Maestro, hermano, te seguiremos cantando, seguiremos llamándote. Asi no estarán solos nuestros pueblos en su dura ascensión a la libertad y a la dignidad.-Pablo Neruda, from Poemas a Mariátegui Jose Carlos Mariategui is one of the most important twentieth century revolutionary leaders in the Americas. The French writer Henri Barbusse once remarked, &dquo;Do you know who Mariategui is? He is America's new luminary. The prototype of the new person of that continent&dquo; (see Del Prado, 1983: 179). Now, 55 years after his untimely death, Mariategui's contributions to revolutionary Marxism, both in theory and practice, are finally being acknowledged not only in his native Peru but throughout Latin America as well. With the victory of Sandinismo in Nicaragua, the democratic, anti-imperialist forces in Peru have adopted &dquo;Mariateguismo&dquo; as their common reference point. Mariateguismo now promises to be the symbol of the largest and most unified revolutionary Left in South America during the 1980s.Perhaps one of the most telling signs of the richness and complexity of Mariategui's thinking and the breadth of his work, is the way Mariategui is &dquo;claimed&dquo; by a broad spectrum of intellectual and political forces, both within and outside the revolutionary Left-much as Gramsci in Italy. Mariategui's probing analyses of Latin American history and culture, his literary criticism, his meticulous dissection of classes and strata within Peruvian society, especially the indigenous peasantry, have won admiration from a wide range of intellectuals, political figures, and cultural workers. *Thomas Angotti is a specialist in urban and regional planning and has lived and worked in Peru. He formerly directed the Planning Program in Developing Nations (P.P.D.N.) at Columbia University. He received a Ph.D. from Rutgers University.

The author teaches in the Columbia University Division of Urban Planning, where he directs the Planning Program in Developing Nations.The widely diverse body of theory that has come to be known as dependency theory has had a significant impact on the anti-imperialist movement and revolutionary forces particularly in Latin America. It enjoys a fairly high degree of prestige and influence not only among professional economists and social scientists -its principal advocates -but within the revolutionary movements themselves. Whether intentionally or unconsciously, the proponents of dependency theory are actually responsible for advancing two strategic political lines for the movement. ' The first and most influential calls for an independent road to capitalist development (and/or gradual transition to socialism) as a means of overcoming the historical legacy of underdevelopment: i.e., independence from foreign domination. This is ultimately a reformist policy that readily appeals to the apologists for neocolonialism and only leads to the proliferation of poverty and exploitation. In effect, this line underestimates the possibility and necessity of socialist revolution as a distinct, advanced stage in the struggles for national liberation and therefore serves to conciliate bourgeois nationalism. The most sophisticated advocates of this line are Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1972) and Samir Amin (1976).2The second strategic line calls for world-wide socialism as a precondition for eliminating underdevelopment. This idealist view is based on the proposition that imperialism, or foreign &dquo;domination,&dquo; directly causes underdevelopment and serves as the main obstacle to development. In effect, this ultra-&dquo;left&dquo; line underestimates the role of the national democratic stage of 1 This assessment would obviously exclude those dependentistas who may be located far enough to the right so as to be clearly within the pro-imperialist orbit (but then are they really dependentistas?). 2 Throughout this analysis, the general perspective of the various theoreticians of dependency is synthesized and its major thrust summed up. This does not always coincide with the selfdeclarations of the dependentistas. Thus, Amin definitely identifies himself against imperialism and for socialism. By summing up the objective effect of the theories, we are consistent with Marxist materialism.

That the quality of life in Latin American cities is in most ways dramatically inferior to the quality of urban life in North America is hardly disputable. For example, about two-thirds of the 20 million people living in Mexico City live in substandard housing, without adequate water supply, sewerage, garbage disposal, clinics, hospitals, parks, and schools. The Latin American metropolis is characterized by mass poverty and environmental pollution on a scale generally unparalleled in the North. Inequalities between the large metropolitan regions, small cities, and rural towns of Latin American nations are gaping. Inequalities within metropolitan areas are no less dramatic.These urban and regional inequalities are not strictly &dquo;urban&dquo; problems but are a reflection of economic inequalities between North and South and within the South, and an unequal international division of labor. As Armstrong and McGee (1985: 17) note, &dquo;The role of cities in both capital accumulation and the generation of dependence, structural inequality and poverty is part of the larger history of the unequal relations existing within and between societies.&dquo;In this article, I will attempt to show that efforts by governments and the international aid establishment to address urban problems have had little success because they do not address underlying economic inequalities. Many of these planning strategies are based on the assumption that the problem lies with cities themselves and, even more so, with the size of cities.Latin America is among the most urbanized of world regions, with many of the largest metropolitan regions in the world. Thus, a good deal of importance has been placed on curbing urbanization, decentralizing the population, and limiting government initiatives to improve living conditions Thomas Angotti is a city planner and an associate professor in the Graduate Center for Planning

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