Between 2003 and 2008 Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) experienced its most remarkable expansionary period since the 1970s. Yet, LAC countries' productivity gaps widened during this period vis-à-vis industrialized countries (here represented by the United States' manufacturing sector) as revealed in CEPAL (2010). The paper splits up this process and examines the different outcomes observed at the national level for the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico during these "boom" years. It examines the composition of productivity divergence in terms of sectoral factor intensity following the Katz-Stumpo taxonomy and examines external productivity gaps, analyzes internal structural heterogeneity and carries out a shift-share analysis of manufacturing labor productivity for the five case studies.