This paper analyzes the social conditions of the penetration of neoliberalism in Guatemala from the 1950s onwards. It focuses on two Guatemalan institutions, the Center of Economic and Social Studies and the Francisco Marroquín university and specifies their positions within the field of economics in Guatemala, characterized by the developmental policies implemented by the various military dictatorships. The paper traces the history of these institutions and in particular the social trajectory of their founders and members. It emphasizes the social dimension of the symbolic investments made by a fraction of the economic elite in the development of knowledge and suggests that these moral entrepreneurs manage to accumulate prestige as well as symbolic capital in different fields (academic, political, economic) both at the national and international levels.