Introduction

The international crisis has struck the region with singular force because of the high decree of integration that Latin America has achieved with the world economy and because the development strategies pursued by many countries were highly dependent on foreign borrowing. Among the principal manifestations of the crisis in the region, the one that stands out is the explosive growth of the Latin American external debt service and the high social cost of the adjustment that Latin American countries have been making in order to pay their external obligations under conditions of domestic and external crisis. The Program for Joint Studies on Latin American International Relations with headquarters in Santiago, Chile, an association of Latin American social research centers, promoted during 1983 a series of meetings in various parts of the region about the external debt problems of Latin America.