Contesting MIT: The Latin American World Model (1971–1977) and Alternative Modernisms

Join us for a presentation by Dr. Ana Lucía Grondona, Fall 2025 De Fortabat Visiting Scholar at the Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. This talk examines the Latin American World Model (LAWM)—developed at Fundación Bariloche between 1971 and 1977—and its international circulation as a counterpoint to MIT’s Limits to Growth and the technocratic visions of the Club of Rome. By tracing the model’s trajectories across regional and global institutions, I show how it questioned prevailing development paradigms while articulating an alternative Latin American modernist project grounded in different assumptions about knowledge production, social needs, and global futures. The presentation forms part of a broader research agenda that reclaims Latin American modernism as a contested yet generative site for rethinking modernization and development in the twentieth century.