Introduction

The role of Latin America in international markets has been broadly dealt with by many authors, most of them having emphasized the connections between trade openness of the region and economic development. In that sense, the timing of each growth period has been used, by part of the literature, to show successful stories of international market integration during the so-called first globalization. Such literature has drawn a picture of Latin America growing till the First World War at the same time as it was tightening its connection to international markets. The war has been said to have interrupted that process generating an enormous break through the decline in international trade. The literature of Latin American economic history has explained that break based on the strong decline in total trade volumes but also through the replacement of one main trade partner by another, that is the US replacing the UK.

Such interpretations refer to the whole Latin American region, but they in fact come from data of only few countries, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile. Although these few countries have a big role in the region because they are very rich countries, they do not necessarily represent what was going on in the rest of the countries, the majority being smaller or much poorer. When we enlarge the sample of countries by including the rest of Latin America, the area's shared economic history changes a lot.