State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain

Miguel A. Centeno, Augustin E. Ferraro

"Miguel A. Centeno, Agustin E. Ferraro, Vivekananda Nemana More than 3 decades ago, Albert Hirschman wondered why not enough attention had been paid to Latin America's post-war economic boom, certainly not while it happened. Only in retrospect, from the "lost decade" of the 1980s, did the accomplishments of the developmental era become relatively clear. But even then, the comparison with East Asia that began during the 1980s diminished the region's achievements. If anything, the period from 1945 to 1975 came to be seen as a lost opportunity, when Latin America supposedly took the wrong direction while East Asia cleared the path to its economic success. This perspective could not be more different than the attention paid to the "Spanish Miracle"-with its own Wikipedia entry! Spain's developmental achievements were seen as a victory for the Franco regime, whose replacement by a vigorous...