Great Depression in Latin America

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The Great Depression which followed the US stock market crash of 1929 badly affected the countries of Latin America. Before the global Great Depression of the 1930s, links between the United States economy and Latin American economies had been established through US investment in Latin America and Latin American exports to the US. As a result, Latin Americans felt heavy reverberations when the US market crashed in 1929.[1]

Chile, Peru, and Bolivia were, according to a League of Nations report, the countries worst-hit by the Great Depression. The rise of fascism also became apparent in Latin American countries in the 1930s due to the Great Depression.[1] In particular, Getúlio Vargas of Brazil was a staunch supporter of the fascist movement and imitated the Italian government. Fascist governments were the result of a desire for nationalism, which rulers like Vargas played on through propaganda.

In Brazil and in other Latin American countries such as Mexico, responses to the Great Depression also led to a strengthening of the industrialization process (begun in the nineteenth century). Brazil needed an economic alternative to the highly devalued coffee, its main commodity at the time. The Vargas government started to purchase and burn coffee from the farmers, in order to avoid their complete bankruptcy.

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Further reading[edit]

  • Modern Latin America, Fifth Edition, T. E. Skidmore and P. H. Smith