On 20 August 1982, Mexico announced its intention to reschedule payments on the principal of almost $20 billion of its public sector debt, owed to about 1,400 foreign commercial banks. By the end of 1982, thirty-five countries were in arrears or in default in their debt payments, and a record number of debt renegotiations were under way.' In 1982 and 1983, the World Bank reports, 'almost as many developing countries have had to reschedule loans. . . as in the previous twenty-five years'.' The debt crisis has penetrated and shaken popular consciousness in the West as few other events in the Third World before. It is the first North-South issue to do so which has not been pressed into the East-West mould. Yet the vast bulk of commentary in the North has concerned itself with the question of whether the international financial system-and hence the solvency of the major commercial banks-is likely to collapse. For the Third World, the impact of the crisis has been more immediate. The debt crisis has represented a deep crisis in Third World development and a watershed in North-South relations. It has resulted in the closing off of options and a new level of disciplinary power of Northern-dominated international institutions. Over a decade before the current debt crisis, a variety of dependency theorists explored the ways in which the International Monetary Fund, the development agencies such as the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development, and the private banks were shaping the destinies of Third World countries. With titles such as Aid as Imperialism, The Debt Trap, and 'Privatisation' and 'Domination by Debt', these works extended dependency insights to the realm of external financing.3 Subsequently, these interpretations were incorporated into the world systems perspective.4