My research examines how societies organized international payments and how the institutions that made those payments possible evolved from the nineteenth century to the present. Combining archival research with quantitative and network analysis, I study how merchants, firms, banks, and governments exchanged resources, information, and trust through intermediaries and institutions that connected local economies to regional and global markets. These interactions produced the payment and financial infrastructures that enabled economic integration across the Americas.
My work traces the changing organization of international payments from merchant-financial arrangements based on Mexican silver pesos, bills of exchange, and commercial credit to correspondent banking, trade finance, and modern payment infrastructures. More broadly, I show how Latin American actors, institutions, and infrastructures were integral to the making of global finance rather than peripheral to it.