In this article the importance of comparative analysis is explored as a tool of understanding for Latin American reality, through the identification of some problem axes that dominated the Latin American socio-political thought during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Specifically, we focus on the second half of the last century, when, from a historical and sociological perspective, these axes appear reformulated in the work of authors like Sergio Bagú, Antonio Garcia, and Fernando H. Cardoso, through concepts such as "commercial capitalism", "situations of dependency", and "agrarian reform".