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Alternative Outcomes of the Latin American Debt Crisis: Lessons from the Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

David Felix
David Felix*
Affiliation:
Washington University
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Will the denouement of the current Latin American debt crisis be unilateral default or preemptive concessionary write-downs of the debt? If either outcome occurs, what are the implications for the U.S.–centered world trade and financial system and, in particular, for the trade and financial links between Latin America and the United States? The crisis containment strategy instituted by the United States in 1982 presumed a negative answer to the first question, thereby ruling out the second as irrelevant. But by 1986, fading confidence in that strategy has reopened both questions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , 1987 , pp. 3 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

My thanks to Gil Merkx, the anonymous LARR referees, and Julio López Gallardo, Facultad Postgrado de Economía at UNAM, for helpful criticism of the first draft of this essay. The draft was written at the Center for U.S.–Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego, when I was a visiting research fellow in the fall of 1984. Special thanks to Wayne Cornelius and Center colleagues for the hospitality and research facilities.

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