Locating the 1948 Economic Agreement of Bogotá: The Rise and Fall of Latin America’s International Economic Law Project

This article claims that Latin America developed a competing International Economic Law project in the 1940s. These ideas and practices served the region to imagine its economic development process. Through the work of economists and lawyers – especially international lawyers – Latin America envisioned a future of industrialization and designed a strategy to make it happen. In the 1940s, many Latin Americans were enthusiastic about the prospects of industrialization; however, the consensus was that this objective required regional cooperation to reshape international trade and foreign investment laws among themselves and, especially, vis-à-vis the United States. This article explores this regional momentum focusing on the 1948 Economic Agreement of Bogotá, one of the most important international economic law-making efforts in the Western Hemisphere. In Bogotá, many Latin American governments insisted that states, not markets or foreign investors, should plan the region’s economic future. The United States and the US business elite disagreed.