Brad: Cuba doesn't qualify as a country that is dominated by world capitalism. Nor is it really one of the poorer countries if you consider life expectancy, education, and the like. I agree with Louis about the relative meaninglessness of comparing GDPs in the Third world. Back in Papa Doc's Haiti, for a time GDP was rising extremely quickly because he decreed that it should. (Which reminds me that Trujillo once decided that his country didn't have a big enough population so they held another ccensus and lo! the population more or less doubled.) Colombia's GDP was shooting skyward in the 60s and that country was lauded as the shining example of development in Latin America -- what a laugh. I don't have the time to debate this issue of development-stasis-underdevelopment with you just now, and, anyway, we'd never agree. Cheers Jim Blaut