Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The Great Depression brought lasting change to Latin America by bringing to an end the long nineteenth century of classic liberal export economies. Throughout the region, export-led growth had fueled urbanization and some early industrialization. New groups, from urban workers to middle-class professionals, had been pressuring the landed elites and commercial interests who held sway over Latin American nations from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth century for a greater voice in local and national politics. With the collapse of the US and Western European economies and the concomitant impact on Latin American exports, economic and political issues no longer dealt with questions of which segment of the agricultural or mining elite would govern and whether or not they might bring some members of the emerging middle class into their coalitions. New styles of governing with new groups and their new economic interests came to dominate Latin American politics in the era after the Great Depression. Those new trends were further modified by the opportunities available in the aftermath of World War II.No two Latin American countries experienced the same politics or economic realities, but the region's larger nations, especially those that had had some initial period of industrialization in the early twentieth century, shared several characteristics in the three decades following ... log in or subscribe to read full text