This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the Latina American adjustment experience during the eighties and early nineties. The adjustment programs applied by the international financial institutions have solved some problems but created new ones. In the vast majority of countries, economic growth is slower and inflation is higher than in the sixties and seventies. Poverty showed a great increase and the income distribution became worse. An analysis of the statistical evidence showns that the adjustment agenda applied according to the "Washington consensus" is technically inefficient as well as politically inadequate.
