Celso Furtado

Celso Furtado worked extensively with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL/ECLAC), where he helped articulate structuralist economic theories alongside thinkers like Raúl Prebisch. His work there in the 1950s laid the groundwork for what became known as Latin American structuralism, which argued that the structure of the global economy systematically disadvantaged peripheral nations.

Furtado's most widely cited work is "Formação Econômica do Brasil" (The Economic Growth of Brazil), which analyzed how Brazil's colonial and post-colonial economic structure shaped its underdevelopment. The book remains a foundational text in Brazilian economic historiography and Latin American development studies.

Furtado is regarded as one of the founders of dependency theory, which posits that the international economic system structurally reproduces the dependence of peripheral nations on industrialized centers. His analyses at CEPAL demonstrated how deteriorating terms of trade historically channeled wealth from Latin American commodity exporters toward developed economies.

Furtado was appointed Superintendent of Development for the Northeast (SUDENE) and later served as Brazil's Minister of Culture in the 1980s after the country returned to democracy. He had previously gone into exile during the military dictatorship that began in 1964, spending years in Chile, the United States, and France.