page_title: Latin American economy
section_title: Export Booms (1870–1914)
hierarchical_section_title: Latin American economy / Export Booms (1870–1914)
caption_attribution_description: English: Image Title: Buenos Aires. Shipping and Docks from Aduana Principal, or Customs House Image Description from historic lecture booklet: "Population, 1,811,500. Beunos Aires, the capital of the republic, is now the largest city in South America. About one fifth of the entire population of Argentina live in this city. Like Chicago, Buenos Aires is built on flat land, and yet, like Chicago, Buenos Aires had the advantage of a wonderful system of parks and playgrounds. There are seventy- two parks in Buenos Aires, and they are being improved and enlarged every year. The harbor at Buenos Aires was not satisfactory, and on account of this fact a great deal of dredging has been done to deepen the water. A very excellent system of stone docks extend for miles along the water front. The Plata River is shallow estuary and not like a real river. The land sank and the sea water came into the mouth of the river, just as it did when Chesapeake Bay was made. British and German people have invested large amounts of money in Buenos Aires and throughout Argentina. Many of the storekeepers are foreigners; some are Spanish, others Portuguese, others Italian. Spanish is the language most commonly spoken; Buenos Aires is, in fact, the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world, larger than any city in Spain" Original Format: Lantern slides Original Collection: Visual Instruction Department Lantern Slides Item Number: P217:set 051 023 Restrictions: Permission to use must be obtained from the OSU Archives. Click here to view The Best of the Archives. Click here to view Oregon State University's other digital collections. We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons; however, certain restrictions on high quality reproductions of the original physical version may apply. To read more about what “no known restrictions” means, please visit the OSU Archives website.
context_page_description: Latin America as a region has multiple nation-states, with varying levels of economic complexity. The Latin American economy is an export-based economy consisting of individual countries in the geographical regions of North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. The socioeconomic patterns of what is now called Latin America were set in the colonial era when the region was controlled by the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Up until independence in the early nineteenth century, colonial Latin American regional economies thrived and worked things out. Many parts of the region had favorable factor endowments of deposits of precious metals, mainly silver, or tropical climatic conditions and locations near coasts that allowed for the development of cane sugar plantations. In the nineteenth century following independence, many economies of Latin America declined. In the late nineteenth century, much of Latin America was integrated into the world economy as an exporter of commodities.
context_section_description: The late 1800s represented a fundamental shift in the new developing Latin American nations. This transition was characterized by a re-orientation towards world markets, which was well underway before 1880. When Europe and the United States experienced an increase of industrialization, they realized the value of the raw materials in Latin America, which caused Latin American countries to move towards export economies. This economic growth also catalyzed social and political developments that constituted a new order. Historian Colin M. Lewis argues that "In relative terms, no other region of the world registered a similar increase in its share of world trade, finance, and population: Latin America gained relative presence in the world economy at the expense of other regions."
caption: Buenos Aires Docks, 1915. The British-financed docks and railway system created a dynamic agro-export sector that remains as an economic pillar.
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