This volume contains the text of three lectures on Latin America given at the University of Salamanca in the summer of 1966 by a Spanish economist of some reputation in public life. The volume also contains many appendices consisting of statistical tables and a variety of documents, including the integration treaties and several resolutions on the subject passed recently by a number of inter-American bodies. The text of the lectures covers about sixty pages; the appendices exceed two hundred pages. The relationship of the latter to the text is often tenuous.
In the first two lectures—about forty pages—the author attempts to set the stage for his discussion of integration. In the first lecture he points out a number of generally known facts and developments under the headings of population, growth of output, social problems, and education and ends by stating the objectives of the Alliance for Progress. In the second lecture he notes a number of additional factors considered obstacles to development under the headings of foreign trade (exports should grow faster), inflation (it is bad), and income distribution (should be more equal). Unfortunately he does not do much more than list facts and developments. There is little analysis, and developments are not related effectively to each other, to integration, or to any other theme.
In the last chapter, where the reader hopes to find a discussion of integration—the title of the book—one encounters merely a listing of the legal steps taken in recent years for and by the Latin American Free Trade Association and the Central American Common Market and a superficial journalistic description of the most important meetings held in recent years by bodies dealing with integration. While little space is devoted to the issues to which these meetings have been addressed, and none to their analysis, by far too much time is spent on such irrelevant details as, for example, a list of the illustrious participants at the foreign ministers’ meeting of ALALC in 1965 and their warm and ceremonious salutations. True, the author does note that while the Central American Market has made progress, the Free Trade Association has advanced little, but he does not tell us why. He affirms that irreversible progress has been made, and that integration will move onwards, yet he fails to tell us anything about the path it might take. This is a rather useless book.
