Exports and American divergence. Lost decades and Emancipation collapse in Latin American and the Caribbean 1820-1870

Abstract

The period 1820-1870, or 'lost decades', is widely regarded as the key moment in the opening of gap between Latin America and the United States. We test this statement with a new set of export series. We show that the performance of Latin American countries was quite good, although not outstanding. Mexico was hit by foreign policy crisis, but the only real basket case have been the British and French colonies in the Caribbean. The emancipation of slaves caused a collapse in their exports, favoring other tropical countries, including Cuba and Brazil. Further South, independent countries such as Argentine and Chile increased their share of world trade. In a nutshell, most of the divergence in the 1820-1870 in the Americas was between tropical countries rather than between Latin America and North America.