ABSTRACT
In the geopolitical context of the post-Second World War world, development studies as a field came into being and Northern and Eurocentric scholars of all kinds – economists, demographers, agronomists, political scientists, anthropologists, and geographers and a range of government, non-governmental, national, and supranational entities, including the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, began to concern themselves with the question of Latin American development. While it is important to recognize that Latin Americans do operate on the margins of the colonial power matrix from a positionality that Enrique Dussel has referred to as “relative exteriority,” the Conquest is however a force to be reckoned with, as if it had not happened, we would not have the concept of “Latin American development.” This chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
