Julio López: Thinker, Sailor, Mentor, Friend

Abstract

This remembrance is written with sadness for the departure of Julio, a dear and highly cultivated friend, with a contagious sense of humor and love for books and cinema, always available for intense conversations be it on world affairs or on personal matters. A man full of qualities, devoted to Pelusa, Manuela and Antonia–wife and daughters, in strict order of appearance–who is sorely missed. But, it is also written in celebration of his passion for economics and in recognition of his extraordinary career and contributions to the dismal science. Be it on applied, theoretical, or on history of economic thought matters, Julio in his publications pushed the frontier of knowledge on numerous relevant topics in economics. His academic quest was carried out from a perspective linked to Kalecki and the Post-Keynesian school and to the Structuralist school on development of the golden years of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). These analytical roots cemented his contributions to economics, intensively focused on Latin America and Mexico. Julio’s creativity and talent for academic research was matched by his commitment to teach and serve as a mentor for students and colleagues. In his many years as Full Professor, he was a captivating lecturer and demanding supervisor. He had the ability to broaden the minds of his students and push them to exploit fully their capacities. He also had the knack to inspire their hearts to pursue meaningful careers as professional economists–be it academic, civil servant or otherwise–in the sense of leaving a mark to improve the lives of others. His mentorship provided crucial guidance in the formation of generations of well-trained economists; many of them now with distinguished careers in academia or in the civil service. When the grave news of his passing reached UNAM’s campus, deep sadness engulfed not only his friends, standing among them his closest friend Gerardo Fujii, and peers of his generation, but also many young PhDs who had been his students or his research assistants. Julio’s solid academic training was the product of a most fortunate and unique coincidence of the times and place where he spent his youth and of the path he decided to follow for his training. His undergraduate education was at the Universidad de Chile, in Santiago, site of ECLAC s Headquarters. The Commission was at the time the most important center in the world for the study of the dynamics and determinants of economic development and the policies to overcome its binding constraints. Being a regional initiative, its focus was on Latin America. But its theoretical contributions and policy recommendations gained relevance urbi et orbi. Given the links between the Universidad de Chile and ECLAC, Julio–and his generation of the then called Commercial Engineers–studied under some of the brightest thinkers of the Latin American Structuralist School. Among his teachers were An ıbal Pinto and Osvaldo Sunkel, two leading minds in such school and whose work marked the field of development economics indelibly. To complement his first-class undergraduate training, Julio went on to pursue his doctoral degree in Europe, a decision that led him to study under Michal Kalecki and Ignacy Sachs at the University of Warsaw and under Paolo Sylos-Labini at “La Sapienza” in Rome. In this blissful