ABSTRACT
This chapter reconsiders the radical Latin American 'dependency' approach to development, arguing that, to some extent, it did not break radically from the modernization approach because it shared its nation state frame of reference. It also considers the post-neoliberal era, after the collapse of the Washington Consensus and the Latin American dictatorships. The chapter explores the possibility that there may be a more radical development theory to be built, based on the Amerindian imaginary pointing towards a sustainable and human-centred mode of development. To 'rethink' Latin America, the chapter explores the debates around 'placing' Latin America in a conceptual rather than geographical sense. The neoliberal restructuring of socioeconomic relations and absolute prioritization of the free market in the 1990s led inevitably to a popular reaction. The contemporary indigenous perspective in Latin America based on the concept of buen vivir provides a different logic to that dominant in mainstream development thinking and practice and in the Western corridors of power.
