Historical structuralism, political economy and communication theories: Notes on the development of Latin American critical thinking

Abstract

This paper identifies the first school of communication criticism and Latin American structuralism as theoretical bases of the political economy of communications (PEC) and Brazilian culture. In reference to the career of Luis Ramiro Beltrán, specifically his work La revolución verde y el desarrollo rural latinoamericano-in which he discusses the category of demonstration effect-, the theoretical limitations of this school are analyzed after identifying the structural nature of underdevelopment in Latin America. Thus, starting from the need to show the double contradiction of capital (capital/ labor and economy/culture), the PEC raises the problem of the role of mass media at the level of social mediations, based on capital's adoption of popular culture elements that-passing first through a moment of primitive knowledge accumulation-will later constitute the industrialized culture. Then, the cultural industry emerges as the mediation authority that characterizes monopoly capitalism, and this is where, supported by Celso Furtado's theory of cultural dependence, the Brazilian PEC exceeds the constraint already recognized by Ingrid Sarti when she stated that the idea of mass culture conceals the existence of a class culture.