Review

Author(s): David Felix

Review by: David Felix
Source: The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Aug., 1968), pp. 456-458
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2511247
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BOOK REVIEWS j GENERAL 457

Argentina and Brazil, which the creditor countries have helped to

relieve by converting some of the outstanding suppliers credits into

longer term official loans. At the end of 1964 Western European

countries held about 24 percent of Latin America's external public

debt of all types. Two-thirds of the European holdings were suppliers

credit, and somewhat over one-fourth long-term official loans.

European direct private investment also revived toward the end

of the 1950s, so that in the early 1960s Europeans owned a-bout half

of the foreign private investment in Argentina and Brazil. Europe's

stake in the other Latin countries has been far more modest, although

the degree of modesty depends on what nationality one chooses to

assign to Shell Petroleum. In 1964 Britain was still the most important

European investor in Latin America, but by only a small margin over

West Germany, with Italy in third place.

La Participacion de Europa is a comprehensive collection of statis-

tics and other descriptive material on European post-war loans and

investment in Latin America. It also contains comparative data on

the mounting foreign debt and the external financial obligations of

various Latin American countries. Many of the statistics are com-

piled from IMF and OECD publications, but the authors have also

incorporated unpublished information from European and Latin

American central banks and other official entities.

Particularly useful are the sections devoted to each of the E.E.C.

countries and the U.K., detailing the flow of funds from each country

to various Latin American countries, the types of loans and invest-

ments, and the regulations and institutions guiding these flows. Other

sections summarize the changing regulations of the larger Latin Amer-

ican countries governing foreign investments and the distribution of

these investments by activity. The trend in the external debt and

the future profile of debt service are also given for each of these coun-

tries. The estimates of private debt and foreign investment are un-

avoidably based on incomplete and often contradictory information.

However, since the international team of authors had inside access to

both European and Latin American sources, their efforts to fill gaps

and reconcile contradictory data are probably the most reliable ones

available.

Studies of controversial subjects by international agencies tend to

be long on reporting and cautiously grey in analysis and evaluation.

This study is no exception to the rule. It touches on many pros and

cons of suppliers credits, private foreign investment, and the rapidly

increasing external indebtedness, but avoids any bold conclusions.

Neither do the summaries of policies and procedures in the various

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458 HAHR j AUGUST

countries penetrate beyond formal description into the politics of

implementation. Nevertheless, the study should be a standard refer-

ence on a period which, if the current storm signals are accurate, may

soon end in a major international financial crisis, as have similar

periods of expanding capital flows in the past. This study, of course,

gives little inkling of this possibility, but then Vietnam is outside its

geographic scope.

Harvard University DAVID FELix

El aspecto economico de la influencia sovietica en la Ame6rica Latina.

By ROBERT LORING ALLEN. Mexico, 1964. Editorial Limusa Wiley.

Charts. Tables. Bibliography. Pp. 174. $5.00 (Mex.).

Many persons in this country are excessively concerned with the

expansion of world trade by the Socialist bloc, ignoring the fear of

many non-Socialist countries at the expansion of United States capital-

ism abroad, especially into Western Europe. Granted the underlying

obsession, this is an admirable little book whose value is enhanced by

our lack of many tangible figures to point up the supposed danger.

This book attempts to remedy this deficiency. That it partly succeeds

is due to the wide range of Robert Loring Allen's scholarship and

that of his collaborators. Of particular merit are the diverse tables,

graphs, and statistical data covering trade in a wide range of com-

modities between Latin America and the Soviet Union, ineluding

Eastern Europe. Allen emphasizes the overall trade balance pieture,

as well as cost of living indices and per capita increase or decrease

by countries, which collectively provide the basis for examining the

GNPs of each country and for anticipating trade trends and fluctua-

tions for the future. A wide range of sources has been used including

International Financial Statistics, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics,

Foreign Trade of the USSR, Economic Surveys of Latin America,

and many others deriving from international organizations. There is

an overall evaluation at the end of the work as well as useful foot-

notes citing additional reference material.

The impressive organization and analytical tables are considerably

impaired, however, by the lack of data for the past ten years. This

leaves the reader in doubt as to whether the dragon of Communist

economic power has receded since then or is poised to strike at capital-

ism itself. That a translation of a book dealing with such vital matters

should take five years or more to reach a Spanish-reading public seems

to indicate either a total mismanagement of the battle against Russian

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