Advantages and risks of Globalization
Globalization is one of the most important issues which we have to confront in the new century. ... There is no doubt that in this process of globalization, we are obtaining net profits that cannot be ignored. ... In this overall landscape of profits, the problem of the risks which it involves is increasingly taking shape in the international debate. ... But there has been one very clear debate which revolves around a central axis: This globalization process is potentially exclusionary, both at the domestic level for the consequences which it entails inside our economies, and at the international level. In other words, only a few countries have access to the benefits of globalization, while others remain at the margin without having even the hope of getting in within a more or less short timeframe. ... In Latin America, therefore, we have the following two cases on the table: the domestic repercussions, which are being accelerated and reinforced by the globalization, and the repercussions coming from the outside, added to which in some instances are domestic sins which aggravate them. ... Thus globalization has had considerable repercussions in Latin America, but is has been paradigmatic with regard to the aspects that are of an exclusionary nature, which are implicit in the phenomena with which we inevitably have concern ourselves, and which can be seen clearly in the domestic dimension and in the international dimension. I will conclude by recalling a happy allusion to this topic which was made by a good friend, and moreover a great Mexican intellectual and politician, Castillo Peraza, who, at a conference in Mexico a few weeks ago, addressed the subject of globalization from an extraordinary, to my mind, and not only semantic, point of view. He said that globalization comes from globe, and that globe has a geometrical, physical meaning. We speak of globalization because in English, the word "mundialización" ("worldization") does not exist. ... Therefore, what we need to try is to humanise globalization, and, in this context, speak a little more about the world.