The last tome of Gustavo Magariños’s three volumes examines efforts to promote economic integration in Latin America. In this volume, Magariños amplifies his focus dramatically; whereas the prior studies were characterized by curt observations, his analyses in the third are expanded as he surveys the political and economic crises that hit the movement throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He discusses Cuba, the election of Salvador Allende, and the strains that these developments placed on the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA), known as ALALC in Spanish. The author argues that the integration process ultimately failed due to lack of political will. He maintains that politicians disowned the integration movement from the very beginning by leaving it in the hands of technocrats responsible for negotiating trade concessions via industrial sectoral commissions. LAFTA thus died a slow death, officially expiring in 1980. During LAFTA’s existence, legislators and presidents (civilians or generals) were...

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