Abstract :
Between 1890 and 1930, Argentina’s manufacturers invested
in imported machinery. Although they aligned with political
allies to advance and protect their companies, their dependence
on imported machinery, raw materials, fuel, and expensive
skilled labor were obstacles to their success. Two factors
slowed the progress of these entrepreneurs: their lack of technological
capabilities and the absence of government policies
to address the problems entailed in importing foreign machinery.
Several political factions supported industry’s efforts to
reduce dependence on imported products and to diversify the
economy. While these supporters hoped to promote industry
through the passage of legislation to raise the tariff rate, their
strategy represented a compromise that stifl ed the drive to
i nnovate that is so necessary for long-run economic growth
and industrial development.
main determinant of its success.1 Although trade policy is important,
industrialization also requires economic growth, access to technology,
business culture, and global markets.2 Economist André Hofman makes
YOVANNA PINEDA is associate professor of history at St. Michael’s College in Colchester,
Vermont.
1 Sanjay Lall, “Explaining Industrial Success in the Developing World,” in Current Issues
in Development Economics, ed. V. N. Balasubramanyam and Sanjay Lall (London, 1991),
119; Alan M. Taylor, “Argentina and the World Capital Market: Saving, Investment, and International
Capital Mobility in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Development Economics
57, no. 1 (1998): 147–84.
2 Shapiro and Taylor concentrate on seven sets of conditions: Helen Shapiro and Lance
Taylor, “The State and Industrial Strategy,” World Development 18, no. 6 (1990): 861–78.
Kim focuses on access to technology and the build-up of technological competencies: Linsu
Kim, Imitation to Innovation: The Dynamics of Korea’s Technological Learning (Cambridge,
Mass., 1997). And Davis analyzes the power of the middle classes. See also Diane E.
Davis, Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin
America (Cambridge, U.K., 2004).
hile
