50 Years of “Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America”: Perspectives and Challenges for Latin American Theory and Practice
by Serena Chew Plascencia
This introduction presents an overview of the international seminar “Nuevas miradas tras medio siglo de la publicación de las Siete tesis equivocadas sobre América Latina” (New Approaches a Half Century after the Publication of “Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America”), which was held on June 25 and 26, 2015, at the Colegio de México with more than 200 participants from various countries. The seminar was intended to trigger a comprehensive debate about the current situation in Latin America and, through a critical evaluation of Rodolfo Stavenhagen’s “Seven Theses,” invite academics of different sectors and generations to engage with the range of contemporary Latin American problems and ideas from a diversity of academic and political standpoints. It was not intended to be a eulogy; on the contrary, the idea was for younger and older generations to come together and imagine new, “non-erroneous” theses about Latin America through what Pablo González Casanova called an open and diverse dialogue. The talks brought together different fields and stances across the social sciences. Participants included political scientists, internationalists, agronomists, sociologists, anthropologists, advocates of social and cultural rights, activists fighting neoextractivism, economists, and others. The objective was to establish a broad cultural and ideological plurality that could rekindle feelings of solidarity among plural Latin American identities and foster possible solutions to the region’s different and, at the same time, very similar problems.
The event was carried out with the help of the political and social sciences faculty of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Consejo Latinoamericano de las Ciencias Sociales and supported by Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología. Through this text, readers are invited to revisit this enriching debate in the hope of keeping its memory alive and using it as a springboard for ongoing debate about current Latin American reality.
The Emergence of the Seven Erroneous Theses
In 1965 Mexico was ruled by Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, perhaps the Partido Revolucionario Institucional’s greatest exponent of development-based strategies and the authoritarian Mexican state. Brazil had just seen a military coup that deposed the progressive government of João Goulart and installed a dictatorship supported by the business and landowning sectors. Guatemala had suffered a succession of alternating civilian and military governments after the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz; the armed conflict, which lasted 36 years, had already begun. Argentina had also had a string of alternating military and civilian regimes after the overthrow of Perón’s government. In Chile, Eduardo Frei’s government made concessions to the political left, fearing a Salvador Allende victory. Cuba was consolidating its revolutionary regime, and Nicaragua saw the Sandinista uprising against the Somoza dictatorship. The Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional emerged in El Salvador. In short, Latin America was caught between the pursuit of development, the reorganization of imperialism, a desire for socal justice, and the balancing of national economies in accordance with particular social and political ideals (many via democratic consolidation or a transition to socialism). The more developed countries, such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, managed to build up commercially and industrially oriented urban sectors while consolidating public institutions supported largely by primary production in rural sectors.
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