“Expertise and Confidence”: ECLAC experts inthe Third Peronist Government (1973-1976)

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the connection between the Third Peronist Government and expert knowledge on development planning. This will be achieved by reconstructing the relationship that it established with ECLAC. Thus, two main events are depicted: ECLAC’s experts technical assistance in building the Plan Trienal and the creation of ECLAC-Buenos Aires. In order to do so, documentary analysis is combined with personal interviews to members of the organizations involved. Empirically, it is shown that in 1973 the Peronist-ECLAC relationship registered an unprecedented approach, thus crowning a process of increasing influence of the latter over Argentine economic policy. As it is argued, this was the consequence of the reactivation of an old network, which was made possible both by aspects of the conjuncture and by the characteristics of Peronism’s return to power. It was the sum of these elements that prompted the valorization by the third Peronist government of the cepalinos’ expertise associated with planning.