Abstract
Development is considered in an integrated, socioeconomic sense and is measured by selecting 120 indicators from various social and economic aspects of life. Comparisons are made between 24 Latin American countries on the basis of social, economic and socioeconomic indices of development. The countries are ranked in order of levels of development by the Wroclaw taxonomic method and are grouped according to similarities with the use of a clustering technique. Various groups of countries are then compared by means of a diagnostic programme in order to analyse the process of socioeconomic development. The analysis offers a number of important insights into the structural characteristics of Latin American development.