CEPAL is an acronym that refers to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean . It is an organization that operates under the orbit of the United Nations ( UN ) whose function is to promote regional development .
It all began in 1947, when ECOSOC , the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations , was created by resolution 106. In short, they were five regional economic commissions that had the purpose of collaborating and providing a hand to the governments under which they operated to resolve analysis and research tasks in economic matters, both at the regional and national level.
The five regions in which ECOSOC was established were the African continent, Latin America, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and the European continent.
ECLAC , which was created in 1948 , has its headquarters in the capital of Chile ( Santiago ). The entity is one of the regional commissions created by the UN to promote economic growth and improve social conditions.
During the 1950s, ECLAC launched a large number of economic reforms in the countries of the regions where it operated, and all of them focused especially on Import Substitution Industrialization , a strategy also known by the acronym ISI that Its objective was to promote productive development by the State to strengthen Latin American economies and make them less vulnerable to the obstacles posed by international trade.
This economic model was adopted in several countries, including Latin America, after the First World War and, later, after the Second . One of the fundamental points that gave meaning to this policy was the scarcity of manufactured products of European origin, where industrialization was already a reality, both in the aforementioned era and during the Great Depression . In short, the ISI sought to replace importation with domestic production .
In 1963, one of the ECLAC sessions was held in the Buenos Aires city of Mar del Plata, Argentina, and there it was announced that the diplomat and economist José Antonio Mayobre , a native of Venezuela, would be named Executive Secretary of the organization from the month of August of that same year. A few years later, in January 1967, the Burmese diplomat Maha Thray Sithu U Thant , then Secretary General of the United Nations , appointed an engineer of Mexican origin named Carlos Quintana to the same position.
Throughout the decade, the idea of industrialization in the region remained at the forefront of ECLAC's ideals, and in pursuit of this process it promoted various reforms.
In addition to the main headquarters in Santiago , ECLAC has two subregional offices : one in Port of Spain ( Trinidad and Tobago ) for the Caribbean subregion and another in Mexico City for the Central American subregion. This institution also has national offices in Bogotá ( Colombia ), Brasilia ( Brazil ), Buenos Aires ( Argentina ) and Montevideo ( Uruguay ) and a liaison delegation that operates in Washington, DC ( United States ).
Among ECLAC 's work themes are international trade, sustainable development, gender issues and natural resources. Since 2008 , Mexican diplomat Alicia Bárcena has been the executive secretary of the organization. Throughout its history , two other Mexican officials, three Argentine, one Venezuelan, one Uruguayan, one Colombian and one Guatemalan also held the position. It should be noted that Bárcena is the first woman to fulfill this function.
The organization of training and courses; the development of statistics, research and reports; the publication of various documents; and technical cooperation are some of the activities that ECLAC carries out.