The Prebisch Plan of 1955, Argentina's development dilemmas and the controversies surrounding the economic legacy of Peronism

This article analyses the controversies surrounding the Prebisch Plan of 1955 and Peron's economic legacy. The paper studies the responses of economists and politicians from four ideological traditions (left, nationalism, liberalism and Peronism) to Raul Prebisch's diagnosis of the state of the Argentine economy. It examines prevailing economic ideas in the Fifties and the limited understanding of the dilemmas of a semi-industrialized economy. It is argued that these debates defined an agenda that would last until the rise of Arturo Frondizi's developmentalism in the late 1950s and, at the same time, have a lasting influence on the historical interpretations of Peronist economics.