Development and the Politics of Expertise: The UN CEPAL in Latin America and Beyond

This paper examines the impact of development experts and of economic expertise on the political life of Latin America and beyond. Focusing on the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL in Spanish and Portuguese), perhaps the most important development institution in the region, the paper examines the impact of the concept of center-periphery and the multiple paths it opened for cepalinos ­- the economists and social scientists, diplomats, and policymakers associated with the UN institution. From popular developmentalism to anti-authoritarianism, from revolutionary movements to Third World internationalism, cepalinos became key players in the most important political movements of their times. As a collective, cepalinos acquired a form of regional hegemony that by the 1960s put them at odds with both the neoliberals in ascent and the Marxist-inspired generation of dependendistas and other radical intellectuals. While the cepalino concept of center-periphery became a rallying cry for the Global South and dependency theory went global in the early 1970s, cepalinos lost their élan in Latin America. Some of them and their ideas lived on in the most unexpected ways when the golden era of development ended in the late 20^th century.