Historia economica, politica y social de la Argentina (1880-2000) (review)

In Historia económica, política y social de la Argentina, Mario Rapoport, Eduardo Madrid, Andres Musacchio, Ricardo Vicente, and their team of additional professors and students not only provide a masterly summary of Argentina's economic, political and social history, but also provide an unbiased and up-to-date presentation of the main lines of interpretation of this history by Argentine scholars, and scholars from other nations whose works have been translated into Spanish. The book is well-written and free of jargon. The book will serve specialists, historians in general, students, and the general public both as an outstanding reference work and as a presentation of plausible hypotheses by the authors. The scope of the book unfortunately prevents presenting all of these hypotheses in this review.

The authors achieve their aim of establishing coherent time periods of analysis, which are: 1880-1914, 1914-30, 1930-45, 1946-55, 1955-66, 1966-76, 1976-83, and 1983-99. Although summaries of books and articles, and reproductions of tables, are presented for each period, the lack of a summary table for all of the periods, a list of tables, and an index reduces the usefulness of this excellent reference book, which is based on studies in traditional format. Technical econometric and other studies available from government and university Web sites are not mentioned, although they may have informed the interpretive books and articles cited.

A more difficult problem is the fact that government statistics, as well as those from corporate sources, are often inaccurate. Scholars informally report that "informal" economic activities in Argentina probably rose from around one-third of gross domestic product in the early 1960s to at least one-half of gross domestic product by 2001. In these circumstances, it is difficult to make compelling arguments about the trend of economic activities. Nonetheless, the team's commanding knowledge of Argentine history leads the authors to emphasize two major facts: (1) Argentine conditions at the beginning of the century were far less favorable than is commonly assumed. A limited resource base, small domestic market, and distance from the centers of trade limited its growth and leadership in Latin America. Moreover, (2) although Mexico could grow as a result of its proximity to the United States, Argentina's nearest neighbor is Brazil, which only recently became capable of playing the same role for Argentina as a major source of trade and investment. The most recent example is the planned purchase of Argentina's top energy company, Perez Companc, by Brazil's state-owned Petrobras for about $1.1 billion. (New York Times, 4 July 2002, p. W1). The 1960s saying "Argentina is alive and well and in hiding somewhere in Brazil" may be about to come true! This is all the more fortunate, because, on Rapoport et al.'s evidence, Argentina has had the worst economic growth record of any major economy in Latin America during the twentieth century.

What happened? Neither international markets nor government intervention provided the stable outlook and trust needed for long-term investment. International markets closed and trading partners shifted due to wars, depression, and trade agreements. National markets had neither security of property rights, varying at different times between favoring landlords and tenants, nor security of contracts; wage freezes, tax changes, new monetary regimes, changes in banking rules, and the inaccessibility of bank accounts made long-term investments imprudent. The Argentine government's attempt to provide some stability by tying its currency to the dollar limited state funds, which then made up budget shortfalls by privatizing its firms, often under terms that may have benefited the brokers rather than the nation. When that income stream ended, and massive investment in Argentina or improved domestic tax collections did not replace it, the government could not sustain...