ABSTRACT
In the mid-sixties, the idea of opening the Argentine economy to foreign investment and the export of industrial goods acquired increasing importance. An “industrial-export consciousness” was taking shape and would end up becoming dominant by the end of the decade, although some deemed that all industrial exports should be encouraged, and others held that only some sectors should be for that purpose. The different perspectives, though with important nuances, all proposed concentrating economic efforts on a reduced collection of industries that would allow the full use of the domestic economy to develop those industries on a large scale to other markets. Underlying these points laid not only a precise characterization of the country’s economic structure but also of the social groups charged with carrying out the different competing strategies, given that success not only resided in an accurate diagnosis or policy decision but also in the ability and objectives of those social actors. The new ideas obtained hegemonic status and established the dynamic of political power over the course of the 1960s. Curiously, this second boom in the “industrial mentality” took shape while the changes in the industrial structure were becoming more perceptible and reaching a stage of maturation.
