To Harberger and the Chicago Boys, Santa Cruz’s emphasis on social and economic rights reflected the influence of ‘nationalist, protectionist, distributive mythologies’, notably the dependency theory of the Argentinean economist Raúl Prebisch, executive secretary of the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). Prebisch’s account of unequal trade between the centre and the periphery challenged the neoclassical assumption that market relations are free, voluntary and mutually beneficial. In opposition to the myth of the sweetness of commerce, Prebisch highlighted the centrality of domination to the operations of the world economy. To Harberger, this stress on the external determinants of economic development – the international economic system, commodity prices, multinational corporations, and what Allende termed ‘neo-colonial exploitation’ – elevated the Latin American tendency to assume that ‘somebody else did it to them’ to the level of theory.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 320