ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the book, a number of recurring themes in the economics of Latin America were introduced. Recall as well that the history of the region that is most relevant for our purposes begins at the end of the fifteenth century. Some of the economic themes that were introduced in the first chapter have their roots almost as far back as that. The discovery of the Americas was followed shortly by the discovery of gold and silver. In turn, this discovery set the region on a certain path of development. Gold and silver were just the first of many commodities that were and are important to the region. In a related vein, the exploitation of these commodities required enormous amounts of labor. Unfortunately, the labor market in colonial Latin America was not exactly the competitive market found in a labor economics text. In a similar way, the conquest of Latin America by the colonial powers produced a distribution of land that was in keeping with the way the land was acquired. The theft of the land from the indigenous population was followed by distribution of much of it to a small population of Europeans. The initial distribution of the land and the labor market conditions created a highly unequal distribution of income. In the economic history of Latin America, commodities, poverty, and inequality often share an uncomfortable relation to one another.
