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It is easy to presume that age's legal value rests in the autonomy and rights that accrue to the liberal (male, propertied) citizen who has reached the age of majority. But this is not universally so. In Spain's American colonies, legal age talk involved multiplying privileges rather than exclusionary subtraction. Few indigenous peoples, enslaved people of African descent, or members of the free casta poor tallied the years they had lived in a manner that meets modern standards of precision. Instead, the ages that Spanish American officials set down on paper in criminal trials, censuses, and freedom suits derived from complicated cultural equations, including reconciling local ethno-numeracies with European counting systems. For all its seeming imprecision, age was of critical importance to colonial Spanish Americans, since rather than guaranteeing access to rights, age was a language that colonial subjects used to turn legal incapacities into beneficial protections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the entangled histories of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL) during the post–World War II era. Born of the same global moment, within two decades of their foundation, these institutions had come to represent two opposing visions of world economic order. Yet their mutual antagonism was not a foregone conclusion, and their identities were not so defined from the start. The binary division between them—as well as the very terms of their debate—emerged not in the realm of abstract ideas but rather in their competition over influence in Latin America. Unlike the history of the UN, the story of the IMF continues to be told as one of projection—of power, ideas, and practices—and reception, of dominance by the North and resistance of the South. By looking at CEPAL and the IMF in tandem, as they converged, diverged, and shaped each other, this article shows the impact of a southern institution and Latin America on the northern institution and the structure of global governance. It contributes to our understanding of global institutional history and economic governance, precisely at a moment when global institutions have lost prestige and leverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]