Crises and Their Consequences in Latin America

The year of 1982 is writ large in the economic history of Latin America for all the wrong reasons. In 1982, a long period of economic growth came to an abrupt end and ushered in the so-called lost decade, which featured economic stagnation and in some cases hyperinflation. A number of factors contributed to this depressing transition, which continued in many countries until the adoption of so-called Washington Consensus economics at the end of the 1980s (Williams 1990).