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Leninism, they're ideologically soft, that their basic concern is na–
tionalism. Once you prove that you're willing to change things even
though it's not using a Marxist-Leninist root, and once you're capa–
ble of showing you're nationalistic because you're from your own
people and you respect what comes from the informal sector, which
is a very Peruvian sector, these people have no ideological hesita–
tions in terms of changing around.
KA:
Did you know Raul Prebisch, the Argentinian economist, who,
as the head of the Economic Commission on Latin America and the
U.N. Commission on Trade and Development, was very influential
in disseminating the notions of dependency theory? During the last
four years of his life, when he was in his eighties, he changed his
mind about dependency theory, and began to put forward argu–
ments similar to those you are making, that the control and role of
the state bureacracies in the developing countries were blocking de–
velopment and had to be reduced .
HS:
I met Raul Prebisch on two occasions when I was a very young
man, and the conversations must not have exceeded twenty minutes
to a half an hour. I'm sure I sympathized with the things he said
then, simply because I had no other explanation for poverty. What
that indicates , which is something that cannot be ignored, is that
none of the intellectuals in Latin America will give up believing in
dependency theory unless they have some other kind of explanation
for their poverty.
My country, for example, has done for many years a lot of the
things the International Monetary Fund has said it should do, with–
out any success .
It
never had tariffs that exceeded an average of 10
percent. There was a minimum of regulation regarding foreign
trade. Peruvians could import and export quite freely. The currency
was relatively stable . Elections were being held. People could trade
land , and yet the poor were poorer. The rich accumulated most of
the real estate and the agricultural wealth in the country, and, as I
said, a group of forty families ran the country.
At ILD we have gone back and studied the situation and found
out that facilitating development isn't only a matter of having low
tariffs or of having a relatively unregulated form of foreign trade; it's
also a matter of asking yourself, do the poor really have an opportu–
nity to participate in entrepreneurship and in the decision-making
process? We found out that liberalism of the market place is also a
matter of finding out how the law affects the poor of your popula–
tion . It's not enough that foreign investors and the privileged should
