Latin America faces the oil shock: South-South engagement during the 1970s Oil Shock

This paper examines the relationship between three Global South actors during the 1970s — Mexico, Venezuela, and Australia — on questions of energy and technology. The paper will present the emergence, development and ultimate failure of a south-south relation during the 1970s, drawing on archival research in Mexico and Australia. It will explore the underlying interests of these countries in building new economic and technological relations, the difficulties in creating these links, the political and material obstacles to establishing such ties, and ultimately, the failure of such attempts. 

The paper forms part of a broader project on the consequences of the 1970s oil and energy crisis in Latin America. It will explore how the oil shock and its related elements profoundly and abruptly transformed the lives of millions of Latin Americans due to economic hardship and socio-political instability, examining some general trends of the energy crisis throughout the region, and considering the transformation of regional international relations between exporting and importing countries and suggest some social repercussions of the 1970s energy crisis.

Gerardo Sánchez Nateras is an associate professor at the International Studies Division of the Centre for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE). He has a PhD in History from El Colegio de México. He is the author of The Last Revolution: The Sandinista Insurrection and the Inter-American Cold War (Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE)- 2022). He received the 'Charles A. Hale' award from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) and the 'Genaro Estrada' award from the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) for the best doctoral thesis in foreign relations. He has published in academic journals such as Cold War History and Latin American Research Review, among others. He is working on issues related to Mexico, Central America, and the United States, as well as inter-American oil and politics, and the Cold War.