The auto industry, reeling from a 54% slump in new car sales since 2001, now accepts grain instead of pesos for the farmers' favorite, the pick-up truck. Other purchases exchanged for grain include farm equipment, seed and property. It may seem like an archaic system, but this is doing business Argentine-style in the 21st century. .
The Common Market of the South (Mercado Comun del Sur - Mercosur) is a South American answer to the new world reality which points towards regionalization in terms of consolidated economic blocs, and globalization, expressed through an increasing internationalization of national economies. The very first antecedents of Latin American integration are from the sixties, when the Latin American Association of Free Trade (Associacion Latino Americana de Livre Comércio - ALALC) was created. This was later.
transformed into the Latin American Association of Development and Integration (Associacion Latino Americana de Desenvolvimiento e Integracion - ALADI) in 1980. Both were inspired by the precepts established by the Latin American Economy Commission (Comision Economica Para America Latina - CEPAL) that recommended expanding the regional market and elaborating a common industrialization strategy. This study was based on the model of import substitution, closed markets and the active role of the government in productive activities, and even though it met with many difficulties in terms of Latin American Integration it did advance the mutual cooperation to some extent. According to Espiell (1991), some of the major factors hindering the integration process were the strong movements related to nationalist ideologies, the authoritarianism prevailing on most of the continent, national development strategies with no room for integration, the great diversity of national realities as far as social, economical and political institutions are concerned, and the foreign debt of practically all the Latin American countries in the eighties.