LATIN AMERICAN ECONOMIC SYSTEM
The Latin American Economic System (SELA) is the only
organization exclusively grouping Latin American and
Caribbean countries. SELA totals 28 States as its members.
The organization’s objectives include the promotion of
5 regional coordination, with third countries or at
international fora, on economic issues of common interest;
the propelling of cooperation among Member States in
support of economic and social development; and support
for the articulation and convergence of the various
10 integration schemes in existence
throughout the region.
In its 23 years of existence, SELA
has always acted on the basis of
the interests and priorities of Latin
15 American and Caribbean regions.
When SELA’s maximum political
decision-making authority met in
Havana, Cuba, on the occasion of its XXIV Regular Meeting,
held from November 30 to December 3, 1998, the Council
20 approved a restructuring process aimed at adapting its
objectives and functions to the changing realities of the
international environment and at establishing priorities on
the basis of the needs of its Member States. As a result, the
immediate objectives established in this respect were: to
25 contribute to inserting the Member States of SELA into the
world economy’s globalization process; to assist in
upgrading inter-relations between the various subregions
of Latin America and the Caribbean; and to promote and
facilitate regional cooperation via activities whose results
30 underscore the organization’s specificity, its contributions
to the region’s identity and unity, and a differentiated
contribution, pursuant to its Latin American and Caribbean
approach.
SELA's new work program will focus on three broad
35 thematic areas, namely:
1. Extra-Regional Relations
2. Intra-Regional Relations
3. Regional Cooperation
Structure
Coordinación de Idiomas
40 SELA's structure consists of the Latin American Council, the
Action Committees and the Permanent Secretariat. The
Latin American Council, which includes one representative
from each Member State, is the highest organ and meets
annually in regular session at the ministerial level to
45 establish the general policies of the organization. Action
Committees are flexible cooperative mechanisms which are
established in the interest of three or more countries in
promoting joint programs and projects in specific areas.
These committees are dissolved upon
50 attainment of their objectives or may
become Permanent Bodies. The
Permanent Secretariat is SELA's
administrative organ and is headed by
a Permanent Secretary, who is elected
55 to a four-year term by the Latin
American Council.
ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR LATIN AMERICA
The Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) -the
Spanish acronym is CEPAL- was established by Economic
60 and Social Council resolution 106(VI) of 25 February 1948
and began to function that same year. The scope of the
Commission's work was later broadened to include the
countries of the Caribbean, and by resolution 1984/67 of 27
July 1984, the Economic Council decided to change its name
65 to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC); the Spanish acronym, CEPAL, remains
unchanged.
ECLAC, which is headquartered in Santiago, Chile, is one of
the five regional commissions of the United Nations. It was
70 founded with the purpose of contributing to the economic
development of Latin America, coordinating actions
directed towards this end, and reinforcing economic ties
among countries and with other nations of the world. The
promotion of the region's social development was later
75 included among its primary objectives.
In June 1951, the Commission established the ECLAC
subregional headquarters in Mexico City, which serves the
needs of the Central American subregion, and in December
1966, the ECLAC subregional headquarters for the
80 Caribbean was founded in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and
 LATIN AMERICAN ECONOMIC SYSTEM
Tobago. In addition, ECLAC maintains country offices in
Buenos Aires, Brasilia, Montevideo and Bogotá, as well as a
liaison office in Washington, D.C.
In the half century since its founding, the Economic
85 Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has made
significant contributions to regional development, and its
theories and approaches have achieved recognition in
many parts of the world.
The Commission has developed a school of thought
90 concerning medium- and long-term economic and social
trends in the Latin American and Caribbean countries.
The thinking of ECLAC is a dynamic process that has kept
pace with the sweeping changes occurring in the economic,
social and political arenas at the regional and international
95 levels. In its early years the Commission developed its own
method of analysis and thematic focus which, with some
variations, it has maintained up to the present day.
Its approach, which has come to be known as "historical
structuralism" focuses on the analysis of the ways in which
100 the region's institutional legacy and inherited production
structure influence the economic dynamics of developing
countries and generate behaviors that differ from those of
developed nations. This approach does not recognize the
existence of uniform "stages of development", since for
105 "latecomers to development", such as the countries of the
region, the dynamics of the process are different than they
were for the nations that underwent development at an
earlier point in history. Thus, this school of thought feels
that the region's economies can be better understood by
110 referring to the concept of structural heterogeneity that
was formulated in the 1960s.
Five phases can be identified in the theoretical work of
ECLAC:
Origins and the 1950s: industrialization through import
115 substitution (ISI);
The 1960s: reforms to facilitate industrialization;
The 1970s: reorientation of development "styles" towards
social homogeneity and towards diversification as a means
of promoting exports;
Coordinación de Idiomas
120 The 1980s: overcoming the external debt crisis through
"adjustment with growth";
The 1990s: changing production patterns with social equity.
Keynesian thought, the historicist school and the Central
European institutionalists exerted a decisive influence in
125 the Commission's early years. More recently, the focus has
been on a revival of this line in inquiry, along with the new
theories of international trade and industrial organization,
evolutionary theories of the firm and the new
institutionalism.
130 The history of ECLAC has also been marked by its
involvement in the debate regarding inflation and its
introduction of the concept of inertial inflation, without
which many of the successful attempts that have been
made in the region to stabilize inflationary forces would not
135 be understandable.
ECLAC also made a major contribution to the analysis of the
debt crisis and the modalities of macroeconomic
adjustment used in the 1980s and to the debate on
sustainable development that has been going on since the
140 1960s.
The development of a methodology of analysis that
combines multiple elements is another of its
accomplishments. This approach, which is the outgrowth of
an integral, interdisciplinary vision of development, relies
145 on a dialectical interplay between ideas and actual
conditions, between thought and action, and implies a
continual evolution of those ideas and thoughts as a
function of changes in the environment and ongoing
interaction with the governments of the region. The search
150 for a regional identity, the study of existing conditions as a
function of regional interests, and the evaluation of any
conceptual scheme on the basis of its effectiveness in
promoting a fuller understanding of those conditions and of
how to influence them are all integral components of this
155 methodology.
This approach has led to the formulation of a range of
policy analyses and recommendations over time and has
drawn upon a variety of other schools of economic thought
that have left their stamp on the history of the institution.