This chapter addresses three questions about Latin American vocational and training institutions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. First, why did traditional Latin American training institutions have so much in common with their Central European counterparts, including the collective designation and delivery of transferable skills, in the twentieth century? The author traces the answer to the influence of Teutonic immigrants and investors prior to the Second World War and German donors and diplomats afterward. Second, why didn't traditional Latin American training institutions bear an even closer resemblance to their European progenitors? The chapter traces the answer to the limited demand for apprentices among Latin America's low-productivity employers, the limited aptitude of graduates of the region's subpar schools, and corresponding adaptations undertaken by the region's training authorities themselves. Third, what accounts for the evolution of Latin American training institutions in the early twenty-first century, when the traditional model has proven more robust in Andean and Central American late adopters than in first movers like Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay? The author traces the answer to the advantages of backwardness, holding that younger institutions were better-suited to the vagaries of the neoliberal era than older institutions that had been established during the highwater era of import-substitution industrialization. The results have implications not only for understanding education and training in Latin America but for understanding of policy and institutional change more generally. © Oxford University Press 2025. All rights reserved.
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