On Monday, September 30, the 20th session of this academic program organized in Santiago, Chile each year since 2000 will come to a close.

Forty postgraduate students from 19 countries worldwide participated in the 20th session of the Summer School on Latin American Economies organized annually by the Division of Production, Productivity and Management of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which included for the first time a week dedicated to gender issues, along with three international seminars – to mention just a few activities.

The students – from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Spain, the United Kingdom, Uruguay and Venezuela – were received in July by ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, Alicia Bárcena, who encouraged them to think about a new development pattern for Latin America and the Caribbean, one that is more sustainable and egalitarian, during the seminar inaugurating the School.

In the context of that activity, the students expressed interest in exchanging knowledge and experiences with academics and their scholarly peers, learning more about the structuralist approach and ECLAC’s thinking in the current, hyper-globalized era, and addressing the challenges and problems shared by countries in the region.

In parallel to attending the classes offered by ECLAC officials and academics from prestigious international universities, the Summer School students also participated in the Development in transition challenges seminar on Inequality: Measurement, analysis and policies, organized with support from the European Union delegation in Chile. At the opening session of that event, Bárcena stated that “untangling the roots of inequality and improving its measurement is key to addressing the challenges of countries in transition,” which include Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Subsequently, the students participated in an international seminar on Sustainable Development: the science, economics and policy nexus, where presenters posed the need to achieve virtuous circles between scientific evidence, economic efficiency and policy decisions to achieve sustainable development with equality in Latin America and the Caribbean. The event was co-sponsored by the European Union and the Young Scholars Initiative (INET).

The last activity included in the School’s program was the presentation of the book From Structuralism to Neo-structuralism: The Intellectual Journey of Osvaldo Sunkel, a leading economic thinker in Latin America and the Caribbean and current chair of the CEPAL Review’s Editorial Board.

The Summer School was created in 2000 and has since drawn the participation of more than 500 students from 35 countries and from different universities worldwide. It is a plural space of thought that promotes discussion, reflection, and the generation and exchange of ideas on Latin American problems, based on the specialized contributions of ECLAC’s various divisions and advances on the frontier of academic research.