Latin America not getting free public capital did not mean that the region was left out of the Marshall Plan. The denial of such capital was the plan, or at least a key part of it. Western Europe would be reindustrialized, while “underdeveloped countries” would continue, as one report to the president put it, to export “raw materials.” As early as 1945, Washington’s economists expressed concern that “ways and means must be found to keep some twenty” essential Latin American commodities—that whole long list of minerals, metals, fuels, grains, and other materials that had fed the war machine—available “in sufficient volume and price to prevent economic depression.” This meant discouraging Latin America from industrializing, lest investment be sucked away from resource extraction, from providing a “dependable flow of materials at the lowest cost.” Washington, writes the economist Jon Kofas, was “unambiguous about subordinating Latin America’s economic development to Europe’s reconstruction needs.” Europe, then, not only got billions of free dollars, it also benefited from a secondary subsidy, in the form of cheap Latin American resources.

— America, América by Greg Grandin