Argentina is a fascinating and baffling case to scholars of economic development. It has rich agricultural resources, a fully monetized economy, a domestic manufacturing sector that occupies a large share of the active labor force, a relatively high level of literacy, and other attributes that resemble a European nation more than a developing country. At the same time, Argentina has found it difficult to develop the institutions of a modern nation-state and to sustain a satisfactory rate of economic growth. This book is a new and vigorous attempt to explain the Argentinian paradoxes.

The authors' central hypothesis is that the conventional framework of economic analysis is ill-suited for policymaking in a pluralistic society; in such a society, successful macroeconomic policy management depends on support from viable political coalitions. In the absence of a repressive dictatorship, decision makers in Argentina, the authors maintain, have consistently attempted to adopt policy positions seemingly designed to tear society apart. Does this mean that no mediative policy alternatives exist which are more congenial to political pluralism? The authors present some answers to this important question by examining the Argentine balance of payments and stabilization policies. Their conclusions about macroeconomic policymaking are not only significant for Argentinian policymaking, but are also relevant for other semi-industrial societies.

El Eternauta, Daytripper, and Beyond examines the graphic narrative tradition in the two South American countries that have produced the medium’s most significant and copious output. Argentine graphic narrative emerged in the 1980s, awakened by Héctor Oesterheld’s groundbreaking 1950s serial El Eternauta. After Oesterheld was “disappeared” under the military dictatorship, El Eternauta became one of the most important cultural texts of turbulent mid-twentieth-century Argentina. Today its story, set in motion by an extraterrestrial invasion of Buenos Aires, is read as a parable foretelling the “invasion” of Argentine society by a murderous tyranny. Because of El Eternauta, graphic narrative became a major platform for the country’s cultural redemocratization. In contrast, Brazil, which returned to democracy in 1985 after decades of dictatorship, produced considerably less analysis of the period of repression in its graphic narratives. In Brazil, serious graphic narratives such as Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá’s Daytripper, which explores issues of modernity, globalization, and cross-cultural identity, developed only in recent decades, reflecting Brazilian society’s current and ongoing challenges.

Besides discussing El Eternauta and Daytripper, David William Foster utilizes case studies of influential works—such as Alberto Breccia and Juan Sasturain’s Perramus series, Angélica Freitas and Odyr Bernardi’s Guadalupe, and others—to compare the role of graphic narratives in the cultures of both countries, highlighting the importance of Argentina and Brazil as anchors of the production of world-class graphic narrative.