Una revisión a la integración latinoamericana: de la ALALC a la ALADI

The aim of this paper is to analyze the reasons for the failure of the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA) and, specifically, the causes of its reorganization into the Latin American Integration Association (LAIA). In this sense, this article not only embraces an economic perspective, but also explores political and social issues related to the character and purposes of regional integration. The methodology employed in this economic and historical analysis is grounded on a latin-american economic integration systems literature review. The results depicts that LAFTA’s failure mains reasons can be explained in terms of the diversity of interpretations that such schema founding states embraced regarding its objectives; the lack of a consolidated political-economic program on the part of these founding states and the infeasibility of the negotiations that LAFTA members concluded within the framework of the so-called common and national lists. The study of this past experience, in short, will allow us to account for the concrete legal, economic and commercial consequences that the eventual conclusion of a free trade agreement between States with dissimilar economic development would entail today.