AMÉRIQUE LATINE : DE L'INTERPRÉTATION NATIONALISTE À L'INTERPRÉTATION PAR LA DÉPENDANCE

In the 1950s two groups of public intellectuals, organized around ECLAC, in Santiago, Chile, and ISEB, in Rio de Janeiro, pioneered the thinking on Latin American societies and on its industrialization from a nationalist standpoint. ECLAC mainly criticized the law of comparative advantage and its underlying imperialist implications ; ISEB focused on the class coalition behind the proposed national-developmentalist strategy. The idea of a national bourgeoisie was key to this interpretation. Yet, the Cuban revolution and the military coups in the South Cone made room for criticism of these ideas by the dependency interpretation. By rejecting possibility of a national bourgeoisie, the mistaken interpretation also rejected the possibility of a national-development strategy.