The Political Economy of China–Latin America Relations by Alvaro Mendez & Mariano Turzi

Author:Alvaro Mendez & Mariano Turzi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030334512
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Latin Swing in New Hampshire

The ostensibly US-designed IMF and IBRD thus actually emerged from “incremental institutional innovations that were layered one on top of one another [sic]” (Helleiner 2017, 20). The central role of Latin America and the global South in the genesis of Bretton Woods is “interesting given the recent initiatives relating to alternative structures for the economic and financial system [now] emanating from the South” (Negi 2017, 133); − such as the AIIB. Of the 44 nations that attended the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 28 were from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Nineteen were Latin American, “a remarkable continent-wide diplomatic presence” (Scott-Smith and Rofe 2017, 3). It would be a distortion to claim that the global South determined the outcome of the Conference, but their “role did herald the arrival of a new era in which the powers of the day would have to accustom themselves to the idea of accommodating the voices of new players in the international system” (Negi 2017, 130). Contrary to the conventional accounts that the nations of the South were invited to fill in empty seats or to legitimate “the predetermined ‘Anglo-American’ prints on the drawing board” (Negi 2017, 129–130), the evidence is that Latin America mattered a great deal not only in the pre-history of Bretton Woods, but in its actual outcome:[Historians] have long explained the creation of the IMF and the World Bank through the framework of “sterling-dollar diplomacy” … a bilateral process of reconciliation between US and British visions for the postwar economic order. In this reading, there are two protagonists: … Harry Dexter White, who chaired the conference’s First Commission, on the Fund, and … John Maynard Keynes, who chaired the Second Commission, on the Bank. But almost always overlooked is the existence of a Third Commission, on “Other Means of International Financial Cooperation,” chaired by Mexico’s Minister of Finance, Eduardo Suárez. (Thornton 2017, 149)

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