Dependency Theory in the Academic Self-Reports of the Brasília Group

• Author: Claudia Wasserman
• Date: 01 January 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211036767
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles: Reflections on Historical Thought

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211036767

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 242, Vol. 49 No. 1, January 2022, 57–74

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211036767

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

57

Dependency Theory in the Academic Self-Reports of the

Brasília Group

by

Claudia Wasserman

Translated by

Luis Fierro

A group of Brazilian writers—Ruy Mauro Marini, Theotônio dos Santos, and Vânia

Bambirra—met in Brasilia in the 1960s and 1970s and produced, predominantly in exile,

theories about the reality of Latin America and the periphery. In the 1980s, with the

amnesty, the group returned to Brazil and confronted a hostile atmosphere in the academy.

Analysis of these writers’ trajectories based on the academic self-reports they produced in

the 1990s for admission or reentry into Brazilian universities addresses their views of the

1964 coup, exile, and the return to Brazil after the amnesty, the identity assigned to the

group, and the controversy over the authorship of dependency theory.

Um grupo de autores brasileiros—Rui Mauro Marini, Theotônio dos Santos e Vânia

Bambirra—reuniu-se em Brasília e nos anos 1960 e 1970 e produziu, predominantemente

no exílio, teorias acerca da realidade latino-americana e periférica. Nos anos 1980, com a

anistia, o grupo retornou ao Brasil e foi hostilizado na academia. Um analisis da trajetória

dos autores a partir de seus memoriais acadêmicos elaborados nos anos 1990 para ingresso

ou reingresso nas universidades brasileiras abordam as visões a respeito do golpe de 1964,

o exílio e o retorno depois da anistia, as denominações atribuídas ao grupo, e as polêmicas

em torno da paternidade da teoria da dependência.

Keywords: Dependency theory, Latin American exile, Intellectual history, Academic

memoirs

This article will revisit the trajectory of a group of Brazilian writers who, in

the 1960s and 1970s, produced, predominantly in exile, theories about the Latin

American and peripheral reality: the Marxist authors of the theory of depen-

dency, Ruy Mauro Marini (1932–1997), Theotônio dos Santos (1936–2018), and

Vânia Bambirra (1940–2018), who became friends in 1963 at the recently estab-

lished Universidade de Brasília.1 In the 1980s, with the amnesty, the group

returned to Brazil and faced a hostile environment in the academy. Only at the

beginning of the twenty-first century did their projects and diagnoses begin to

be rehabilitated. From this recovery it is possible to critique their scientific pro-

Claudia Wasserman is a full professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, a fellow

of the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico y Tecnológico, the Brazilian coordinator

of a CAPES/MERCOSUR agreement that brings together Brazilian, Argentine, and Uruguayan

universities, and a participant in the University of Barcelona’s Memory and Reparation project.

Her publications include A teoria da dependência: Do nacional-desenvolvimentismo ao neoliberalismo

(2017). Luis Fierro is a translator living in the Miami area.

1036767LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211036767Latin American PerspectivesWasserman / Dependency Theory and The Brasília Group

research-article2021

58 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

duction and revive it as a starting point for new projects for Brazil and Latin

America. The main sources for this review are unprecedented—the academic

self-reports written in the 1990s as a requirement for entry or reentry into the

Brazilian public universities from which they had been dismissed. From these

reports and secondary bibliographic sources, I will address the authors’ view

of the 1964 coup, their exile, and their return to Brazil after the amnesty, the

identity attributed to the group, and the controversy surrounding the author-

ship of dependency theory. The reports (Bambirra, 1991; Marini, 1990; Dos

Santos, 1994) represent their own versions of the past and cannot necessarily be

considered what really happened. They reflect the views prevailing in the 1990s

about the installation of the dictatorship in Brazil and the initial impact of

authoritarianism on Brazilian intellectuals and universities.2 These academic

self-reports, as instances of “self-writing,”3 allow their authors to control their

intellectual trajectories, indicating a direction of their activities and scientific

production that was not necessarily deliberate in the past. Acording to Philippe

Artières (1998: 11), “the choice and classification of events determine the mean-

ing we wish to give our lives.” Analysis of them can help to understand the

context in which they were produced—in this case the 1990s in Brazil, the

epoch of neoliberalism—and point to a “retrospective logic of the fabrication of

one’s life” (Gomes, 2004: 13).

The opportunity to analyze a small group of intellectuals in terms of their

memories has been defended by Raymond Williams (1999: 140):

The group, the movement, the circle, the trend seems either too marginal or too

small or too ephemeral to demand historical or social analysis. However, their

importance as a general social and cultural fact . . . is great: in what they accom-

plished, and in what their ways of accomplishment can tell us about the society

with which they establish relations that are, in a way, indefinite, ambiguous.

Therefore, while admitting methodological difficulties,4 I set out to study

this group of friends, coworkers, and colleagues in theoretical and political

activism.

Marini, Dos Santos, and Bambirra gradually formed a group that developed

a strong antagonism to the hegemonic meanings attributed to capitalist devel-

opment in Brazil and the possibilities of overcoming dependency. This antago-

nism was the main definer of their alliance, and for the same reason they were

considered a group by their opponents.5 They were young Marxist intellectuals

active when the 1964 coup took place. In exile, they got to know the Chilean

and Mexican universities, worked with other Latin American social scientists,

and formulated concepts and interpretations that they considered appropriate

for understanding Latin America and the periphery of the capitalist system.

The set of concepts, ideas, and interpretations they and others formulated was

given the name “dependency theory,” and its authorship was disputed by

other intellectuals in the 1970s. When they left Brazil, the most recurrent discus-

sion among left-wing intellectuals was the Brazilian Revolution—its urgency,

character, agents, concrete and subjective conditions, etc. When they returned

to Brazil after the amnesty, they found a country immersed in discussions about

democracy and economic conditions such as the adjustments recommended by

the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, participated in these