This book is not a conventional study of Latin America—either in survey fashion or in depth. It is rather a set of polemical perspectives on the dynamics of globalization by a Latin American who stands in a New York observatory. The book contains observations from this center of the global economic crisis, where it originated and then spread like wildfire to the rest of the world, prompting a series of questions about what has happened and what might happen in the countries of the South, in this tempestuous context.

From the bottom of the global South, in Latin America, a small group of pensadores gathered in an NGO—The South North Development Initiative—has been voicing their opinions and concerns in the Internet newsletter Opinión Sur. As a participant in the group it is my belief that the crisis is an interesting moment of provocation to find a lodestar to sustainable development, a strategy for economic growth with social inclusion. This book is a contribution to that conversation: how the world affects Latin America and how a Latin American perspective can contribute to thinking about the world.

Because the circumstances of my life have caused me to straddle the North and the South, I look at the shifts in global power through different lenses than those whose views reflect the more settled habits of their particular geographies.