Hermeneutic key to developmentalism

Abstract

"Developmentalism" emerged as an economic policy project within a sector of intellectuals and politicians that reached wide dissemination (especially in the so-called "peripheral countries") during the 1950s and 1960s. The remarkable post-war economic boom and the bipolar division of the Cold War world introduced the possibility of transformation of the economic structures of the "developing" countries (sixty euphemism to classify some of the Third World nations) through sustained economic growth (measured in terms of GDP) from the industrialization of the former primary economies- exporters But growth and development did not have the same meaning for all who employed it. The so-called "developmentalists" claimed that development implied that heavy industry would assure these nations a place among the most powerful countries on the planet. Developmentalism was then an overcoming synthesis that presupposed the passage of national development -that is, conceiving of industrial growth, even of heavy industry, relying exclusively on state financing or with national capitals- to developmentalism proper, which meant accepting as insufficient the financing and national know-how also adding foreign organizational, scientific and technological cooperation. In this presentation it is proposed to present some hermeneutical keys to understand the developmental challenge in Latin America.