By now, it has become a platitude to proclaim that, over the past decade, Latin America has experienced its deepest, most prolonged economic recession in modern history. Nevertheless, this has indeed been the case. The magnitude and effects of the crisis have, of course, varied from country to country, and so have the policy responses. What is undeniable is that not one single country has escaped the recessionary impact of a complex combination of circumstances which appeared on the horizon in the early 1980s, and in which an adverse international economic environment played a prominent role.