Martinez de Hoz and the birth of Neoliberalism in Latin America. (1976-1981)

• In Event: La circulación de las ideas en las Américas

Abstract

Jose Martnizez de Hoz was the Argentine finance minister during the hardest days of the military dictatorship, where death and torture prevailed in Argentina. From 1976 until 1981 he was the responsible for trying to give some resemblance of economic order for a country that was living in a permanent state of civil war. Hoz tried to break with the previous path of developmentalism set up by CEPAL and tried to follow a more Liberal oriented economic path. Historiography so far credited to him the title of the "First Neoliberal in Latin America" die to the orthodoxy of his policies. The goal behind this paper is to rediscover Martinez de Hoz and utilize new techniques of analysis in order to verify the validity of this statement. In using Hoz's own writings, IMF and World Bank documents together with brand new theoretical work on Neoliberalism makes possible to provide a reassessment on Hoz's tenure as finance minister and debunk for the first time the idea that he was a Neoliberal minister.

Author

• Bruno H Biazetto, Georgetown University