In thinking about the Economics of Latin America

Today I start this year´s course on the Economics of Latin America at the Latin American Centre.  In preparing the first class, I realised an obvious point: how much the region has changed during the last two decades that I have been studying it but also how much continuity there is.  We had ten years of growth in which we were all wondering how much the region had truly become different... and now we are back to a crisis.  Finding better ways to understand both continuities and changes should be one of the primary goals of political economy in the region.