The purpose of this paper is to discuss the proposition that Latin America is a continent that has only been able to inadequately fulfill its development potential, based on the limitations of the persistent characteristics of its colonial past.
Latin America was dependent on the Spanish and Portuguese, who were in turn, dependent on the wealthier and more advanced countries of Western Europe. The dependency has been extended in time and widened in scope to current days when larger and more developed Western countries control much of the trade that globalization has enabled.
Latin America is an area that presents a regional identity to the world; however, is a definitely pluralistic region, made up of many countries that, while Hispanic in background, have pursued similar but different paths to get to the present.
The historical absence of trade growth in the nations of Latin America is due to their failure to adapt to changing world economic realities. Most governments in these regions pursued economic growth and industrialization through import substitution, protecting their domestic economies from international competition. As a result, they priced their own exports out of world markets and stunted the growth of new, internationally competitive businesses. In the case of the developed countries, trade increased because they made it easier to trade among themselves, which has only recently been a feature of the Latin American region. Nationalism and statism caused the countries to retreat into anti-imperialism, developing a reticence to open themselves and their markets to the rest of the world while other countries were eagerly courting and developing world trade.
In the two centuries of Latin America's existence as independent republics, an institutional and political order has followed a path of constant swings from isolationism to protectionism to present goal of integration into the world community and antici...