Causes and consequences of globalization in Latin America

After listening yesterday to Maria Eugenia Bogozzi's presentation on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Center of Latin American Studies here at KU, I am still debating the implications of worldwide economic interconnectedness and cultural homogeneization. Particularly in the case of LA, it seems to me that the same old "cultura de servicio" is key to understand how different regions and key players within the continent interact in this web of events of global tendencies that end up shaping their lives and defining the power struggles within each specific society. Needless to say, said 'culture of service' has systematically made LA throughout the centuries since contact and colonization by the West, a wealthy repository of any thing from raw materials to cheap and forced labor, to "ethnic" artifacts to paradisiac touristic destinations, from indigenous exoticism to exciting "new" biodiversity just waiting to be found by a "real" scientific team, etc. It also strikes me the common sense in LA of always being on call, on duty, regardless of time or space restraints, to the continuous demands from somewhere else, be it North America or Europe, tendentiously following the axis South - North. It could be something very subtle like the Guatemalan indigenous women in Antigua that put up a Mayanness performance for the turists while making a living selling their art involved in claims of "authenticity." After the tourists are gone, they finally pull their cellphones from behind the screen and text their families back about how much they sold that afternoon, or ask a neighbor if they can come by after dinner to watch the telenovela with them on the new flat screen. It can also be a problematic appeal like Peruvian chef Gastón Acursi's speech in a well publicized national event when he exhorted the youth of his country to meet the challenge of globalization by creating more opportunities for what he identifies as the "Peruvian label" of distinct cuisine. Drawing from the country's multicultural background and vast biodiversity, Acursi dreams of bringing cevicherías side by side with haute cuisine Peruvian restaurants worldwide, thus making the boom of Peruvian cuisine more widely spread and typical dishes as available as Mexican taquerías or North American hamburger houses like Macdonalds. Claiming that Peruvian cuisine can tailor to all tastes and pockets, Acursi aims at exporting his national brand in a joint effort that ideally will promote job creation and specialized technicians, thus wealth and business to Peru, while providing for the economic viability of the millions of destitute families that still rely on traditional agriculture to subsist. I am not saying that one should not dream. Actually, I' m a strong believer that without dreaming and people that take dreams to other levels, humanity wouldn't stand a chance against the elements. However, Acursi's utopia is symptomatic of this same "culture of service" that has long prevailed in LA. I am not saying neither that the contrary of this globalized trend, so economic isolationism and cultural self-absorption should be the goal either. It is such a vast and complex challenge thinking about how LA in all its diversity and uniqueness, should develop, or even if it should develop at all following a Western model, that I am afraid I don't have an answer. And probably very few people do! I just simply want to make a point that so far what has been happening is what Homi Bhabha called "colonial mimicry," LA trying to emulate the centers to which she has always been a periphery, meanwhile falling into the same "cultura de servicio" that is historically well-recorded ans still persists. Unless the master's tools are learned and used to built the new subject's home,, with Fanon, how is LA to benefit in depth from homogenizing trends like globalization? Professor Bogozzi yesterday at the fore mentioned conference made a point that in L A, "The Other is always part of the Self." In a world interconnected by real organic solidarity as global trendists claim to be, shouldn't this also be true? Shouldn't the Other of economic and cultural centers that control the world be part of an organically solidary self that unites us all by our differences and uniqueness, nit homogenizing us all? I would like to hear what others have to say about these issues, particularly since so many more relevant questions about identity, supra national cultures and indigeneity are not being addressed in this post.