ABSTRACT
The creation of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) happened amidst the world economic reorganization after the Second World War. To ensure that developing countries could partake in the international affairs system, the newly United Nations created temporary commissions to evaluate these countries’ social and economic conditions. In this context, ECLAC developed a train of thought contrary to the traditional economic ideas of the 1950s by proposing strategies of development to the Latin American countries. Although it was placed in Santiago de Chile, ECLAC embraced many Latin American researchers (mostly Brazilian, Argentinian and Mexican sociologists and economists) who focused on investigating the roots of the region’s economic underdevelopment and its contemporary transformations. Many Latin American intellectuals and many theoretical frameworks derived from ECLAC’s core ideas proposed by R. Prebish. The article provided an overview of the creation of ECLAC and on the work of two Brazilian intellectuals, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Celso Furtado, who enriched ECLAC’s thinking with new interpretations on the development of Latin American development. Both authors and works became prominent scholars in Brazil and are still crucial for understanding economic and sociological ideas that influenced public policies and theories in Latin America.
