ABSTRACT
The 1980s were called “the lost decade for development in Latin America”. These were the years of “structural adjustment” when much of the “progress” of the previous decades was lost. Those were also the years of awakening when many people were able to see the real consequences of the development strategies and formulated a solid critique of the whole enterprise. What was later called post-development was thus born. The chapter is made up of two texts. The first was presented in the XVIII Conference of the Society for International Development, held in Rome. It was a radical critique of the very idea of development, shared with some friends also attending the Conference. The text circulated in Tecno-política 07.86, with an introduction by Ivan Illich. The second was the fruit of conversations in Argentina, with the editors of the journal Mutantia, about how to bury the myth of development.
