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1 Multilateralism from the Margins Latin America and the Founding of the IMF, 1942–1945 I n July 1944, as the battles of World War II continued to rage, representatives of forty-five countries met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to forge a permanent mechanism of economic coordination among countries and avert a new crisis in the postwar era. The conference, almost exclusively a U.S. initiative and supported by a declining Britain, established the foundations for two international organizations: the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, better known as the World Bank. Although the United States invited all Latin American countries except Argentina to participate in the Bretton Woods Conference, the role they played in the new economic order was secondary. This chapter focuses on the Bretton Woods Conference, described in the historiography as the cornerstone of the “new economic order.” However significant the planning and establishment of the IMF is for understanding the relationship that evolved between the institution and its Latin American members , there has been no empirical examination of its early and formative stages, largely because the Bretton Woods Conference Collections in the IMF Archives have been closed to the public until very recently. The lack of empirical research on the IMF’s formative years also seems to reflect the misleading assumption that the loan agreements signed with the IMF are the most crucial, if not the only component of the IMF’s mission and activity vis-à-vis its clients. Consequently, almost nothing has been published on the IMF’s involvement in the region before 1954, the year in which the IMF signed its first stand-by arrangement Parts of this chapter appeared in my article “The Beginning of a Controversial Relationship: The IMF, the World Bank, and Argentina, 1943–1946,” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 35, no. 69 (2010): 201–230. 12 Chapter 1 with a Latin American nation (Peru).1 This partial and fragmented analysis of IMF–Latin American relations leaves important political questions unanswered, including those related to the relatively minor involvement of Latin America in the conference in 1944, as well as questions surrounding Argentina’s incorporation into the IMF and the World Bank in September 1956, twelve years after the institutions were established and ten years after all of the other countries in the region had joined them. This chapter analyzes the planning and early outcomes of the Bretton Woods Conference from different though complementary angles. First, I examine what motivated the United States and Britain to embark on such an ambitious undertaking. Second, I look at the Bretton Woods Conference through the eyes of the Latin American countries that were officially invited to send delegates to this international gathering. Third, and equally illuminating, I examine the events from Argentina’s unique perspective as the only Latin American country to have been excluded from the foundational events of the IMF and World Bank. That exclusion was predictable, I argue, and aimed not only to block Argentina’s access to the supposed benefits of the new multilateralism but also to convey the unambiguous message that alignment with Washington’s policies was a precondition for financial assistance. The creation of multilateral economic organizations committed to providing loans to their member states created great expectations among Latin American republics. Countries in the region had for some time been pressing for the establishment of international institutions capable of backing their new development priorities. In 1933, Latin American nations proposed the formation of an inter-American bank that could provide credit lines and mobilize capital to improve the conditions of many countries negotiating foreign loans.2 Moreover, the economic impact of the World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II caused serious disruptions to Latin America’s traditional international markets and increased the conviction that an outward-looking structure had failed to increase the region’s autonomy. It was precisely this disillusionment with old economic strategies that led to the promotion and diversification of industrialization and to the adoption of inward-looking models of development.3 But economic development demanded massive investments that local creditors and investors were unable to fully provide, consequently increasing the need for foreign financiers. At the same time, Latin American nations expected that the Bretton Woods institutions would turn into a more convenient and less controversial option to exclusive reliance on U.S. capital.4 For these reasons, Latin American republics were strongly motivated to back the foundation of multilateral institutions in which...

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