movement was greatly indebted to the work of Prebisch and the other Latin American structuralists at CEPAL 172 – the most notable example being the brilliant Brazilian economist Celso Furtado. Inspired by the Singer-Prebisch hypothesis, Keynesian economics, and arguments pertaining to infant industries, the Latin American structuralists were broadly in favour of an active industrial policy led by a strong state: one that subsidised and orchestrated the production of strategic substitutes, discouraged direct foreign investment, placed barriers (usually in the form of tariffs) to protect infant industries, and took action to maintain a strong currency so that manufacturers could import more capital goods. Also known as Import Substitution Industrialisation (ISI), this active and state-led industrial policy was already adopted by Argentina and Brazil spontaneously in the 1930s as a response to a vast decline in foreign sales. 173 However, it was not until Prebisch’s The Economic Development of Latin America and Its Principal Problems 174 that ISI would be theoretically mapped out. Prebisch was among the first thinkers to acknowledge the fundamental differences that made Lati n America’s economic situation unique. Though the region shared many similarities with the U.S. and Europe, Prebisch and his fellow structuralists believed there were fundamental historical, economic and institutional differences that would result in Latin America facing a unique path to growth and prosperity. The renowned political economist Albert O. Hirschman noted that it was in the 1940s and 1950s when “for the first time...a well- reasoned, indigenous doctrine” 175 for Latin American 172 Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), more commonly known in English as the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) 173 John Seahan, Patterns of Development in Latin America: Poverty, Repression and Economic Strategy (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1987), page 83. 174 See 8. 175 Albert O. Hirschman, Journeys Toward Progress (New York: Anchor Books, 1965), page 282.
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