The Marginality Project: The Ford Foundation and Marxist Analysis of Poverty in Latin America

In the 1960s, the Ford Foundation was the world’s wealthiest philanthropic institution, and active around the globe in many initiatives. In Latin America, it was primarily investing in higher education, hoping to develop institutions and personnel who could oversee economic development. Typically grants with political content went to the reformist political center. But occasionally they were given to individuals outside of that perceived “vital center.” This paper will examine the reasons that the Ford Foundation gave a grant to a project to study “Marginality Theory” in 1966 with a team that included two scholars working in a Marxist framework: Brazilian Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Argentine José Nun. After conflicts emerged, Nun took over the project, now with an advisory board that included Eric Hobsbawm. The paper will explore the work produced by the project, the consequences for Marxist theory in Latin America, and the fallout for the Ford Foundation, which ultimately declared the project “as costly in terms of the Foundation’s credibility [as any in Latin America].”