Alternautas
type: channel
description: Alternautas is a multi-disciplinary journal devoted to counter-balancing mainstream understandings of development in/from Latin America – Abya Yala. Alternautas emerges from a desire to bridge language barriers by bringing Latin American critical development thinking to broader English-speaking audiences. The journal covers a broad range of development issues across regular and special issues. The journal was launched in 2014 and is fully open access, with no fees for readers or authors.
publisher: University of Warwick Press
language: en
publication name: Alternautas
issn: 2057-4924
items: Driven by Theory, Missing the Mark
items: Governing the Revolution: A Foucauldian Critique of Passive Revolution in Bolivia
items: Instrumentalising Indigenous Differences: Modernity’s Ultimate Cul-de-Sac
items: The far-right in the Southern Cone: from the military dictatorships to the recent right-wing turn
items: Building a collective identity of the river: lessons learned from transdisciplinary research in the Caoní River basin, Ecuador
items: The cultural-political utopia of Amefricanity
items: Introduction: Interrogating the Resurgence of Latin American Dependency Theory
items: Feeling, acting and connecting rivers: the experience of the San Pedro River Rescue Collective in Ecuador
items: Tracing the Past, Shaping the Future: Latin American Constitutionalism and Its Discontents - Interview With Professor César Landa
items: Recovering Historical Memory and Collective Knowledge: Strengthening Resilience in Ecuador’s Chota Valley in Response to Water Scarcity Challenges
items: Transdisciplinarity from Below: Weaving a New Tapestry of Knowledge through Art and Collective Resistance
items: Universal Basic Income from the ‘Buen Vivir’ Decolonial Perspective
items: Unequal Exchange with Differential Ground Rent: The Originality of Uruguayan Dependency Theory
items: Book Review: Levy, Helton. Globalized Queerness: Identities and Commodities in Queer Popular Culture. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.
items: Black LGBTQIA+ Political Subjectivities in the Roma Negra: On Black LGBTQIA+ Political Resistance in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
items: Critical reflections on the super-exploitation of labour power, reproductive labour and the theory of value
items: Subordinate financialisation in Argentina and Brazil. Different patterns of dependence
items: Towards a new dialectics of dependency theory
items: Coherence through critique: how Cueva’s attack on Marini’s Dialectics of Dependency contributed to strengthening Marxist Dependency Theory
items: Ruy Mauro Marini’s thought and neodevelopmentalism in Brazil (2003-2016): Subimperialism, autonomy and renewed dependency
items: Book Review: Mariya P. Ivancheva, The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela, Stanford University Press, 2023, 216pp.
items: Introduction to Solidarity Politics: the (Re)activation of European-Latin American Solidarities
items: Uses and Abuses of the Conquista
items: “Equality, freedom, solidarity – the issues on which I was raised”
items: From La Boca to La Stocka
items: Political Caricature to Mobilize Solidarity Through Humor
items: ¿Why Leeds?
items: The cultural-political category of Amefricanity
items: Decolonising Solidarity?
items: Bridging Justice Struggles

Driven by Theory, Missing the Mark
type: item
description: In a recent review of my book Now We Are in Power in Alternautas, Elias Moises Sanchez Flores offers a ‘Foucauldian critique of passive revolution in Bolivia’. For Sanchez Flores (2026: 1), passive revolution in my book ‘operates at the top-down level of political structure, foregoing a genealogical analysis of how categories such as “indigenous movement” were produced as legible political actor’. Moreover, my spatiotemporal apparatus ‘generates a blind spot’, failing to ‘account for formations of Bolivian social life that never synchronised with the homogeneous time of the state’. Following these assertions, there are two major charges that must be answered: (1) I offer a top-down framework that misses creation of new subjects; and (2) there is a blind spot in my spatiotemporal apparatus that cannot account for, for example, the popular economy. I will address each in turn in what follows.
subject: Dialogues
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creator: Angus McNelly
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Angus McNelly https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2026-07-03
publication date: 2026-07-03
starting page: 1
ending page: 10
doi: 10.31273/f6j4q621

Governing the Revolution: A Foucauldian Critique of Passive Revolution in Bolivia
type: item
description: This dialogue offers a Foucauldian critique of Angus McNelly's (2023) Gramscian analysis of passive revolution in Bolivia under Evo Morales. While McNelly's framework rigorously illuminates elite adaptation and the incorporation of social movements into the state, it operates at the top-down level of political structure, foregoing a genealogical analysis of how categories such as "indigenous movement" were produced as legible political actors. Moreover, the spatiotemporal apparatus McNelly deploys — Zavaleta Mercado's sociedad abigarrada and "temporal dissidence" — generates a blind spot within his own framework: it cannot account for formations of Bolivian social life that never synchronised with the homogeneous time of the state. Applying Foucault's governmentality and biopolitics, this dialogue shows that the plurinational state reproduced neoliberal governmental rationality under a new discursive subject, domesticating Bolivia's abigarramiento through constitutional classifications and biopolitical interventions. Resistance is relocated below hegemony, in the economía popular — a formation operating on concrete time that, drawing on Mises' praxeology, constitutes the ontological substrate from which political formations momentarily crystallise and to which they return.
subject: Dialogues
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creator: Elias Moises Sanchez Flores
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Elias Moises Sanchez Flores https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2026-06-12
publication date: 2026-06-12
starting page: 1
ending page: 10
doi: 10.31273/f0w33926

Instrumentalising Indigenous Differences: Modernity’s Ultimate Cul-de-Sac
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description: This is a critical examination of the contemporary comprehension of difference, focusing particularly on one of its most violent expressions: the systematic and often brutal instrumentalisation of Indigenous peoples in the wake of mainstream development and the ongoing encroachment upon Indigenous worlds, especially across the American continent. It argues that difference is not an incidental feature of social life but a central mediator of both internal and external relations, shaping how groups respond to one another and how new forms of interaction and conflict emerge. Throughout recent centuries, divergent and frequently antagonistic interpretations of difference – rooted in contrasting ideological and political projects – have collided, revealing the persistent struggle over whose worldview prevails in defining social order. This process unfolds through complex socio‑spatial dynamics in which conservative forces have consistently worked to relativise, domesticate, or negate autonomous forms of difference. In doing so, they reinforce entrenched hierarchies and sustain a status quo marked by structural intolerance and deep inequality. Difference does not merely exist within space; it is produced through spatial relations. Its political significance becomes fully intelligible only when examined through the collective and contested production of social space, where groups negotiate, resist and reshape the conditions under which they live. Ultimately, the management, suppression or mobilisation of difference plays a decisive role in structuring contemporary socio‑spatial orders, determining who is recognised, who is marginalised and whose worlds are allowed to flourish or are rendered disposable.
subject: Articles
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creator: Antonio Augusto Rossotto Ioris
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Antonio Augusto Rossotto Ioris https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2026-05-06
publication date: 2026-05-06
doi: 10.31273/eg6ypg85

The far-right in the Southern Cone: from the military dictatorships to the recent right-wing turn
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description: The aim of this text is to analyze the recent rightwing turn in Southern Cone countries or, more precisely, towards the far-right. I intend to explain the recent context by exploring three strategies of analysis: first, conferring a historical density on the phenomenon of the rebirth of the far-right contrasting this with previous experiences, especially the military dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s, whose legacies continue to mark the current scenario; second, reflecting on transnational connections, since the growth of the far-right is a global phenomenon which propels local agents, however, without disregarding the singularities; third, analyzing essential aspects of the far-right in the Southern Cone highlighting its common points, but also the particularities of each case.
subject: Commentaries
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creator: Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2026-05-12
publication date: 2026-05-12
doi: 10.31273/hh5hv056

Building a collective identity of the river: lessons learned from transdisciplinary research in the Caoní River basin, Ecuador
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description: The Caoní River watershed, located within the Pichincha Chocó Andino Biosphere Reserve in northwestern Ecuador, is a territory affected by deforestation dynamics and water pollution. In response, citizen groups have mobilized to protect the river as a living entity through the creation of the Salvemos el Caoní initiative, supported by NGOs and academia. This article explores how transdisciplinary research tools implemented within the framework of an international cooperation project have contributed to building and strengthening a shared identity around the river as a common good in a context of ecosystem and human social fragmentation. The methodology integrates three transdisciplinary research tools under the umbrella of an embodied learning approach: community river monitoring, the co-construction of environmental narratives, and participatory mapping. The objective is to identify both the benefits and challenges of these tools in mapping sources of pollution, assessing species at risk, and collectively designing a watershed conservation mechanism within a context of local tensions among multiple interests and actors surrounding the river. Finally, the article analyzes how, on the one hand, the process strengthened local capacities and fostered trust and cooperation among municipalities, community organizations, private stakeholders, and academia. On the other hand, it examines both the progress and tensions involved in strengthening collective identity and action around the river as a necessary prior step toward defending the river as a rights-bearing subject under Ecuador’s constitutional framework of the Rights of Nature.
subject: SI: Transdisciplinary research around Latin American commons: exploring tools and methods
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creator: Emilie Dupuits
creator: Cecilia Puertas
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Emilie Dupuits, Cecilia Puertas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2026-06-25
publication date: 2026-06-25
starting page: 1
ending page: 36
doi: 10.31273/j913jf70

The cultural-political utopia of Amefricanity
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description: This paper is a reflection on the cultural-political category of Amefricanity, created by Brazilian intellectual and activism Lélia Gonzalez in the 1980s. Considering that Latin America is one of the most important cultural categories in the US today, this reflection stems from the question: what is the political potential of this cultural category? In an attempt to answer this question, the paper revisit Gonzalez’s theorization to arrive at a redefinition of Amefricanity as a cultural-political utopia, which has the potential to mobilize imagined communities capable to picture collective actions of resistance to authoritarian Western narratives.
subject: Dialogues
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creator: Carolina Freitas
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Carolina Freitas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2026-02-18
publication date: 2026-02-18
doi: 10.31273/n4nvh809

Introduction: Interrogating the Resurgence of Latin American Dependency Theory
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description: As 2025 draws to a close, we are witnessing a fundamental transformation of the global economy and political order established in the 1970s and '80s. The rise of China to become by some measures the largest economy in the world, and the formation of the BRICS as an influential grouping of non-Western states, shows a profound shift in the geography of capital accumulation since the 1980s. But the growing significance of China, India, and the constellation of other high-growth economies, has not led to the worldwide convergence promised by advocates of neoliberal globalization. Rather, the emerging world order once again raises the prospect of transformation without convergence that is fundamental to Dependency Theory. Viewed from Latin America, the parallels between the current era and the original formative period of Dependency Theory are striking. Latin America faces de-industrialization, a return to 'extractivism' based on natural resource exports, combined with persistent poverty and rising inequality, mirroring its position in the early to mid-20th century. The political, social, and economic transformations outlined above have coincided with a renewed interest in Latin American Dependency Theory, both within the continent and beyond. This Special Issue of Alternautas explores the ongoing significance of this 'view from the periphery' in terms of its historical roots and its novel contemporary transformations.
subject: Editorial
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creator: Philip Roberts
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Philip Roberts https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-12-31
publication date: 2025-12-31
starting page: 1
ending page: 12
doi: 10.31273/q3vwpr61

Feeling, acting and connecting rivers: the experience of the San Pedro River Rescue Collective in Ecuador
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description: The San Pedro River Rescue Collective was born in 2021 as a citizen group whose goal is to restore the San Pedro River and its banks, which flow from the Illiniza volcano through Quito and its valleys towards the Pacific Ocean. One of the main dreams of its members is to bathe again in the river, as the past generation of their fathers and mothers did thirty years ago. The San Pedro River is facing multiple sources of contamination, from intensive cattle production at its watershed to wastewater and trash discharges in the city of Quito and Los Chillos valley, a densely populated area. From a political ecology perspective, this article examines the river imaginaries, knowledge co-creation and justice mobilized by the San Pedro River Rescue Collective as a river movement. The analysis is based on feminist epistemologies and ecologies of care mobilizing qualitative data gathered between January to April 2025. We explore how the San Pedro River Rescue Collective not only strives to revitalize a river, but to transform the relationship between society and nature at the very heart of the city. As a main result of this study, we conclude on the power of feelings and emotions to enact citizen action for the protection of urban rivers.
subject: Articles
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creator: Raquel Andrade
creator: Anahi Machado
creator: Valentina Troya
creator: Emilie Dupuits
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Raquel Andrade, Anahi Machado, Valentina Troya, Emilie Dupuits https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-07-31
publication date: 2025-07-31
starting page: 91
ending page: 121
doi: 10.31273/8deqjg16

Tracing the Past, Shaping the Future: Latin American Constitutionalism and Its Discontents - Interview With Professor César Landa
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description: Professor César Landa, a renowned constitutional law scholar and distinguished public servant in Peru, is one of the unique figures who successfully bridges the worlds of academia and political practice. In addition to his academic position as a professor of constitutional law, he has held several key state offices, including President of the Peruvian Constitutional Court, ad hoc judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Deputy Minister of Justice, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Drawing on this unique combination of experience, Professor Landa offers a rich and informed perspective on the democratic challenges facing Peru and Latin America more broadly. At a time when democratic erosion and the crisis of representative institutions have become global phenomena, his reflections on institutional fragility, constitutional resilience, and the potential for democratic renewal have both scholarly and practical significance. This interview aims to contribute to the broader conversation on constitutionalism in the region and to bring Professor Landa’s deep insights into the academic literature.
subject: Dialogues
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creator: Muhammet Derviş Mete
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Muhammet Derviş Mete https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-07-31
publication date: 2025-07-31
starting page: 122
ending page: 142
doi: 10.31273/5jggmn70

Recovering Historical Memory and Collective Knowledge: Strengthening Resilience in Ecuador’s Chota Valley in Response to Water Scarcity Challenges
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description: This study examines the historical transitions, struggles, practices, and political participation related to irrigation water governance in Afro-Ecuadorian communities and their impact on redefining hydrosocial territories in the dry Chota Valley of the Ecuadorian Mira River Basin. In recent years, the shift in the region’s productive matrix has brought significant transformations to these territories. Using a case study approach, this research aims to recover historical memory about water access conditions through ancestral knowledge and collective rights. This effort presents a critical opportunity to protect the collective values of the Chota River and to recognize the intangible national heritage of this region in the face of water scarcity. The case study combines semi-structured interviews with community members and questions addressing the fairness and effectiveness of the current water governance system. Findings from community experiences across the Chota Valley suggest advocating changes to address inequalities and improving services for the local population, particularly during drought scenarios. The research employs qualitative methods, including bibliographic review, ethnographic data collection, and results validation.
subject: Articles
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creator: Sandra Santos Valencia
creator: Jeroen Warner
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Sandra Megens, Dr. Jeroen Warner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-07-31
publication date: 2025-07-31
starting page: 61
ending page: 90
doi: 10.31273/2exr1m96

Transdisciplinarity from Below: Weaving a New Tapestry of Knowledge through Art and Collective Resistance
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description: Decolonising research methodologies has expanded opportunities for a more pluriversal world, yet knowledge production still remains controlled by a privileged minority. This piece examines how vivencias (lived experiences) can shift attention and privilege away from dominant forms of knowledge. I offer three examples of transdisciplinary collaborations rooted in grassroots movements, led by Afro-descendant women affected by the armed conflict in Colombia. Despite widespread fears, these women chose to speak out, using art and art-making as means to (re)signify and (re)construct collective memory amid violence. They do not work alone; academics and social actors join these women’s struggles, co-creating knowledge and resistance. These stories show how vivencias expressed through art become tools for weaving alternative knowledges from below and for developing situated, collective knowledge that fosters critical awareness and social change through peaceful resistance. This approach (re)invents research practices rooted in struggles for collective liberation, valuing diverse ways of knowing and being to challenge the dominance of traditional knowledge production and pursue epistemic justice.
subject: Articles
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creator: Adriana Moreno Cely
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Adriana Moreno Cely https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-11-22
publication date: 2025-11-22
starting page: 1
ending page: 27
doi: 10.31273/p670kk74

Universal Basic Income from the ‘Buen Vivir’ Decolonial Perspective
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description: This article interrogates the relationship between Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a policy tool and Buen Vivir as a conceptual framework, interpreting their significance within the domains of sustainable development and socio-environmental justice. Through a critical examination of conventional development paradigms from a decolonial perspective, we identify a substantial lacuna in the extant literature: the imperative to incorporate epistemologies from the Global South into social policy formulation. Employing non-systematic literature review methodologies, we reflect on how Buen Vivir principles might inform UBI implementations. Our reflections emphasise the necessity of reconceptualising social policies through a lens that not only critiques prevailing economic structures but also valorises and recuperates indigenous and local knowledge systems. Our central objective is to propose the notion of decolonizing Universal Basic Income (UBI), understood as the process of reimagining UBI through Southern epistemologies that challenge Eurocentric assumptions about well-being, development, and human-nature relationships. In doing so, it aims to contribute to scholarship on social and environmental development within the context of post-development thought.
subject: Articles
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creator: Leticia Diniz Nogueira
creator: Gibrán Cruz- Martínez
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Leticia Diniz Nogueira, Gibrán Cruz- Martínez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-07-31
publication date: 2025-07-31
starting page: 32
ending page: 60
doi: 10.31273/dpt7nc35

Unequal Exchange with Differential Ground Rent: The Originality of Uruguayan Dependency Theory
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description: Historiography on Latin American dependency theory highlights its importance between the sixties and eighties, primarily focusing on Chilean and Brazilian perspectives. This focus overshadows the diverse dependentistas works in other Latin American countries, such as Uruguay. Studying dependency theory in Uruguay enriches our understanding of Latin American social sciences and the theory itself, revealing an original interpretation involving unequal exchange and differential ground rent in international trade. This work outlines the main tenets of a Uruguayan interpretation of dependency theory that emphasizes on the importance of the theory of differential ground rent and its interpretation of underdevelopment and dependency. A theoretical comparison with Ruy Mauro Marini, Ernesto Laclau, André Gunder Frank, Fernando H. Cardoso and Enzo Faletto shows Uruguayan theory’s distinctive dimensions. It offers a unique definition of dependency, nuanced compared to Marini’s, incorporates Laclau’s rent differential while emphasizing exogenous factors, and aligns partially with Cardoso and Faletto’s views, differing notably from Gunder Frank’s perspective.
subject: Articles
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creator: Pablo Messina
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Pablo Messina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-12-31
publication date: 2025-12-31
starting page: 39
ending page: 64
doi: 10.31273/83tjfk90

Book Review: Levy, Helton. Globalized Queerness: Identities and Commodities in Queer Popular Culture. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.
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description: Globalized Queerness takes a critical look at the global media landscape to examine whether queer and trans representations become homogenized or flattened as they seek to reach a wide, transnational audience. Levy defines “globalized queerness” as a series of media strategies emerging mostly from Western and Anglophone metropoles, which “have capitalized on queer life to sell products and homogenize ideas of queerness” (197). This mass commodification of queer representation emerges at the expense of racially minoritized, impoverished queer communities, particularly those from the Global South, as their localized experiences of doing LGBTQIA+ art and politics are erased from the media landscape. The book is careful, however, not to portray globalized queerness as an all-encompassing media landscape, as it tracks the frequent ruptures of local politics into global narratives, particularly in the hands of more critical queer and trans media producers.
subject: Reviews
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creator: Carmen Alvaro Jarrin
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Carmen Alvaro Jarrin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-30
publication date: 2024-12-30
starting page: 75
ending page: 80
doi: 10.31273/ygrxwq39

Black LGBTQIA+ Political Subjectivities in the Roma Negra: On Black LGBTQIA+ Political Resistance in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
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description: This article examines the politics of Black LGBTQIA+ political resistance against multiform violence in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Nicknamed the Roma Negra (Black Rome) due to having the second largest Black population in the world, Salvador, the capital city of the northeastern state of Bahia, has disproportionate rates of LGBTQIA+ violence. This article offers various case studies on how Black LGBTQIA+ activists and civil society and non-governmental organizations in Salvador politically organize, negotiate, and transform space, and combat non-citizenship and subordination since Brazil’s redemocratization.
subject: Articles
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creator: Jaimee Swift
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Jaimee Swift https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-30
publication date: 2024-12-30
starting page: 35
ending page: 61
doi: 10.31273/z656ac30

Critical reflections on the super-exploitation of labour power, reproductive labour and the theory of value
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description: <p class="s6" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; line-height: 2.4; text-align: justify; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Marxist dependency theory puts the category of super-exploitation of labour power as the “essence of dependency”. However, this category is presented in most debates as fundamentally linked to so-called productive labour, carried out by a working class that appears to be male and white. The work of reproduction and care, essential in the (re)production of the labour force, carried out essentially by women and feminised and racialised bodies, is hidden in the analysis. In this article we propose to develop a critical reflection on this relevant category, recovering the debates coming from the field of feminism and in particular from Marxist feminism. We seek to explore this debate in the light of key discussions in the theory of value that allow us to fruitfully articulate productive labour with the so-called reproductive and care work.
subject: Articles
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creator: Mariano Féliz
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Mariano Féliz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-12-31
publication date: 2025-12-31
starting page: 125
ending page: 144
doi: 10.31273/dtss2405

Subordinate financialisation in Argentina and Brazil. Different patterns of dependence
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description: This article contributes to the literature on dependency theory and subordinate financialisation in peripheral economies by examining the cases of Argentina and Brazil. Building upon the subordinate financialisation framework (Kaltenbrunner, Alami) and dependency theory (Marini), we analyse these nations' distinct experiences of international subordinate financialisation. Drawing on original evidence from constructed datasets of national and international accounts, we demonstrate that Brazil exhibits conventional drivers of subordinate financialisation—including household indebtedness, financialisation of non-financial corporations, and a developed banking system reliant on high interest rates to attract foreign capital. Conversely, Argentina manifests financial subordination through structural foreign currency illiquidity (at both national and international levels), dollarisation of savings, cyclical external indebtedness shaping real business cycles, and persistent capital flight.
subject: Articles
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creator: Leandro Bona
creator: Andrés Wainer
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Leandro Bona, Andrés Wainer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-12-31
publication date: 2025-12-31
starting page: 91
ending page: 124
doi: 10.31273/kz937g98

Towards a new dialectics of dependency theory
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description: Dependency theory is arguably the most important theoretical tradition to emerge from Latin America. Functioning as a vital source of counter-representation and contestation, it challenged the prevailing developmental orthodoxies of the time. During its heyday in the 1960s and early 1970s it served simultaneously to critique prevailing power relations within the global political economy and as a political programme for domestic and regional transformation, defined in terms of self-determination and political autonomy. However, with the broader crisis of developmentalism in the 1970s, a counter-movement to the radicalism of dependency analysis emerged: authoritarian populism. The victory of authoritarian populism helped contribute to the death of Third Worldism as a political project and with it, dependency theory fell into decline. In the current conjuncture, this paper calls for a new dialectics of dependency theory. A reinvigorated dependency critique is needed to address the prevailing developmentalism of the left in Latin America that has remained in thrall to extractivism and thus continues the region’s peripheral role as a commodity exporter to the Global North, built on the foundations of cheap nature and cheap labour. Furthermore, a dependency-informed analysis is required to challenge contemporary modes of authoritarian populism and statism that are being celebrated geopolitically through the BRICS grouping. To do so, I make the case for considering dependency theory as a radical contribution to the literature on the production of space. A renewed dependency theory can thus challenge the state-centrism present in its original formulation and its lack of ecological concern.
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creator: Chris Hesketh
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Chris Hesketh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-12-31
publication date: 2025-12-31
starting page: 145
ending page: 171
doi: 10.31273/rahyyq58

Coherence through critique: how Cueva’s attack on Marini’s Dialectics of Dependency contributed to strengthening Marxist Dependency Theory
type: item
description: The paper presents the sequential interaction between the works of three thinkers, Ruy Mauro Marini, Agustin Cueva and Vânia Bambirra, published in the 1970s. It argues that Cueva’s critique of the methodological approach of dependency theory in general, including its most radical strand based on Marxism, played an important role in strengthening and giving cohesion to the group which would later be known as the creators of the Marxist Dependency Theory. The importance of critique is highlighted, in order to show that debate and disagreement are inherently constructive when the participants of the controversy recognize their interlocutors as equals in terms of having the capacity to use Marx’s works in a creative and original way.
subject: Articles
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creator: Rafael Athayde
creator: Tiago Camarinha
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Rafael Athayde, Tiago Camarinha https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-12-31
publication date: 2025-12-31
starting page: 13
ending page: 38
doi: 10.31273/6nf4z337

Ruy Mauro Marini’s thought and neodevelopmentalism in Brazil (2003-2016): Subimperialism, autonomy and renewed dependency
type: item
description: Marxist Dependency Theory is currently experiencing a revival as a pivotal framework of analysis for the study of global economy from a peripheral perspective. In particular, Ruy Mauro Marini’s thought still holds a prominent place both in Marxist theory and in Latin American critical social sciences as an irreplaceable tool and method for analysis and agency. As this paper will show, his original and situated approach to the theory of imperialism offers a key grounding to the study of the capitalist State in Brazil in the context of a new stage of South America’s subordinate international insertion into the global economy. Marini’s subimperialism comes in play when assessing the foreign policy of “neodevelopmentalism” (2003-2016) as a “hybrid” international politics between renovated efforts at independence and autonomy and recharged subaltern imperialism. Also, his contributions around the concept of semiperiphery, are paramount to apprehend the progress of processes such as the “mundialization” and the “deconcentrated centralization” of capital and their effect on Brazil’s enhanced dependent international insertion. As such, Marxist Dependency Theory analytical tools, and Marini’s “method” of complementing thorough class analysis with a Political Economy perspective on a country’s mode of insertion in the world market, prove once again to be key to any effort at understanding the contemporary transformation of the centre-periphery nexus worldwide and Brazil’ subordinate role in it.
subject: Articles
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creator: Dario Clemente
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Dario Clemente https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2025-12-31
publication date: 2025-12-31
starting page: 65
ending page: 90
doi: 10.31273/x066bg72

Book Review: Mariya P. Ivancheva, The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela, Stanford University Press, 2023, 216pp.
type: item
description: Among the pantheon of left-wing Latin American governments that swept the continent in the early 21st century, arguably the most radical, most beguiling, most contradictory, and most tragic, is the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Given its unique (though not necessarily ‘special’) place within this political conjuncture, no shortage of ink has been spilled on the deep-seated transformations carried out in the name of the Venezuelan people, as well as the domestic and international conflicts that followed in their wake (see, most recently, Marino 2018; Samet 2019; Cooper 2019; Wilde 2023; Lubbock 2024). Among the many themes examined by scholars, activists and other observers is the role of higher education reform within the Bolivarian Republic, and the ways in which Hugo Chávez Frias, the charismatic leader of the ‘Bolivarian turn’, sought to build a new society by cultivating new knowledge among the people.
subject: Reviews
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creator: Rowan Lubbock
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Rowan Lubbock https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-30
publication date: 2024-12-30
starting page: 62
ending page: 74
doi: 10.31273/1pk2h912

Introduction to Solidarity Politics: the (Re)activation of European-Latin American Solidarities
type: item
description: Our proposal for this special issue was inspired by the breadth of commemorations we were witnessing in the lead-up to September 11th, 2023, the 50th anniversary of the military coup that has cast a shadow over Chileans until today. Seeking to avoid repeating the question of where, how, and between whom European-Latin American solidarity takes and has taken place from its inception, we intended this special issue to go beyond the question of chronological memory and historiography to rethink the cyclical and reiterative nature of these solidarities rooted in the Cold War. From the unique vantage point of living with the third generation of Chile’s exile diaspora, we wanted to revisit the current-day vernaculars and practices of European-Latin American relations through concepts of translocal and transgenerational solidarity. Similarly, at a time when older categories of internationalism and anti-imperialism have taken on entirely new meanings for protest movements and social justice activism, adapted definitions of the vocabulary surrounding human rights, solidarity, and democracy play an increasingly central role in activism narratives and need to be more thoroughly scrutinised.
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Anna Grimaldi
creator: Samira Marty
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Anna Grimaldi, Samira Marty https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-07-31
publication date: 2024-07-31
doi: 10.31273/an.v11i1.1692

Uses and Abuses of the Conquista
type: item
description: Spanish people can detect my Mexican accent as soon as I open my mouth, and it’s interesting to see their reactions during my travels through that country. Most Spaniards are kind and curious. But I do remember a taxi driver who convivially told me that, to be sure, Spain had done horrible things to Mexico, but that I should still think of Spain like a father — a drunk and abusive father, in his words, but a father nonetheless. One can take such remarks about colonialism in stride and with good humor when they come from a taxi driver. But it is difficult to swallow similar arguments when they come from historians like Fernando Cervantes, author of Conquistadores: A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest.
subject: Varia
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creator: Ulises Mejias
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Ulises Mejias https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-07-31
publication date: 2024-07-31
doi: 10.31273/an.v11i1.1691

“Equality, freedom, solidarity – the issues on which I was raised”
type: item
description: As part of this special issue, we received this reflective piece from Viena Chilena 73 | 23, a project initiated to record and articulate the history and memory of Chilean exile in Austria and Austrian-Chilean solidarity during the 50 years since the 1973 military coup in Chile. This contribution pieces together elements of the project website, extracts of their archival work and reflections from the project collective.
subject: Commentaries
  topic: section
creator: Bethold Molden
creator: Rayen Cornejo Torres
creator: Marcela Torres-Heredia
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Bethold Molden, Rayen Cornejo Torres, Marcela Torres-Heredia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-07-31
publication date: 2024-07-31
doi: 10.31273/an.v11i1.1686

From La Boca to La Stocka
type: item
description: In this short reflection piece, we hear from Neil West, who recently co-organised a project between artists in La Boca in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Stockport, near Manchester in the UK. The piece brings together anecdotes and personal photographs as documentation of collective, cultural political practice.
subject: Commentaries
  topic: section
creator: Neil West
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Neil West https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-07-31
publication date: 2024-07-31
doi: 10.31273/an.v11i1.1685

Political Caricature to Mobilize Solidarity Through Humor
type: item
description: As part of our special issue, we invited artist Pedro X. Molina to choose a selection of his works to dialogue with our central themes of past and present European-Latin American solidarities, and the role of artifacts therein. Molina has chosen three caricatures for our special issue, which we include over the coming pages. Reflecting on current socio-political affairs such as Nicaraguan authoritarianism, migration to the US, and memories of violence, his work manages to address these issues with sharpness and rigour.
subject: Commentaries
  topic: section
creator: Pedro X. Molina
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Pedro X. Molina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-07-31
publication date: 2024-07-31
doi: 10.31273/an.v11i1.1672

¿Why Leeds?
type: item
description: The following piece was written by Elisa Martinez Relano in 2023. Inspired by a student-led project exploring past and present solidarities with Latin America, Elisa, now completing an MA in the History of Art and Social History at the University of Leeds, wrote the following text. Her reflection on archival research around Chilean exile in the 1970s takes place in 2023, fifty years after the infamous coup, and is guided by a simple question: how and why would Leeds engage in solidarity activism with a place as seemingly distant as Chile?
subject: Commentaries
  topic: section
creator: Elisa Martinez Relano
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Elisa Martinez Relano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-07-31
publication date: 2024-07-31
doi: 10.31273/an.v11i1.1671

The cultural-political category of Amefricanity
type: item
description: In this original contribution published in 1988, Brazilian Black intellectual Lélia Gonzalez develops the concept of Amefricanity (amefricanidade) as a politically and culturally relevant category to address the material, historical, and symbolic realities of Afro-descendant and Indigenous peoples in the Americas.
subject: Translations
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creator: Livia de Souza Lima
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Livia de Souza Lima https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-30
publication date: 2024-12-30
starting page: 81
ending page: 91
doi: 10.31273/4efczn62

Decolonising Solidarity?
type: item
description: While the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état against the government of Salvador Allende in Chile invites to reflect on past and current experiences of solidarity between Latin America and Europe, the present contribution seeks to foreground the rather overlooked international solidarity efforts of and with the indigenous Mapuche. As a result of their forced exile to Europe after 1973, Mapuche activists began to organise themselves as a diasporic community in Europe and to form a transnational advocacy network in support of their people. This contribution aims to showcase how international solidarity of and with the Mapuche in Europe evolved over time, how they relate to non-indigenous, Chilean solidarity networks, and which underlying Mapuche notions of solidarity they reactivate in order to weave their transnational advocacy network.
subject: Articles
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creator: Sebastian Garbe
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Sebastian Garbe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-08-01
publication date: 2024-08-01
doi: 10.31273/an.v11i1.1491

Bridging Justice Struggles
type: item
description: We investigate the idea of translocal bridge building – a concept related to ideas of network and alliance building – between environmental and social justice struggles. We examine the potentials and challenges of connecting place-based struggles against extractive industries. Moving beyond normative-idealized ideas of movement alliances, we theoretically root the paper in non-romanticizing accounts of justice networks. We empirically draw on the lead author’s research with groups struggling against extractive industries across Germany, the Netherlands, and Guatemala. Our argument is threefold. First, it highlights the potentials of bridging while at the same time raising issues of unequal power and difference, space, and scale among the actors in translocal and multi-scalar justice struggles. Second, the focus on bridge building and our role as bridge building researchers contributes to an understanding of the political and ethical possibilities and dilemmas of research that blurs the boundaries between research and activism. Third, we discuss how bridging may help generate counter-power but also risks perpetuating power imbalances. We suggest that our insights highlight the potentials and challenges for multi-scalar, multi-actor, translocal and cross-cultural alliances, and encourage researchers and social movements alike to explore the difficult yet insightful tensions of bridging spaces.
subject: Articles
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creator: Hannah Porada
creator: Rutgerd Boelens
creator: Jeroen Vos
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Hannah Porada, Rutgerd Boelens, Jeroen Vos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
date: 2024-12-30
publication date: 2024-12-30
starting page: 1
ending page: 34
doi: 10.31273/n9gkhy06