Celso Furtado y el subdesarrollo subdesarrollo

a new reading of what celso furtado wrote on underdevelopment (in the sixties) shows clearly his current relevance. employing a structuralist approach and a historical method, furtado arrives at such conclusions as: "underdevelopment is (...) an autonomous historical process", therefore it does not constitute "a necessary stage in the formation (...) of the capitalist economies"; "the only visible tendency is for the underdeveloped countries to remain so"; "twentieth-century development has provoked a growing concentration of world income", with "a progressive amplification of the gulf between the rich regions and the underdeveloped countries"; "underdevelopment is the manifestation of complex relations of domination-dependence among peoples, and tends to reproduce itself under changing forms"; all this requires that one take "conscience of the political dimension of the situation of underdevelopment" with the formation of "national centers capable of adopting valid decisions".