History of Latin American Countries

Read this article. Guillermo O'Donnell, an Argentinean political scientist, has compared the rise of bureaucratic-authoritarianism in Brazil and Argentina during the 1960s. Drawing on dependency theory (which assumes resources will flow from poorer peripheral nations to wealthier core nations), O'Donnell argues that dependent development in Latin America led to heightened class division within Latin American countries. Modernization efforts in Latin America has resulted in increasingly repressive governments, as state-led industrialization promoted dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s and the growth of a technocratic elite. The recent rising popularity of socialist and revolutionary military movements has signaled a backlash against this technocratic elite.