By mid-1940, the Argentine economy seemed to be heading for a major
crisis because many of her traditional export markets had suddenly become
inaccessible. In response, Finance Minister Federico Pinedo and his team
developed a wide range of initiatives. These aimed to overcome the crisis
and
restructure the Argentine economy in order to accommodate it to a changing
and
difficult international environment.
This article analyses the nature, successes and failures of these
policies.
It argues that while
Pinedo's initiatives certainly entailed visionary elements
which anticipated major problems
of the Argentine and Latin American development of the post-war era, they
should not be
regarded as some ‘golden opportunity’ for sound
economic modernisation that was missed only
because Pinedo and his fellow conservatives failed to win political approval
and were later
pushed aside by the rising force of populism.