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Paper short abstract

In this contribution I reassess the relentless quest for development. By revisiting the Peruvian military dictatorship between 1968 and 1975 through the lens of dependency theory, I argue that some developmental policies enforced are still valid to navigate the current stage of green capitalism .

Paper long abstract

One of the most salient contributions of Marxist dependency theory is to provide a theoretical and methodological toolbox to understand national (under)development as an outcome of global unequal exchange, independently of the ongoing stage of capitalism. Today’s pursuit of low-carbon societies led by the Global North increasingly translates into snowballing demand for natural resources and energy of the Global South to build up green technologies. As many traditional raw material exporting countries rethink their natural resource-driven development strategies and simultaneously attempt to achieve low-carbon societies themselves by buying green technologies in the global market, key tenets of dependency theory are more topical than ever.

In this contribution I aim to revalue the theoretical and empirical inputs of Latin American social thought to Marxist dependency theory and development studies. Therefore, I reassess Latin American countries’ relentless quest for natural resource-driven development. By revisiting the Peruvian military dictatorship between 1968 and 1975 through the lens of dependency theory, I argue that some developmental policies enforced during the so-called ‘peculiar revolution’ are still valid to navigate the current stage of green capitalism and globalized supply chains.