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), pp. 22–23.

20. New York Times, 5 February 1976, p. 1.

21. Socio-Economic Progress in Latin America, Social Progress Trust Fund, 9th Annual Report, 1969 (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 1970), p. 99; 12th Annual Report 1972, pp. 86–91.

22. Fox, Urban Population Growth Trends, p. 6.

23. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, Trends and Prospects in the Populations of Urban Agglomerations, 1950–2000, As Assessed in 1973–75 (United Nations, 21 November 1975), pp. 36–39. See also, for projections to 1980, Ligia Herrera and Waldomiro Pecht, Crecimiento Urbanos de América Latina (Santiago, Chile: Centro Latinoamericano de Demografía, 1976), pp. 348–54.

24. Frederick C. Turner, “The Rush to the Cities in Latin America,” Science 192 (4 June 1976): 955–62.

25. Robert J. Alexander, “Import-Substitution Strategy of Economic Development,” Journal of Economic Issues 1 (December 1967): 297–308; Raúl Prebisch, Towards a Dynamic Development Policy for Latin America (New York: United Nations, 1963), pp. 67–78.

26. David Felix, “Latin American Power: Take-off or Plus C'est la Même Chose?,” paper presented at a meeting of the International Studies Association, Toronto, Canada, 26 February 1976, pp. 1–40.

27. Ibid., p. 34.

28. Ibid., p. 36.

29. Economic and Social Progress in Latin America, Annual Report 1973 (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 1974), p. 16.

30. Economic and Social Progress in Latin America, Annual Report 1974 (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 1975), p. 20.

31. Montague Yudelman, Agricultural Development in Latin America: Current Status and Prospects (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, October 1966), pp. 38–46; Farley, Economics of Latin America, p. 169.

32. “Inter-American Bank Lends $43 Million for Rural Electrification in Argentina,” Washington, D.C., Inter-American Development Bank news release, 30 September 1974, p. 2.

33. Economic and Social Progress 1974, pp. 12, 16.

34. Lester R. Brown, The Politics and Responsibility of the North American Breadbasket, Worldwatch Paper No. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, October 1975), pp. 10–11.

35. Economic and Social Progress 1974, p. 14.

36. A similar scarcity of trained professional and technical personnel limits Ecuador's ability to put its oil money to good use. Sarita Kendall, “Ecuador: Oil and Development,” Bank of London & South America Review 9 (June 1975): 318.

37. David Nott, “Venezuela: The Apportionment of Oil Wealth,” Bank of London & South America Review 9 (January 1975): 12.

38. For an account of efforts to rebuild the Argentine universities from 1955 to 1966, see Guillermo S. Edelberg, “Managerial Resource Development in Argentina,” in Latin American Management: Development and Performance, ed. Robert R. Rehder (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1968), pp. 35–92. See also James H. Street, “The Domestication of Science and Technology in Latin America,” paper presented at a meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, San Francisco, California, 16 November 1974, pp. 26–29.

39. Juan de Onis, “Argentine President Supports Autonomy for the Universities,” New York Times 12 September 1976, p. 5; “El Gobierno Argentino Suprimirá 95 Carreras Universitarias,” Excelsior (México, D.F.) 28 November 1976, p. 2-A. See also Nicholas Wade, “Repression in Argentina: Scientists Caught Up in Tide of Terror,” Science 194 (24 December 1976): 1397–99.

40. Richard and Patricia Fagen, “The University Situation in Chile,” LASA Newsletter 5 (September 1974), pp. 30–37; and other personal sources.

41. In the mid-1960s the United States was exporting as much as 18 million tons of wheat annually on a concessionary basis. As world food shortages developed, commercial sales increased. By 1975 such aid, on a global basis, had dropped to 4.7 million tons. Ann Crittenden, New York Times, 7 December 1975, p. 3.

42. James H. Street, “The Technological Frontier in Latin America: Creativity and Productivity,” Journal of Economic Issues 10 (September 1976), pp. 538–58.

43. E. C. Stakman, Richard Bradfield, and Paul C. Mangelsdorf, Campaigns Against Hunger (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1967), pp. 90–91.

44. See David K. Todd, “Advanced Techniques of Ground Water Resources Development,” in The Challenge of Development, ed. Richard J. Ward (Chicago: Aldine, 1967), pp. 160–72.

45. Merle H. Hensen and Hamdy M. Eisa, “Controlled-Environment Vegetable Production: Results of Trials at Puerto Peñasco, Mexico,” mimeographed (Environmental Research Laboratories, University of Arizona, Tucson, 1972).

46. “The World Coal Industry,” Bank of London & South America Review 9 (October 1975): 560. The data that follow are from this article and the succeeding one in the same issue, “Coal in Latin America,” pp. 565–71.

47. The data on oil reserves in this section are taken from a number of published sources.

48. “Argentina: The Energy Sector,” Bank of London & South America Review 9 (April 1975): 198.

49. Erik Eckholm, The Other Energy Crisis: Firewood, Worldwatch Paper No. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, September 1975), pp. 12–20.

50. Jonathan Kandell, “Itaipu Dam: Brazil's Giant Step,” New York Times, 6 September 1976, pp. 22–23.

51. “Argentina: The Energy Sector,” pp. 192–93.

52. Bank of London & South America Review 9 (August 1975), p. 460; 9 (July 1975), p. 390; New York Times, 28 June 1975, p. 2.

53. Allen Jedlicka, “Comments on the Introduction of Methane (biogas) Generators in Mexico with an Emphasis on the Diffusion of ‘Back-yard’ Generators for Use by Peasant Farmers,” a brief for the Commission on International Relations, National Academy of Sciences, 10 September 1974.

54. Victor K. McElheny, New York Times, 5 January 1976, pp. 1, 18.

55. Manuel J. Carvajal and David T. Geithman, “Fertility in Costa Rica: Socioeconomic and Family Planning Differentials,” paper presented at a meeting of the International Studies Association, Toronto, Canada, 28 February 1975.

56. David J. Myers, “Frontier Settlement Policy in Brazil: International Provocation or National Development?,” paper presented at a meeting of the International Studies Association, Toronto, Canada, 25 February 1976, pp. 14–15.

57. Farley, Economics of Latin America, pp. 53–64; Elizabeth Allen, “New Settlement in the Upper Amazon Basin,” Bank of London & South America Review 9 (November 1975): 622–28.

58. This proposal was set forth for Argentina in an earlier paper: James H. Street, “Technological Dependency and Education in Argentina,” presented at a “Symposium on Argentine—U. S. Relations during the Sixties,” University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, 4 October 1973.

59. James H. Street, “The Technological Frontier in Latin America,” pp. 548–53.