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This article examines Argentine relations with multilateral agencies and bankers during the first years of the last military dictatorship. It begins with an overview of relations and the external situation before the rise of the military and why a new economic team sought and restored Argentine credit standing. There follows a review of how links with the U.S. Treasury and international institutions lost significance and how cross-country financial intermediation, carried out mainly by leading state banks, gave foreign bankers a key role in the financing of Argentina’s foreign exchange needs. It also emphasises explicit and underlying motivations in the behaviour and policies of all actors involved and offers an evaluation of former Minister Martínez de Hoz’s efforts to justify these policies in the early 1980s.

This article is an effort to update a discussion of Argentina's international financial relations during the late 1970s that is lagging behind recent scholarly developments on the cases of Mexico and Chile. It focuses on the early restoration of Argentine credit standing with multilateral financial institutions, as well as their loans and technical assistance, achieved by Minister Martínez de Hoz and his team during their early years in office. So far this stage had not elicited detailed analyses of its differences with the controversial and better-known monetary balance of payments approach adopted in December 1978 to finally curb inflation, and which gave international private bankers a leading role in the financing of Argentina's foreign exchange needs.Este artículo retoma la discusión sobre las relaciones financieras internacionales de Argentina a fines de la década de 1970 para equipararla con los recientes estudios sobre los casos de Méjico y Chile. Está centrado en la restauración del crédito y la asistencia técnica de los organismos financieros internacionales que lograron el Ministro Martínez de Hoz y su equipo durante sus primeros años en la función pública. Hasta ahora esta etapa no había sido objeto de un detallado análisis que marcara las diferencias con el período más controvertido y mucho más conocido del enfoque monetario del balance de pagos adoptado en diciembre de 1978 como herramienta anti-inflacionaria, y que dio a los banqueros privados un destacado rol en el financiamiento externo de la Argentina.En estos momentos el problema de mayor gravedad es la crisis del sector externo, que hace temer que el país enfrente en las próximas semanas el estado de cesación de pagos.

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