Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez are again talking about dependency and how all the ills of the poorer nations are caused by the richer nations; particularly the USA. At the meeting of the so-called Non-Aligned Nations in Cuba, Chavez said, ???????To be radical is not to be insane, it’s to go to our roots. Let’s go to our roots, let’s be truly radical,” Chavez told diplomats and leaders from two-thirds of the world’s countries. He concluded by chanting “Patria o Muerte!” (“Fatherland or Death!”), a favored Castro rallying cry. Well, those roots are dependency theory, blaming the First World for all the woes of the Non-aligned World. A big meeting of people with enormous inferiority complexes and major problems with external attribution of control!

Raul Castro has this great non sequitir:

“When there no longer is a Cold War, the US spends one billion dollars a year in weapons and soldiers and it squanders a similar amount in commercial publicity. To think that a social and economic order that has proven unsustainable could be maintained by force is simply an absurd idea.”

Dependency theory promotes the idea that the poverty of the countries in the periphery is because they are taken advantage of by First World nations who actively perpetuate a state of dependency through various policies and initiatives. This state of dependency is multifaceted, involving economics, media control, politics, banking and finance, education, sport and all aspects of human resource development. Poor nations provide natural resources, cheap labor, a destination for obsolete technology, and markets to the wealthy nations, without which the latter could not have the standard of living they enjoy. Any attempt by the dependent nations to resist the influences of dependency will result in economic sanctions and/or military invasion and control. Dependency theory first emerged in the 1950s, advocated by Raul Prebisch and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The Latin American version was popularized by Galeano????????s major best seller, Open Veins of Latin America.

Major criticism of the theory was offered by Revel????????s Ni Marx Ni Jesus (incorrectly translated into English as Without Marx or Jesus), followed by Carlos Rangel????????s excellent critique in Del Buen Salvaje al Buen Revolucionario (From The Good Savage to the Good Revolutionary), by Harrison????????s work >, and then the theory was pilloried in the Mendoza, Montaner and Vargas Llosa book, Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot. By the time Cardoso became President of Brasil he had totally cast off dependency theory.

But in Havana it is still alive and thriving with Raul Castro and Cesar Chavez. That is the first piece of good news. These guys are dangerous thugs, but lousy theorists!

The second piece of good news is how the world is ignoring them! Few major US newspapers have mentioned the meeting and when they do it is mostly to comment about Fidel Castro????????s health (he is as fit as a Fidel, as Taranto would say), and to comment on Chavez relations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The rest of the world ignores them.