The Consumption of Dependency Theory in the United States

Abstract

If an observer from outer space had landed his UFO at any meeting of Latin Americanists during the last few years, he would have had to agree with the structural anthropologists. He would have said that at these meetings, versions of the same myth are constantly repeated: dependency and development, exploitation and wealth, backwardness and sophisticated technology, unemployment and extreme concentration of income. Somewhat wearily, our creature from space would have commented: “The brains of these beings appear to limit their images and thoughts to binary opposites.” Returning to the debate on the meaning of analyses of dependency gives one the sensation of entering a discussion in which imagination is bound by preestablished models. Nevertheless, as though I were one of the “founding fathers” of dependency, I endorse the ceremonial consumption of the theme. How to escape from this uncomfortable position?