[Marxism] Spanish exiles in Mexico

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Julio asked about the reference to Spanish CP'ers exercising an
influence in the Mexican academy. It comes at the tail-end of this
quotation from Magnus Blomstrom and Bjorn Hettne's excellent overview
"Development Theory in Transition", a Zed book that is unfortunately out
-of-print. Although the CP is not specifically mentioned by name, it
should be clear from the context that it was who the author's were
referring to. My explanatory notes are in parantheses.

---

After the military take-over in Chile, Mexico City subsequently assumed
the role as Latin America's new theoretical centre. As such, it received
a number of prominent development theorists who had been forced to leave
Chile. However, it might be appropriate to give a short description of
Mexico's unique position in Latin America before we discuss the debate
initiated by these expatriate scholars.

Mexico is, in many ways, different from the rest of Latin America. Apart
from being a big country with a relatively developed economy, it is also
politically more stable. Also the Mexican culture is, in many respects,
unique and quite different from that of the other Latin American
countries. The Mexican identity is asserted at many levels (art, music,
literature, etc.). For our purposes, it is particularly interesting to
note that the Marxist tradition in Mexico is different. It is quite
obvious that so-called neo-Marxism (ie, A.G. Frank, Samir Amin, et al)
has had relatively little effect upon the Mexican Marxists, and that the
more traditional type of Marxism has prevailed. Compared to Chile, where
Marxism had a greater influence in the universities, Mexican Marxism was
far less visionary, with a greater tendency towards determinism (stages,
base/superstructure, etc.). Although an analysis of the reasons for this
difference is beyond the scope of this book, one important reason might
be the influence on Mexican intellectual life of the exiled Spanish
opponents of the Franco regime.

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