ABSTRACT
The origins of industrial development in Latin America have increasingly drawn the attention of numerous historians, sociologists, and economic historians. Latin American industrialization emerges as a much more gradual, evolutionary, and extended process than was previously recognized. Luis Ortega, following others such as A. W. Frank, places the beginning of Chilean industrialization as early as 1879-1883. The article and book by Fernando Fajnzylber, in the context of Latin America, are indicators of a growing interest in comparative studies, particularly in the use of international experience to enrich our understanding of the problems and history of Latin America. The progress of Asian and European peripheral economies, in which the income distribution profile is more egalitarian than that in Latin America, reflects the effectiveness of an alternative to Latin American import substitution. Ecologism involves a broad challenge to the industrialist ideology and technological optimism shared by almost all modern trends of thought, from liberalism to Marxism.
