New Perspectives on Latin America and the US - Noon Lecture Series

Claudia Kedar will present "Constructing the 'New Economic Order': Latin America, the US, and the Creation of the IMF" at LACS' New Perspectives on Latin America and the US - Noon Lecture Series. A native of Buenos Aires, Dr. Kedar recently completed her dissertation in history at Tel Aviv University on "The Routinization of Dependency: Argentina and the IMF, 1944-1977." In July 1944, representatives of 45 countries met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to forge a permanent economic agreement between nations to remove a traditional cause of war. The conference, which was the result of an almost exclusive US initiative and was supported by a declining British partner, established the foundations of two international organizations: The International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), better known as the World Bank. While all Latin American countries except Argentina participated in the Bretton Woods Conference, and joined the privileged group of original members of both organizations, the role that was played by them in the new economic order was a passive and secondary one. By focusing on the Bretton Woods Conference as a turning point in international economic relations and by analyzing it from a US and Argentinean perspective, this lecture suggests that the multilateralism that the US aspired to implement in the postwar era was not intended to significantly improve the fortunes of Latin American countries.