ABSTRACT
The notion of progress that had spread since the end of the nineteenth century was tied to the notion of biological development, but it was not applied in the same way to the Anglo-Saxon countries and to Latin America. Since the nineteenth century evolutionary sociology had postulated that the natural evolution of society toward higher levels of development would fail due to an imbalance between the character of man and his social state. Development theories and their relationship to education were nourished by functionalist sociology and the intellectual contributions of many Latin Americans who were affiliated with institutions such as the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. The deterioration of the Latin American economies in the second half of the 1950s led to an increase in social instability and revealed the antiquated character of the social structures and political leadership of the traditional dominant classes.
