This book serves as one fo the main texts representing the dependency movement that hit Latin America in the 60s and 70s. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, one of the authors who later became a president of Brazil, changed his posture and ended up becoming one of the strongest supporters of orthodox neoliberal policy. This book is important in the history fo economic thought in Latin America, but one should not forget the context in which it was written and it may be a good idea to read it in conjunction with the many works that have been written since on the fallacies of thought in the dependency movement.