ECLA made Santiago the ideological counterweight hub against neoliberal economics

Evidence

Chile arguably figured more prominently in the “battlefield of ideas” than other countries, if only because the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) had been established in Santiago in 1948 and had become a bastion of the structuralist approach to the causes of uneven development. Raúl Prebisch, ECLA’s general secretary, promoted the import substitution development strategy. Within this framework, a selective retreat from the world market was prescribed to enhance regional economic cooperation and alter the international division of labor to the advantage of the newly industrializing countries (Prebisch 1950, 1961). ECLA therefore contributed to an intellectual climate that attracted critical development theorists from all over the Americas, including the Chicago School heretic Andre Gunder Frank. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1547

Categorization

• XREF: Prebisch/import substitution structuralism is the very paradigm Chicago-trained economists came to overturn in 1970s Chile — sets up the later confrontation. — connects to: Chile’s CIA-backed coup installed economists who imposed austerity suppressing working-class alternatives — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 356

Broader Connections

• Chile’s CIA-backed coup installed economists who imposed austerity suppressing working-class alternatives #qualifies (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 356