Hothousing for development: Sorting out the mixed economy in Mexico and Chile

This article refocuses attention on issues of mid-20th century state-led development and the role of development banks in shaping capitalist expansion. More specifically, a general recasting of attention back to the era of Import Substitution Industrialisation (ISI) is underway in light of contemporary debates about ‘mixed economies’ in constituting state-led developmentalism. Mixed economies are held to conjoin public and private interests and thus state and market practices as the hallmark of mid-century statecraft in Latin America. Rather than accepting the mixed economy approach, this article focuses instead on the role of nodal planning agencies in Latin America in hothousing capitalist development. As a result, an alternative account is revealed in the making of mid-century state capitalism that does not shy away from assessing its class-relevance. Focussing on Nacional Financiera (Nafin) in Mexico, founded in 1934, and Corporación de Fomento de la Producción (Corfo) in Chile, founded in 1939, foreign capital is revealed as playing a pivotal role in shaping ISI ‘national’ state development plans. Exploring the secret histories involved in hothousing for development in mid-century Latin America thus assists us to inform present economic geography and geographical political economy considerations of state capitalism, class power and public-private sector financing of development.