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Dávila, Carlos; Miller, Rory Reseña de"Business history in Latin America. The experience of seven countries" Academia. Revista Latinoamericana de Administración, núm. 26, 2001, pp. 119-127 Consejo Latinoamericano de Escuelas de Administración Bogotá, Organismo Internacional

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Business history in Latin America. The experience of seven countries

Carlos Dávila y Rory Miller (Editores) Liverpool Latin American Studies, New Series 1 Primera edición, 1999 Liverpool University Press, Liverpool. 241 páginas. 15,5 x 23,5 cm ISBN: 0-85323-723-9

Business history in Latin America. The experience of seven countries

Este libro no es la traducción del libro Empresa e historia en América Latina. Un balance historiográfico*, sino una edición revisada, ya que examina lo publicado en historia empresarial hasta fines de 1998, cubriendo así tres años más que el libro en español. Así mismo, en este la introducción está a cargo del profesor Rory Miller, y no del profesor Carlos Dávila. A continua- ción, se transcriben siete reseñas publicadas en diferentes revistas académicas internacionales en los años 2000 y 2001.

* Carlos Dávila L. de Guevara (Compilador) Primera edición, septiembre de 1996 Colciencias, Tercer Mundo Editores, Bogotá. 254 páginas. 16 x 23 cm ISBN: 958 601 684-6

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Iberoamericana (Alemania), 2 (5), 2002, pp. 302-304 Reseñador: Thomas Fischer, Universidad de Erlangen

Este compendio contiene ensayos sobre el estado de investigación de la historia empresarial en los siete países más grandes de América Latina. Las contribuciones, escritas por especialistas de reputación internacional, reflejan el rápido e impresionante desarrollo de una disciplina que no ha tenido gran tradición en esta región del mundo. En un momento en el que todo el mundo está cantando himnos de alabanza sobre el libre comercio, vale la pena resumir la experiencia histórica del mundo de los negocios privados. Estos resultaron especialmente importantes durante el llamado “desarrollo hacia fuera” (1850-1930). Si bien la adopción del patrón del libre comercio y de la propiedad individual estuvieron presentes mucho tiempo en la región, saltan a la luz grandes diferencias entre los estados: Raúl García Heras, quien ha estudiado el caso de Argentina, hace hincapié en que en este país las compañías extranjeras estuvieron por mucho tiempo bajo la mirada de los investigadores, puesto que fueron los principales promotores del espectacular auge del sector agro-exportador, que hasta los años treinta del siglo xx fue el más relevante del país. La discusión sobre la presencia extranjera giraba en torno a los pros y contras del impacto sobre el desarrollo nacional. Dadas las grandes inversiones en la construcción y el funcionamiento de ferrocarriles por consorcios britá- nicos, esta rama es la mejor investigada. Aparte de ello se investigó la participación de la City of London en la deuda externa de Argentina, el papel de las sociedades comerciales en la organiza- ción del comercio exterior y la inversión de compañías extranjeras en algunos sectores importantes del mercado interior. En cuanto a la importancia del empresariado privado hasta los años treinta del siglo xx, la conclusión de Colin Lewis, quien ha tratado Brasil, es muy parecida a la de García Heras. Sin embargo, la discusión sobre Brasil se centra en el empresariado doméstico, que tuvo su origen en la producción y comercialización del café para el mercado mundial. A este empresariado se le atribuye una participación elevada en el proceso industrializador. Mientras las familias destaca- das paulistas y de Minas Gerais consiguieron exitosamente influenciar a su favor la política económica del Estado, los empresarios de otras regiones y de negocios menos poderosos tenían problemas para conseguir apoyo estatal. En su análisis sobre Chile, Luis Ortega se centra en los sectores de la industria, la agricultura, la minería y los servicios. En particular menciona la “industria popular”, montada por los artesanos y los bandidos, descartada por las elites económicas desde la derrota de los nacionalis- tas en la guerra civil de 1891. Últimamente se han revelado tendencias similares en México, Colombia, Perú y Brasil. Por tanto, Ortega lamenta el pobre estado de investigación sobre las empresas, sobre todo en cuanto a los “años cruciales” 1925-1945. La contribución de Carlos Dávila sobre Colombia es la más completa. Este autor constata que la situación en que se encuentra la investigación del empresariado está mejorando continua- mente. Su análisis comienza con una mirada a los diferentes tipos de empresariado por regiones. Ello resulta bastante convincente, ya que Colombia se divide en espacios muy diferenciados. Dávila discute una gran cantidad de estudios abarcando empresas pequeñas que exploraron mercados locales, compañías especializadas en el mercado interno o empresas mineras, agrícolas y de productos selváticos orientadas a la exportación. Cabe señalar que, si bien se ha elaborado una gran cantidad de investigación que utiliza cada vez más el material archivístico en el país, todavía falta una discusión académica para sintetizar los resultados regionales y sectoriales.

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En cuanto a la diversidad regional del empresariado doméstico, el juicio de Mario Cerruti, que es el responsable del capítulo sobre México, se parece al de Dávila. Sin embargo, en México existe un consenso más profundo sobre la necesidad de conceptos analíticos. En particular, vale la pena reflexionar sobre la negativa de Cerruti en lo referente a la clasificación de la actividad empresarial de inmigrantes como “extranjera”. Las observaciones de Rory Miller sobre Perú se centran en la extracción de guano, la forma jurídica y la actividad de casas comerciales extranjeras en otros sectores y la participación de las elites locales en los negocios. Subraya que las interpretaciones generalizantes todavía son esca- sas. Miller opta por un esquema de interpretación que abarque las complejas interdependencias entre los gobiernos, las grandes empresas peruanas y extranjeras, las empresas medianas, las elites regionales así como los bancos y asociaciones empresariales. Si bien en la investigación peruana todavía hay mucho que hacer, en el caso de Venezuela tanto la cantidad como la calidad de la investigación es aun peor. Ruth Capriles y Marisol Rodríguez de Gonzalo se encargaron del análisis del caso de Venezuela, y aseguran que el progreso investigativo, aun en las ramas claves de la economía del país, o sea el petróleo, la banca, la agricultura y la industria automotriz, es casi nulo. En resumen, puede decirse que se trata de un compendio muy útil, de carácter básico y didáctico. Los contribuyentes han organizado sus capítulos según las particularidades de los países tanto en sus estructuras empresariales como en la literatura bibliográfica. Para entender mejor los rasgos nacionales hubiera sido deseable un capítulo adicional con un análisis compa- rativo de la historia y la historiografía de los casos tratados. En general llama la atención la casi ausencia de estudios de caso provistos de enfoques teóricos sobre estrategias, prácticas, decisiones empresariales y ciclos de vida empresarial que a la vez contextualizan la temática dentro del desarrollo económico, las culturas regionales y las estructuras sociales. Al parecer, se trabaja muy poco con conceptos “clásicos” elaborados por Weber, Schumpeter, Sombart e Hilferding. Rory Miller constata: “It is rare, for example, for foreign historians of Latin America to employ terminology like ‘managerial capitalism’, to consider the internal structures and management of firms or to address some of the major developments in business history such as the concept of the ‘free-standing firm’ or the use of transaction costs theory to explain strategic decision-making and institutional change” (p. 7). Quizás ello se deba al hecho de que e1 discur- so metodológico aún no se ha podido institucionalizar. Por ejemplo, todavía gran parte de los historiadores que contribuyen a la investigación de la historia empresarial se limita a la descrip- ción de las fuentes primarias que encuentran en los archivos, y los sociólogos, politólogos y economistas se contentan con considerar la misma problemática desde ángulos abstractos. Si se pudiera establecer un debate interdisciplinario sería muy fructífero para la disciplina de la historia empresarial de América Latina.

The Americas, 2001, pp. 156-157 Reseñador: Marshall C. Eakin, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

The history of business has rarely been the business of historians of Latin America. Despite a vigorous and long-established tradition of economic history, only in the last two decades have historians of Latin America begun to write consciously and systematically about the history of business in the region. Arguably, business people are the most important understudied group in

REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA DE ADMINISTRACIÓN, 26, CLADEA, BOGOTÁ: 2001 121 RESEÑAS modern Latin America. Given the importance of business enterprises, both foreign and nationa1, the absence of serious studies of the history of business in Latin America is striking. Unlike historians of the United States, Europe, and even (to some extent) Asia, there are no schools of business history, very little monographic literature, and certainly nothing equiva1ent to, say, the Chandlerian synthesis. (This might actually be an advantage given the current turmoil in business history in the North Atlantic as historians try to redefine the field!) This volume of collected essays is a major step in the creation of a serious and developed literature on the history of business in Latin America. The origina1 versions of these essays were given as papers at a conference in Colombia in 1992 sponsored by the Consejo Latinoamericano de Escuelas de Adrninistración, and they were published in Spanish in 1996 as Empresa e historia en América Latina: un balance historiográfico (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo/Colciencias). We have Rory Miller and the Liverpool University Press to thank for translating and making them available to a wider English-speaking audience. These essays survey the state of the field in seven countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela). Given the underdevelopment of the field, the authors have chosen to survey the literature (primarily in economic history) that touches on or contributes to our knowledge of business in Latin American history. In some essays, this approach is so pronounced as to make the essays something of a business historian’s approach to the economic historiography of Latin America. The essays by Carlos Dávila on Colombia, Rory Miller on Peru, and Colin Lewis on Brazil are especially well crafted. In some cases, the chapters have a more restricted approach. Mario Cerutti, for example, looks at the topic from the angle of the regiona1 history of Mexico, and the essay on Venezuela is somewhat thinner than the others due largely to an even more pronounced scarcity of work on the subject. As might be expected, Mexico and Brazil seem to have attracted the most interest of historians of business and have the most developed literature. As Rory Miller points out in his excellent introduction to the volume, historians of business face many of the same problems other historians have confronted over the past thirty years, in particular, “striking the right balance between commitment, theory, and empirical data, and making appropriate use of foreign ideas” (p. 10). He a1so highlights the role of entrepreneurship and how it may have differed from the North Atlantic versions. Family firms and capital generated through commerce seem to have been fundamental features in the development of businesses across the region well into this century. Certainly, these essays emphasize the need to study the history of business in Latin America so that we may better understand the region, and how Latin America fits into the economic development of the Atlantic world. An especially important feature of the volume is the bibliography at the end divided by country and then topics and themes. For anyone interested in business history in Latin America, this will become a fundamental bibliographica1 reference source. This volume is an important landmark in the emergence of the business history of Latin America.

The Economic History Review, 54 (1), February 2001, pp. 208-209 Reseñador: Robert G. Greenhill, London Guildhall University

This book, a revised version of a monograph first published in Spanish, inaugurates the new series of ‘Liverpool Latin American studies’ and is a welcome addition to the literature in English on the region. With an introduction by Miller, who has also contributed a case study, the book examines

122 REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA DE ADMINISTRACIÓN, 26, CLADEA, BOGOTÁ: 2001 RESEÑAS business history in seven Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela), each chapter by different scholars. Inevitably, the authors tackle the issues in their own way. Manuel Cerutti has drawn only upon works published in Mexico which emphasize domestic business elites. Raúl Garcia Heras, on Argentina, and Colin Lewis, on Brazil, have adopted a wider approach. The definition of what constitutes business history, too, is flexible. There is also some repetition as each chapter addresses familiar topics such as the role of foreign firms, the concept of business imperialism, and the importance of the dependency debate. The studies reveal that business history is a discipline of recent origin in Latin America compared with its longer tradition in the United States and to a lesser extent in Europe. Perhaps this is a period of catch-up but some countries in Latin America have clearly gone further than others. In Chile, according to Luis Ortega, progress remains limited, and Carlos Dávila argues that in Colombia the discipline still lacks a critical mass. Political change, especially the withdrawal of the state from business activity and the championing of the private sector, has not only opened up new archives in Latin America but has also raised awareness of the origins and performance of local business enterprise. While the involvement of North American and European graduate researchers in Latin America’s business history remains strong, the region’s own academics and institutions are showing an increasing interest in the subject. Moreover, new historical sources, notarial registers, Chamber of Commerce records, and oral history are increasingly being exploited. There is, of course, much still to do. The emphasis so far in many Latin American business histories has been on export commodities, expatriate firms, and foreign investment in sectors such as mining and transport. What are needed are more studies of small and medium sized enterprises serving the domestic market and owned by local entrepreneurs, and more comparative works, although research on interest groups in many of the republics is on the agenda. To date, regional coverage has been uneven, and much more is also needed on the state sector. Moreover, the application of analytical tools in the form of business theory and concepts has some way to go in Latin American business history. As well as discussing the development of business history as a discipline, the book offers useful insights into and interpretations of each country’s recent economic past. Several chapters also help to dispel well-established myths, for example, that powerful foreign firms could always have their own way in negotiations with local governments, that extractive industries failed to promote economic change, or that Latin American businessmen lacked enterprise. Other conclusions are less surprising: the role of immigrants as a dynamic source of enterprise is a recurrent theme. The book is well produced and easy to read with a very extensive bibliography, helpfully divided by country and sector, as well as footnotes and a comprehensive index. It is not a volume which undergraduates are likely to purchase, despite its very reasonable price, but it is an indis- pensable work of reference which all serious scholars and research students of Latin America’s business history should have on their shelves.

Hispanic American Historical Review, 80 (3), 2000, pp. 643-644 Reseñador: Thomas F. O’Brien, University of Houston

The field of Latin American business history remains at an incipient stage of development, but this collection of essays offers an important assessment of its accomplishments thus far, as well as suggestions for future research agendas. The authors offer some fairly coherent observations

REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA DE ADMINISTRACIÓN, 26, CLADEA, BOGOTÁ: 2001 123 RESEÑAS about business history in the seven countries that they examine. They agree that the level of development of business history varies dramatically from country to country, with Brazil and Mexico leading the list while Chile and Venezuela appear near the bottom. The essays also stress certain common limitations in the business historiography of the region. While there is general agreement that social and economic histories have contributed to a better understanding of business, the authors are critical of the focus on dependency and imperialism, which typified these works in the 1960s and 1970s. That focus on externalities, most of the authors believe, stereotyped Latin American business elites as weak and prone to domination by foreign capitalists, and discouraged more thorough research on local corporations. They are also critical of the fact that even as more researchers turn to the firm as the focal point of their interests, most have failed to apply the methodologies developed by such noted business historians as Alfred Chandler. While recognizing these shortcomings, the essayists do an impressive job of leading the reader through the literature on the subject. Most of the essays, especially those by Raul Garcia Heras (Argentina), Rory Miller (Peru), Colin Lewis (Brazil), Luis Ortega (Chile), and Carlos Davila (Colombia) provide effective surveys of the literature that include not only the narrow base of works strictly concerned with business, but the broader range of works in economic and social history as well as those from other disciplines that have contributed to our understanding of corporate history. The articles also provide some limited observations and suggestions about archival materials although the emphasis is on secondary literature. While it would be difficult to summarize the research agendas for seven countries, there seems to be a consensus on the need to focus on individual firms and their institutional development, the history of business associations, and the legal and economic environment in which corporations developed in each country. The one significant disappointment in this collection is the essay by Mario Cerutti on Mexico. Cerutti notes that in the last three decades Mexico developed an impressive business historiography; he supports this assertion with a sixteen-page bibliography, but the essay itself is only ten pages long. Because of its brevity the article offers few specifics to guide the reader through this rich array of materials. As a group the essays provide limited treatment of the literature from labor historians, despite the fact that labor has been a central formative factor in the evolution of Latin American business enterprises. Finally, while the criticism of works on developmentalism and imperialism is warranted, it is also true that the concern with the economic, social, and political effects of private enterprise, typical of research concerned with Latin America, has given business history an immediacy and import that contrasts positively with studies that concern themselves exclusively with the internal working of corporations, as if they operated in splendid isolation from the world around them. But these are essentially quibbles with what is a valuable addition to business historiography that will guide scholars and students through the existing literature and encourage and direct future research.

Journal of Latin American Studies, 32 (3), October 2000, pp. 826-827 Reseñador: Maurice De Bunsen

This book provides a usefully succinct summary of the state of writing about business history in the larger countries of Latin America. The editors have themselves written two of the chapters, Dávila on Colombia and Miller on Peru. They have assembled a skilled team to write about Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela. With variations imposed by the differing stages of

124 REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA DE ADMINISTRACIÓN, 26, CLADEA, BOGOTÁ: 2001 RESEÑAS development of business history in each of the countries and by the priorities of each contributor, the chapters follow the same general approach: a survey of the cumulative bibliography, a sketch of the main themes, comment on the available sources and an agenda for further work. There is an extensive bibliography, helpfully arranged by country and (with the exception of Mexico) by the main themes. The contributors are at pains to emphasise the newness of business history as a distinct discipline in Latin America, linked to a lack of resources and the indefinite boundaries with other fields of study. The book itself is not wholly new. It was conceived in 1992 at a meeting convened by Dávila in Bogotá and first published in Spanish in 1996 as Empresa e historia en América Latina. The English-language edition has been revised, expanded and updated to include publications to the end of 1997. All of the contributors argue for an objective approach to research and writing on business, an ‘urgent need to lay the ghosts ...[that] see the businessman as someone who should be eulogised or demonised, rather than studied critically.’ This contrasts with the pervasive influence over an earlier generation of CEPAL and other dogmas. As Colin Lewis puts it in the context of Brazil, ‘cepalino analyses were both descriptive and prescriptive and, at the same time, historical and predictive’, leaving little scope for entrepreneurial initiatives that failed to fit the structuralist mould. There are many common themes that recur in each country: the local business elites and kinship groups, their brief successes and relative failures; the ‘imperialism’ of foreign investors (widely studied because their records are more generally accessible); the ebb and flow of state intervention; the role of state companies; the role of immigrants. Increasingly business historians have come to realise that they should not be deceived by national boundaries, when there are evident regional differences, marked by natural resource, geographical advantage or a subtle mutation of culture. The most elusive prize is to explain the ‘entrepreneurial factor’: what was the special magic that allowed generations of antioqueños to succeed in business? What did their neighbours miss? The most provocative of the chapters is the essay on Venezuela by Ruth Capriles (also author of Diccionario de la corrupción en Venzuela) and Marisol Rodríguez de Gonzalo. They stress the crucial, but difficult, area of ‘study in the intricate relationship between economic influence and political power’, particularly in Venezuela where ‘the state has been the homo economicus’. They go on to describe the practical obstacles to research, ‘the distrust, fear, prejudice, changing alliances and personalities who wish their role to be either minimised or praised’. They note the invisibility of capital and its true ownership, the barriers to prying eyes through the anonymity of bearer shares and the use of front men to shield not just offshore capital ‘but also national figures like presidents and civil servants, or shy and retiring businessmen who wish to avoid provoking social envy or resentment.’ To this reviewer, as a practitioner of business in the region, it is a rare treat if the empresa- rio in Latin America commits to paper his true thoughts on major business decisions. Records and papers abound, but the escritura sworn before the notary and deposited in the commercial register (and as such key material for the historian) records what has been decided, not why, nor the fraught negotiations leading to it. Accounting records have become in the Hispanic tradition luxuriantly detailed, but they require expert and often creative interpretation, especially in periods of high inflation, to achieve even an approximation of the true and fair view to which auditors put their names. This explains the emphasis given by Rory Miller to the call for the researcher to develop personal relationships and trust, which may deliver the keys to a more realistic understanding of the true nature of business in Latin America.

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This book is valuable for what it is -a bibliography with expert commentary. But it is tantalising for the number and variety of glimpses into subjects and debates, which cannot be developed in the limited space of this volume. It is a useful tool and a stimulus to a vast agenda of further work. As Luis Ortega puts it ‘there is a whole history yet to be written’.

The American Historical Review, 105 (3), June 2000 Reseñador: Michael Monteón, University of California, San Diego

The subtitle of this anthology should have been the bibliography of seven countries. This is not a survey of business history in Latin America. Instead, the authors each contribute a bibliographic essay on business history in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. Several studies focus on the period between 1850 and 1950; others emphasize the twentieth century to the present. In some ways, as coeditor Rory Miller explains in the introduction, this is a successor vo1ume to an issue of Business History Review (1985) devoted to Latin America; the current work concentrates on literature since the late 1970s. It is far too specialized for undergraduate students, but its generalizations should be of interest to research historians and graduate students. The country-by-country bibliography at the end of the work is excellent. Just as the structure of each nation’s economy has differed, so, too, has the evolution of business. While these authors are in command of their subjects, the topics covered vary enormously from essay to essay; few common threads run through all the studies. One notable exception is the consistent rejection of economic generalizations developed by CEPAL (also called ECLA or the United Nations’ Economic Committee on Latin America) and by dependency theorists. In the eyes of all these authors issues of dependent development and structural obstacles to development are passé or were wrong all along. The authors claim that such ideas led historians to overlook major elements in the internal economies of the region, from the organization of business firms to the linkages between domestic and export sectors. Nonetheless, the topic of “business history” is so disparate, covering so many different economic activities and social developments, that no one proposes an alternative perspective on how and why Latin American economies have developed as they have. All the authors focus on issues of entrepreneurship and the studies of business firms. The reader is left with the assumption that neoclassical theory can provide the tools and agenda for developing future studies although this is never stated explicitly. Individual essays by Miller (on Peru), coeditor Carlos Dávila (Colombia), Luis Ortega (Chile), and Ruth Capriles and Marisol de Gonzalo (Venezuela) have different but considerable strengths. In the case of Ortega, Capriles, and de Gonzalo, the authors provide excellent syntheses of new literature developed in their respective countries. Dávila does a fine job of covering an obscure literature on Colombia. Like the other authors, he stresses that the field of business history contains numerous subfields and ties to other large topics, such as economic history per se. As a topic of research, however, it has “a high degree of dispersion, fragmentation, and contributions from various disciplines, with the result that a critical mass of research has not yet been attained” (p. 115). Ortega is more direct, “To put it in a nutshell, there is a whole history yet to be written” (p. 82). Miller’s study of Peru is the only one that suggests how future studies can triangulate various issues into coherently manageable sets of relationships among the state, foreign and domestic firms, and such key social topics as labor. His is a well written and fascinating tour de force, albeit the mention of labor reminds the reader how little interest business historians seem to have in working people.

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None of the essays addresses the rise of capitalist power or the development of businessmen as actors in a political economy. There is, instead, an assumption in each essay that the contours of national development are well known. National business associations are barely mentioned; regional ones are ignored. The laws of countries are never analyzed. No theory of the state or evaluation of the regulatory environment is offered. We are told about works on particular firms but not how firms changed over time. Amazingly for a book on business, there is no sustained analysis of foreign or domestic corporations. Although many entities are mentioned in passing, no one offers insights on how landlords and merchants of the nineteenth century were replaced by corporate banks, industrialists, and agribusiness. In all, the anthology can be recommended as a starting point for organizing research on business topics, for the essays do discuss particular strategies for research and the kinds of sources to be found. The essays also provide a brief guide to recent work. Nonetheless, the anthology leaves the reader with the sense that business history is not a coherent field of study— not in Latin America, in any event.

English Historical Review, June 2000 Reseñador: Malcolm Deas, Oxford University (St Antony’s College)

Is a regional introduction to what Thomas Cochran is quoted as defining as ‘something of a no- man’s land, on the frontiers between economics, history and sociology’. An introduction by Rory Miller, who also provides an excellent chapter on Peru, provides the focus for essays on business history there and in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela, which are followed by a generous classified bibliography of nearly sixty pages. The chapters take the form primarily of reviews of the academic literature, native and foreign, of the last four decades. It is more the history of business history than the history of business, but the best, as well as being admirably complete in their trawl, give politically and theoretically informed accounts of the discipline’s development in each country concerned, which are interesting in themselves, both critical and sympathetic. On the whole, the authors, with the exception of the chapter on Venezuela, manage not to stray too far from the defined no man’s land into more general economic history, to stick to business history and not to embrace too much. This gives the collection the desirable edge. The reader is gently convinced that distinctive and rational patterns are emerging -not a pan-regional Latin-American mode of entrepreneurship, which would be unlikely, but evidence, arguments and suggestions that alter the stereotypes of local bourgeoisies that occupied so much of the highly ideological and thinly researched debate of the sixties and seventies. The product of a conference convened by Carlos Dávila in Bogotá, the book is the first survey of the field, and it succeeds admirably in its purpose.

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