André Gunder Frank was a well-known intellectual who in the 60s participated in the gestation of the Marxist theory of dependency. He sought to elucidate the peculiarities of the center-periphery relationship by analyzing the origins and characteristics of capitalism.
Frank adopted successive visions focused on Latin American backwardness, the dynamics of the world system and the international prominence of Asia. In each approach, it provoked intense controversies because of its tendency to radicalize the discussion, contradicting its previous proposals. Its evolution was very illustrative of the different profiles assumed by the debate on underdevelopment.