Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
globalization don't claim anything compassionate about it. It's presented
simply as unstoppable: “Globalization is a big train, and it's moving out.
Get on or get run over.”
I believe we Americans have a moral responsibility to implement global-
ization conscientiously. I worry that, since the end of the Cold War, the US
has been pushing globalization with an almost religious zeal. Our ideological
export after the defeat of
communism is free trade.
h e World Bank, Inter-
national Monetary Fund
(IMF), and World Trade
Organization (WTO)
are our crusaders. Ameri-
cans are rightly proud to
champion freedom and
liberty. But traveling in
Latin America, I heard
leftist leaders of er a dif erent interpretation: “Sure, freedom for the USA to
take other people's natural resources, and liberty to use their cheap labor.”
Why so cynical? When globalization was taking root in the early 1990s
in places like El Salvador, their US-friendly governments chose growth over
policies designed to protect labor and the environment. Still today, if a country
has a sick economy, the medicine is predictable: “structural adjustment.” h at
means new laws that protect investors from governments who may someday
want to defend their people from the will of aggressive corporations. h e end
result: Corporations become stronger than the governments of the nations
who host them...and the needs of those corporations begin to trump the
needs of the nation's own citizens.
In Central America, egregious examples of mishandled globalization
are numerous. In the aftermath of their devastating 2001 earthquakes,
Salvadorans saw American capitalists roll up their sleeves and speed to the
rescue. Clothing manufacturers moved into the earthquake-devastated area
to provide jobs…on the condition that the government allow them to lower
the minimum wage from $144 a month to $85 a month.
Folk remedies are the salvation of poor campesinos who can't af ord the
drugs sold by pharmaceutical companies. But the people of neighboring Hon-
duras were recently forced to sell patent rights for these local plants to the
Search WWH ::




Custom Search