This economic history examines the political, institutional and economic forces that shaped Latin America's complex and often paradoxical development process over the 20th century. Quantitative data is examined alongside the region's political economies to provide a context for the successes and failures of the Latin American countries. A Statistical Appendix provides regionwide and country-by-country data in such areas as GDP, manufacturing, sector productivity, prices, trade, income distribution and living standards. Moving chronologically through the century, the book focuses on two dramatic waves of expansion that shaped regional growth: first, an export boom as the century began, and second, import-substitution industrialization corresponding to renewed expansion of the international economy following the depression and the two World Wars.