Latin America: Theory of dependence or scientific and technological deficit?

Abstract

Since the 30s of the twentieth century, marked by the capitalist crisis generated by the crack and the Great Depression of 1929, there began the concern to explain the crisis of underdevelopment in Latin America. Following the structuralist model of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), it was generated the Center-Periphery Theory within which the industrialized countries were part of the center, while the non-developed countries constituted the periphery. According to this notion, the developed countries had attributed the processing and industrialization of raw materials, while the underdeveloped and non-industrialized countries were only left the production of raw materials with very little added value. But, in this regard, we should reflect if the Latin American situation might be genuinely explained by the dependency theory or is really there a scientific and technological deficit that explains it more accurately?