Latin America Between 1914 and 1930: Economic, Political, and Social Transformations

A Region in Flux

The period 1914–1930 swept Latin America with four intertwined forces:

1. Economic Prosperity (Then Bust)

• WWI boom: Neutral status → surging exports (nitrates, copper, coffee, beef, wheat) to Allies.
• Post-war: Prices collapsed 1920–21; recovery fragile.
• 1929 Crash: Commodity collapse → depression, ending the "export-led growth" model.

2. Political Instability

• Coups, caudillos, contested elections (Mexico's Revolution 1910–20 spills over; Brazil's Tenentes; Argentina's 1930 coup).
• Weak institutions, military interventionism, oligarchic resistance to reform.

3. Social Change

• Urbanization accelerates (buenos aires, Mexico City, São Paulo double).
• Labor movements: anarchist, socialist, communist unions; strikes repressed.
• Women's suffrage begins (Ecuador 1929, Brazil 1932, Uruguay 1932).
• Indigenous mobilization (Peru, Bolivia, Mexico).

4. Urbanisation

• Rural-urban migration fuels informal settlements, changes consumption, creates new political constituencies.
• Public health, transport, housing crises emerge.

Legacy

This era forged the structural tensions—export dependence, inequality, weak democracy—that shaped mid-century populism (Perón, Vargas, Cárdenas) and later developmentalism.