Distinguished historian Thomas Holloway spoke at CLAS on February 10, 2003 as part of the Bay Area Latin American Forum. Holloway is a professor of Latin American History at UC Davis, the director of the Hemispheric Institute on the Americas and immediate past president of the Latin American Studies Association. During his presentation he argued that “for a historian looking over the long term at the level of political economy of the hemisphere … dependency has been and continues to be a useful concept for understanding Latin America.” He went further to suggest that “the paradigm shift of the past couple of decades associated with the abandonment of the dependency interpretation in favor of a neoliberal analytical framework is in itself a confirmation of the validity of dependency as an interpretive framework.”

In order to acquaint the audience with dependency theory, Holloway began by quoting theorist Teotonio dos Santos. “By dependence we mean a situation in which the economy of certain countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy, to which the former is subjected.” Holloway quoted another theorist, Andre Gunder Frank, to point out that dependency can occur not only between countries, but also between regions within the same country, and that dependence is not limited to economic relationships, but also can occur in the political, social and cultural realms. Lastly, Holloway read the following quote from the preface to the English edition (1979) of Dependency and Development in Latin America by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto. “In order to go ahead with economic expansion, a dependent country has to play the ‘interdependency’ game, but in a position similar to the client who approaches a banker … even if the dependent country becomes less poor after the first loan, a second one follows. In most cases, when such an economy flourishes, its roots have been planted by those who hold the lending notes.” Holloway said he chose this quote because of “its relevance to the current debt ‘situation’ of Latin America” where the debt still “hangs there like a cloud over the policy makers of the region.”

Holloway then went on to describe different periods in Latin American history and highlight the usefulness of dependency theory in understanding the situations the region faced at different times. As one example, Holloway cited Latin America’s response to the stock market crash of 1929 which he claimed was indicative of its dependence since the region was not to blame for the Great Depression, yet it suffered a disproportionate amount of the costs. He argued that during the periods of liberalism, populism and developmentalism, Latin American policy elites always looked outside the region for policy prescriptions and did what was required of them by international capital and the hegemonic powers. Thus, he argued that the emergence of neoliberalism follows this logic. “Neoliberalism has emerged as a less deliberately historical listing of Latin American’s current problems and the pragmatic, practical solution to them. Again the Latin American policy elites have had no viable choice but to adapt an ideological paradigm and a set of policy prescriptions demanded by hegemonic governments, principally the United States and multinational institutions from outside the region, as the price of continued participation in what, after 1989, has been the only game in town,” said Holloway.

Holloway believes that dependency theory was largely abandoned by the mid 1970’s because “True to the radical critique of capitalism, the policy prescription of dependencistas pointed towards, sometimes more explicitly and sometimes more generally, a transition away from this historical condition – a transition to the only alternative around at the time, and that was socialism.” Thus, Holloway argues, “Let’s not throw out the baby of dependency with the bathwater of the transition to socialism. But that’s what happened by the middle of the 1970’s. Let’s not toss out dependency as an explanatory model just because the fixation with the transition to socialism became an impossible dream.”

In response to those in the audience who were skeptical about the usefulness of a theory without policy implications, Holloway asserted, “Historians, of course, by profession, resist the idea of prediction and the elaboration of policy prescriptions, but if we use it for its heuristic value, that is, its aid in explaining reality and how [things] work and why, it seems that dependency as an interpretive perspective has a certain sticking power and a continued explanatory usefulness.” In the era of neoliberalism, Holloway argued that dependency remains useful “as a way of explaining that … the neoliberal paradigm … is not truth handed down from the mountain and finally revealed, but rather a stage in the historical development of Latin America in this current environment in which there’s no viable alternative to challenge it, and in which it is in the interest of the hegemonic powers that it emerges.”

Holloway succeeded in making a persuasive case for the use of dependency to understand broad themes in Latin American history. He argued for a “soft” or “light” dependency that does not get caught up in the impossible dream of the “imminent” transition to socialism. Nevertheless, one should not throw out the baby of “the dream for a more just society” with the bathwater of the failure of many socialist experiments in the 20th century. There are policy prescriptions coming out of various social movements and policy circles that could make for a more just global society if implemented. Furthermore, it is important to avoid another trap of the original dependency theory, which is to believe that Latin America’s fate is almost purely determined by outside factors. It does matter whether a Lula da Silva instead of an Alberto Fujimori or a Carlos Menem runs the government. Even though Latin American countries are heavily constrained by their historical place in the global economy as dependency argues, there is still room to maneuver. Therefore, it continues to be important for people to demand that their governments be more transparent and responsive to their needs.