WASHINGTON -- Twenty years after the Latin American debt crisis, which forced governments to make structural changes in pursuit of stable economic growth, the region is once again in recession -- leaving many wondering just what happened.

Some experts consulted by AFP agree at least that by following the neo-liberal push to open up markets over the past two decades, the region is re-evaluating the role of the government as a catalyst for growth.

However the black cloud of excessive debt is once again hanging over Latin America.

In 1999 Ecuador became the first Latin country to default on payment on its brady bonds -- a framework of bonds created from restructured commercial bank debt created in 1989 and named after then U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady.

Argentina was next in line in early 2002, and others currently run the risk of falling foul of the same scheme.

With credit risk ratings at unprecedented levels, credit lines are virtually closed.

"We are living in an enormously disappointing time which looks very much like the debt crisis" of the 1980s, said Ricardo Haussman, professor of economic development at Harvard University and chief economist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) between 1994 and 2000.

"This is the fifth year of recession in Latin America and 2002 and looks like a particularly bad year. The financial markets have been closed to most people, Argentina has fallen into a moratorium while Brazil and Uruguay are both in a position of great uncertainty. It seems more like 1982 than the 1990s," Haussman said.

But how and why has this happened? Argentina was the International Monetary Fund's star pupil. Brazil was the investors' spoiled child, and Uruguay a model praised by the U.S. government.

"I think, inevitably, that a certain reflection has to come, over what went wrong and what are the lessons.

There is a failure which needs explaining," Haussman.

Claudio loser who heads the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department, acknowledged that the situation was "very difficult" but does not believe that the region is on the brink of another generalized crisis.

For loser, a solution is possible providing the developed countries ease off from their protectionist tendencies.

According to Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 and former chief economist at the World Bank from 1997-2000, following a decade of reforms from 1982 to 1992, average growth rates in Latin America between 1992 and 2002 were half those experienced in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Jesus Silva Herzog, who was Mexican finance minister when the debt crisis broke in August 1982, agrees and says that Latin American governments wanted to be "more papal than the pope" in pursuing the reforms recommended them by the IMF.

"I believe in a mixed economy, where the state should in no way abdicate its responsibility to promote the central aim of all economic policy, which is not stability but growth," he said.

"In recent years, virtually the only concern has been price stability and that seems to me too modest an aim to fit with the historic responsibility. A state must be an active catalyst, as it has been in the successful countries of the world," he added.