This article is part of ourEconomy's 'Decolonising the economy' series.
With the demise of the import substitution industrialization scheme – which sought to replace foreign imports with domestic production - since the mid-seventies, Latin America has been looking for a development path to close the gap with the industrialized world. From the right, the path is clear: liberalization of goods and finance will eventually get us there. However, the results have been disappointing, to say the least. Today, with a renewed offensive of the neoliberal right in the region –with Bolsonaro, Duque, Macri, and Piñera- the lack of a coherent economic program from the progressive side is striking.
The first step in overcoming mainstream development economics continues to be the very prescient statement by Dependency theorists: capitalism is based on asymmetric relations that generate “development” and “underdevelopment” as opposed poles in different parts of the world. In other words, Latin American underdevelopment is not a serious case of bad luck, but the necessary flip side of the coin of other countries´ development.
