The concerns about social inequalities, the processes that generate and reproduce them, and the mechanisms that enable their mitigation are recurring topics in modern social thinking. The Latin-American sub-continent, and Argentina es-pecially, has been defined by its long history of creating severe and persistent forms of social, economic, and cultural inequa-lities. In this context, we analyze the processes and dimensions which create economic, social, and institutional inequality and backwardness in the Northwest region of Cordoba and, especially, the central aspect of the State's institutional weakness, the deficiencies that prevented regional management accountability, and its impact on the reproduction of social inequalities.