ABSTRACT
It has been almost fifty years since the victory of the Cuban Revolution thrust dependency theory onto the center stage of Latin American history and policy. In that time its fortunes rose and fell dramatically (and then moved east toward China), only to rise again with the resurgence of the governments of the Latin American “pink tide” in recent years, now, however, in a somewhat chastened, albeit still compelling form. Why still compelling? The new governments of the left are, in different ways, seeking to move away from the hegemony of neoliberal economics and the accompanying focus in the social sciences on civil society and the new social movements, restoring emphasis on the role of the state and intra-state cooperation in national and regional economic planning. Why chastened? Chastened because of the question posed to the underlying assumptions of dependency theory precisely by civil society and the social movements: Planning to what end? That question involves in turn two goals that are at once inter-related and antagonistic: modernity (development) and diversity.
