Cold War America funded economics training in Latin America partly to counter Marxism

Evidence

In the 1950s, various programs were initiated to introduce and strengthen Western economics in Latin America’s academics. Of particular importance in this regard were U.S. efforts to “modernize” the curriculum in economics and to provide training grants to Latin American students to come to the United States. American resources were deployed with the goal of training new economic personnel, thereby providing a bulwark against Marxist positions, which were accorded considerable importance in the new development discourse established after World War II. Although many academics involved in the U.S. Point Four Program supported what later culminated in Walt Rostow’s “modernization paradigm,” the effort also recruited neoliberal strongholds like the University of Chicago, which was hostile to the strong emphasis on state planning that dominated the developmental mainstream in the West at the time. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1546

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader Cold War ‘modernization paradigm’ literature (Rostow) and how knowledge transfer served geopolitical ends. — connects to: Cold War rivalry led US agencies to fund state-led socialist-style development abroad. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1294; Cold War anticommunism and colonial economics stunted early neoliberal development thinking — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1267; Cold War competition over decolonizing markets drove US federal action against domestic discrimination — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 905 (+2 more)
• SEED: Angle: how Point Four programs weaponized economics curricula in the Global South — academic exchange as counterinsurgency.

Broader Connections

• Cold War competition over decolonizing markets drove US federal action against domestic discrimination #corroborates (0.85) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 905
• Perceived Third World radicalism mobilized support for counter-revolutionary economics #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1735
• Cold War anticommunism and colonial economics stunted early neoliberal development thinking #complicates (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1267