ABSTRACT
Prebisch was a very well known figure amongst the intellectual and political elite of most Latin American countries in the early 1940s. Yet there is a sense in which, before his arrival to the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC), he was relatively unknown. This chapter tries to describe what I consider an exceptional period in his intellectual life: the years that follow his dismissal as the Director of the Argentinean Central Bank in 1943 up to a few days before he departs from México City on his way to Santiago de Chile to report to ECLAC in 1949, that is, right before the formulation of his development manifesto (Economic Development and Its Main Problems),2 Indeed Prebisch himself said it on various occasions that this was an exceptional period in his intellectual life.3
