This is the second session of the seminar "The New Histories of Capitalism in Latin America." It will be focus on business and financial history within the history of capitalism.

This session examines how business history and the history of finance have reshaped the study of capitalism in the region. While earlier scholarship often concentrated on individual firms, entrepreneurial dynasties, or multinational corporations, more recent work situates these actors within broader political and institutional frameworks. Firms are analyzed not as isolated units but as embedded in shifting configurations of state power, international institutions, and global markets. At the same time, scholars have expanded the range of actors under consideration, incorporating immigrants, women, technocrats, and policymakers, and moving beyond dependency-centered interpretations to highlight negotiation, adaptation, and strategic action within the periphery.

The papers in this session reflect these developments through new empirical research on sovereign debt, international financial institutions, and the long-term evolution of business-state relations. Carlo Edoardo Altamura and Fernanda Conforto de Oliveira revisit IMF and World Bank engagement during the 1982 Mexican debt crisis. Using newly declassified archival materials and computational analysis of internal documents, they argue that these institutions were not simply imposing a coherent austerity program, but were themselves engaged in processes of internal debate, experimentation, and policy learning that later shaped interventions elsewhere in the region.

Aurora Gómez Galvarriato offers a wide-ranging account of business transformation in Mexico from the mid eighteenth to the early twenty first century. By identifying five distinct periods, she traces changing patterns of interaction between domestic enterprise, foreign capital, and government policy, providing a long-term perspective on how capitalist development in Mexico has been structured through evolving state-business relations.

Uziel González-Aliaga turns to the early operations of the Paris Club between 1956 and 1966, examining debt relief negotiations with Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Drawing on new archival evidence, he shows how South American governments participated actively in shaping emerging norms of sovereign debt restructuring in the context of Cold War geopolitics and multilateral financial coordination.

These papers underscore how the study of business and finance opens a critical window onto the institutional architecture of capitalism in Latin America, highlighting negotiation, rule-making, and strategic interaction as key dimensions of its historical development.