Paz del Río

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Paz del Río

Paz del Río, Colombia's first modern integrated steel-production operation. Founded in September 1947 and located along the Chicamocha River in the department of Boyacá, Paz del Río played a key role in Colombian industrialization policy of the 1940s and 1950s. Due to World Bank opposition to the project in the early 1950s, its construction occurred as a result of French financing and technical assistance as well as the nationalist zeal of President Laureano Gómez. Steel production began in 1955. Although Paz del Río became privatized, in contrast to the prevalent pattern of state ownership of steel production in Latin America, it remains a symbol of the country's effort to free itself from dependence on foreign industrial power.

See alsoIron and Steel Industry .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eduardo Wiesner Durán, Paz del Río (1963).

René De La Pedraja, Fedemetal y la industrialización de Colombia (1986).

Additional Bibliography

Pinto Escobar, Inés. Progreso, industrialización y utopía en Boyacá: El caso de la siderúrgica de Samacá. Tunja: Publicaciones del Magister en Historia, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, 1997.

                                        Pamela Murray

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Paz del Río

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