Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
For me, munching
on that tortilla provided
a sense of solidarity—
wimpy…but still soli-
darity. I was what locals
jokingly call a “round-trip
revolutionary” (someone
from a stable and wealthy
country who cares enough
to come down here…but
only with a return plane ticket in hand). Still, having had the opportunity to
sit and talk with Beatriz and Veronica, even a round-trip revolutionary l ies
home with an indelible understanding of the human reality of that much-
quoted statistic, “Half of humanity is trying to live on $2 a day.”
Globalization: The -Ism of Our Time
Beatriz and Veronica—and you and I—are players in a vast global chess game
of commerce. As the world's economy evolves, modern technology is shrinking
the planet, putting the labor, natural resources, and capital of distant lands
in touch with each other and revolutionizing the way products are made and
marketed. Globalization is a complicated process that, frankly, nobody can
control or even fully understand. But the people I met in El Salvador made
it more meaningful for me than any book or lecture ever could. Free trade,
neoliberalism, and globalization—which are abstract political buzzwords back
home—are all too real to the half of humanity struggling for survival.
h e rich world likes to imagine that globalization brings needed resources
to poor nations. And often, it does. In this equation, a company from a wealthy
country decides to have their product manufactured in a poor country. h e
company enjoys a much lower payroll than if they employed workers back
home, while still paying a wage that's considered generous in the local economy.
It's a win-win. At least, that's the hope.
But in reality, all too often, globalization is driven not by altruism, but
by a naked ambition to open new markets to i rms and products. h e legally
mandated responsibility of a corporation is to maximize proi ts. (Technically,
to do anything less opens its oi cers up to lawsuits from stockholders.) If
the only way to do so is to exploit cheap labor in poor countries, they do
it. h
at's why, if you talk with people in El Salvador, even proponents of
