ABSTRACT
The twin oil shocks of the 1970s, that of 1973 and then the second one in 1979, helped launch Latin America on the road to economic disaster. For countries wholly dependent on oil imports for their energy needs, the tripling of oil prices in 1973-1974 and then the stiff rises of 1979 had devastating consequences. Latin America's economic crisis was primarily caused by the downward turn of the world economy beginning in 1979. The internal structural factors that have helped worsen the economic crisis are familiar. They include widespread corruption, which in some countries has gone beyond the pale. Once the economic crisis had gotten under way in 1979, it revealed additional weaknesses and further debilitating trends in the Latin American economies. Latin America is of course dependent on the United States, for both good and some ill, and the activities of some US firms have in the past sometimes been ill-advised.
