A Marshall Plan for Latin America

Roberto Simonsen and Latin American underdevelopment’s thesis

Abstract

This article discusses the ideas of Roberto Simonsen about the effects of the Marshall Plan in Latin America and Brazil. Simonsen was a businessman and intellectual who led the industrial segment of the Brazilian bourgeoisie in the 1930s and 1940s. His ideas, described in the books and articles analyzed in this work, anticipated economic concepts that only as from the 1950s on would gain substance in the national debate. Inserted in the discussions about industrialization in Brazil and Latin America during that period, Simonsen defended that, in order to raise the standard of living, it was necessary to industrialize. However, the US proposal for the recovery of Europe, the Marshall Plan, would have the direct consequence of accentuating poverty in Latin America, as it would reinsert these countries in the old international division of labor in which they would occupy the position of producers of raw materials. His idea was to create a development strategy that would raise Latin American living conditions, industrializing Brazil and other countries and refusing the position of exporters, which in his vision would not allow us to obtain the level of economic and social development necessary to raise the standard of living of the population. These are the ideas we intend to demonstrate and debate throughout this article.