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ABSTRACT
This article analyses the widespread impact of dependency theory in Latin America during the 1960s by exploring two important cultural productions from the period: Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s film Hour of the Furnaces (1968) and Eduardo Galeano’s book Open Veins of Latin America (1971). The article seeks to understand how ideas of an unequal world brought about by dependency analysis in the 1960s structured the arguments found in both the film and the book. It aims to clarify what ideas from dependency analysis were adopted by Solanas, Getino and Galeano and how these were ‘translated’ into a language accessible to the general public. Although neither the book nor the film employed the term ‘global inequality’ explicitly, much of the language used in these cultural productions is thematically linked to the idea of global inequality. This article thus aims to shed a new light on the intellectual history of global inequality at a time of high contestation of inequality in Latin America.
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Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Interview with Fernando Solanas and Fernando Birri in Peña, “Como se hizo”.
2 See, for instance, Solanas’ reference to Galeano’s appreciation of the film in Fernando “Pino” Solanas (Interview), La Gualdra, June 8, 2015.
3 Galeano, Open Veins, 2.
4 In 2014, at a book fair in Brazil, Galeano said that he would not tolerate reading Open Veins’ laden prose, typical of the 1960s left. See Rohter, “Author Changes His Mind”.
5 Clark, “Chávez Creates Overnight Bestseller”.
6 The “Pink Tide” is a term coined by The NewYork Times reporter Larry Rohter to refer to Latin American countries where left-leaning governments in the 2000s carried out reforms that were more reformist than revolutionary. The colour pink is referred to a toned-down red, traditionally associated with socialism. Rother had in mind Latin American political figures, such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Néstor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Tabaré Vázquez and José “Pepe” Mujica in Uruguay, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. See Rohter, “With New Chief”.
7 Christian Christiansen has argued that, although the term ‘global inequality’ only saw the light of the day in the 1970s (even then it was not used as much as today), it emerged as ‘part of a larger semantic field and well-established historical discourses on an unequal world.’ Christiansen, “A Conceptual History of Global Inequality”. In this article, I argue that dependency theory is a crucial part of such historical discourses.
8 Bulmer-Thomas, The Economic History of Latin America, 10.
9 Jelin, “Género, etnicidad/raza y ciudadanía,” 44; Thorp, Progress, Poverty and Exclusion, 199; Bulmer-Thomas, The Economic History of Latin America, 312.
10 Halperín Donghi, “Dependency Theory,” 115.
11 Recent works on dependency theory are, for instance, Kvangraven, “Beyond the Stereotype;” Giller, Espectros dependentistas; Tzeiman, La Fobia al Estado.
12 Sánchez, “The Rise and Fall,” 31.
13 There is a wealth of academic articles and books that analyse dependency theory. Some of the main references remain Kay, Latin American Theories; Halperín Donghi, “Dependency Theory;” Sánchez, “The Rise and Fall;” Larraín, Theories of Development; Lehmann, Democracy and Development.
14 Halperín Donghi, “Dependency Theory,” 116.
15 For a definition of dependency as an ‘approach’ see Kay, Latin American Theories, 109. For a definition of dependency as a 'research program' see Kvangraven, “Beyond the Stereotype,” 80–83.
16 ECLA is the acronym of the United Nations Economic Comission for Latin America. It is an institution established in 1947 and located in Santiago, Chile. Under the Secretariat of Raúl Prebisch in the 1950s, the ECLA became a well-known hub for Latin American economists and sociologists who held a structuralist and developmentalist perspective. Famously, the ECLA school advocated for industrialisation policies in Latin America. As Kay argues, the ‘ECLA influenced government policy in many Latin American countries through its writings, speeches, and press reports, its technical advice to governments, and the courses and seminars it provided for top civil servants. Its influence was particularly strong where governments intended to undertake major reforms, such as land reform, and where they aimed to work towards economic integration as a way of proceeding towards industrialization.’ Kay, Latin American Theories, 28.
17 Ibid., 125.
18 Prebisch, “The Economic Development”.
19 Ibid., 1.
20 Furtado, “Development,” 211–12.
21 Kay, Latin American Theories, 29–30.
22 Bulmer-Thomas, The Economic History, 276–77.
23 Ibid., 312.
24 For an insightful analysis of the differences between the concepts of centre-periphery, development-underdevelopment and autonomy-dependency see Cardoso and Faletto, Dependency and Development, 16–18.
25 Sánchez, “The Rise and Fall,” 33.
26 Cardoso and Faletto, Dependency and Development, 15.
27 Ibid., 17.
28 Halperín Donghi, “Dependency Theory,” 115.
29 Cardoso and Faletto, Dependency and Development, 23.
30 Ibid., 23–24.
31 For an analysis of the influence of ‘internal colonialism’ theories on dependency analysis see Kay, Latin American Theories, 58–87.
32 There seems to be a consensus, too, about Cardoso being a more sophisticated analyst, while Frank—whose work brought dependency analysis to Anglophone audiences—has been often criticised for his sweeping statements and historically inaccurate analysis. Halperín Donghi is particularly critical of Frank’s work, as he claims that his 1967 book Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, had ‘a delightfully egocentric tone’, and that its ‘defects were not exaggerated by its critics.’ On the contrary, Halperín praises Cardoso and Faletto, as he argues that they ‘carried out –with admirable tact and deadly accuracy—a double task of recovery and destruction: they systematically gathered and described situations of dependency and proceeded to analyse them with tools that owed very little to Frank”s revolution of ideas.’ Halperín Donghi, “Dependency Theory”, 115–16.
33 For a brief account of this theory, which Frank presents as five interlinked hypothesis, see Frank, Latin America, 3–20.
34 Halperín Donghi, “Dependency Theory,” 117.
35 Frank, Latin America, x.
36 Solanas has said he registered the film in Argentina as a European documentary production, in order to avoid government censorship under Onganía”s dictatorship in 1967. Peña, “Como se hizo”.
37 Mestman, “The Hour of the Furnaces”.
38 Guillermo Olivera has analysed the influence of dependency theory in Solanas’ films, yet, in my view, he focuses too much on the idea that Hour of the Furnaces conveys an externalist viewpoint, disregarding other important elements of the dependency approach that are present in the film. See Olivera, “Dependency Theory”.
39 Solanas and Getino, Hour of the Furnaces, pts 1, Chapter 1: History.
40 The Havana Cultural Congress (1968), where almost 500 intellectuals from across the globe met to discuss the role of the intellectual and Third-World solidarity, expressed, according to some testimonies, the view that the United States were the main obstacle to the development of peripheral nations. Reviews of this congress by American novelist Helen Yglesias and British Historian Eric Hobsbawm are particularly telling of this standpoint. See Yglesias, “The Havana Cultural Congress”; Hobsbawm, “The Cultural Congress of Havana”.
41 Solanas and Getino, Hour of the Furnaces, pt. I, Chapter 8: Neoracism.
42 Ibid., Part I, Chapter 9: Dependency.
43 Curiously, Solanas was working as an advertising creative at the time he made the film.
44 Peña, “Como se hizo”.
45 Solanas and Getino, Hour of the Furnaces, pt. I, Chapter 13: Option.
46 Quoted in Campo and Pérez-Blanco, A Trail of Fire, 1.
47 Godard, “Godard Por Solanas”.
48 Canby, “Screen: Argentine Epic”. Fernando Birri was another filmmaker who also worked closely with Solanas and, later, with the author of Open Veins, Eduardo Galeano.
49 For references of Open Veins as the Latin American ‘Bible’ see “Las nuevas venas abiertas”; and Peruana, “Publicación de la semana”. Halperín Donghi has also referred to the kind of ideology represented by the book as ‘biblical’ in Halperín Donghi, “Dos siglos de reflexiones,” 40.
50 Halperín Donghi, “Dos siglos de reflexiones”.
51 One of the most remarkable personal stories he describes is an encounter with Che Guevara in Havana, in which the leader allegedly told him that Cuba had nickel and manganese reserves sought-after by the “Imperium”. Galeano, Open Veins, 136.
52 Ibid., 2.
53 Ibid., 30.
54 Ibid., 265. This fragment was not part of the original version published in 1971, it was added by Galeano as a third part in 1978.
55 Ibid., 8.
56 Ibid., 261.
57 To the best of my knowledge, there are no statistics about Open Veins’ sales in the 1970s, but it has been translated into eighteen different languages. The first English edition was published in 1973, and, as suggested in a rather critical review published that year, it was already widely read by then (see Roman, “Review ”). The book has remained very popular throughout the decades passed since its first edition. As an example, this year, the publishing house Siglo Veintiuno released a 50th anniversary edition of the book.
58 Galeano, Open Veins, 264.
59 Ibid., 263.
60 Lovell, “Fire of Memory”.
61 Wilks, “Film”.
62 Hobsbawm, “The Cultural Congress of Havana”.
63 Enzo Traverso has analysed in detail how the perspective of a promising future envisioned by the left-wing (which he associates almost exclusively with communism) came to an end after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Traverso, Left-Wing Melancholia.
64 Sánchez, “The Rise and Fall of the Dependency Movement”.
65 Kvangraven, “Beyond the Stereotype”.
66 I refer, more specifically, to Nancy Fraser. See Fraser, “Climates of Capital”.