The Route to Autonomous Development

No longer need we convince ourselves of the huge impact that the international economy has on our lives. It is taken for granted that transnational capital is trying to shape and reshape our societies to enhance their contribution to its relentless search for profits. No longer need we discuss the relevance of dependency, since it is now widely accepted that most Latin American nations have forsaken any possibility of autonomy in exchange for their integration into the new global system of specialization and trade. LAP has allowed us to explore these trends and informed us of routes that we might take in seeking to become part of the struggle for a better world. In Latin America, we shiver in poverty and fear under the domination of powerful international forces enriched by the massive accumulation of wealth that has flowed from the continuing extraction and destruction of our natural heritage. Little thought has been given to the possibility of exhausting these treasures, for there seemed to be countless others to which to turn. When local resources became too costly or inaccessible, new supplies were brought from abroad, where costs were lower and the devastation could be left behind. We do not have to fool ourselves into thinking that conditions in the past were better than today: we only need read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera to disabuse ourselves of this notion. Certainly there has been progress, and many people are clearly better-off than most people were at any time in the past. Without going into the issue of the quality of that improvement, it is clear that today wealth creates poverty and both the rich and the poor are creating environmental destruction. The dynamics of this process are explored in my Wealth, Poverty, and Sustainable Development (Mexico City: Editorial Jus Centro de Ecologia y Desarrollo, 1998). Cumulatively, the contributors to LAP have demonstrated vividly that the very pattern of development is limiting opportunities for the majority in both North and South and the majority of people throughout the world. This process is leading to an unprecedented concentration of wealth and a dramatic deterioration of the environment of the planet Earth. More important, however, even the substantial numbers of people who are aware of these dangers

Autonomy · Capital (architecture) · Development economics · Economics · Garcia · Humanities · Latin Americans · Political economy · Political science · Poverty · Relevance (law) · Sociology · History · Law · Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy

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