Professor Teichert’s new book is a translation of his Economic Policy Revolution and Industrialization in Latin America, which was completed in 1957, and published in 1959 by the Bureau of Business Research of the University of Mississippi. The reader should not expect, therefore, a discussion of recent developments in economic policy in Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, and elsewhere. Whether or not this is a loss may perhaps be judged from some of the material in the preface to the Spanish edition. Any hope for a change in U.S. Policy toward Latin America is dismissed on the evidence that C. E. Wilson and Robert McNamara were both presidents of automobile manufacturing companies, and that in 1951 Dean Rusk made a statement supporting our recognition of the Chinese Nationalist government. The special trade relations that existed between the United States and Cuba before Castro are described as a system under which Cuban sugar alone entered the United States at a preferential rate (for the benefit of U.S. sugar producers in Cuba and, inexplicably, in Louisiana), while all U.S. exports to Cuba received preferential treatment, “a burden which fell on the Cuban people generally.” It is stated that Cuba represents “the sentiments and fundamental aspirations of the Latin American masses, although, unfortunately, not of all their governments.”
The first two-thirds of the book are primarily historical. Case studies are featured, with an emphasis on Mexico and Uruguay, although, curiously, there is an entire chapter on “The Development of Argentina’s Four State Fleets.” Chile, which invented the now ubiquitous development bank, and Venezuela, are overlooked, while three chapters are devoted to Uruguay. The remainder of the book is largely a discussion of economic theory as it relates to economic development. “Keynesian theory”—in other words, modern national income and employment theory— is dismissed as applying only to a closed economy, and “something which Latin Americans can worry about after they have achieved their goals of industrialization and economic development.” All major and most minor contemporary works on development theory are ignored, with the exception of Nurkse’s Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries, while Raúl Prebisch’s provocative booklet, published by the UN in 1949, is treated as the only “complete theory of Latin American development.”
The Spanish translation fails to capture the full flavor of the English original, which frequently reads like a poor translation from the Spanish. For example, where the English edition refers to “the costwise rentability of enterprizes,” the Spanish has “la rentabilidad de las empresas.” It may be that the Spanish editions will be more successful than the original. There is a tendency to cater to Latin American tastes, which could have this result. It is certain that the book, in either language, will not achieve the stated purpose of replacing Hanson and Gordon as a standard textbook on Latin American economies.
