Challenging 500 years of globalization

To end poverty, you have to know how it began - with globalization. No, not the 20th century variety engendered by multinationals and their friends at the IMF, World Bank and WTO. They just codified practices that kept developing countries poor. French Filmmaker Philippe Diaz, in an illuminating documentary opening in New York Friday, traces globalization back 500 years to the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of the Americas. Diaz shows how the colonial North used the South's resources to build its industrial base and how its continued control over resources, global trade and debt rules prevents developing countries from ending poverty. Diaz had produced French feature films such as "Bad Blood" and "The Man Inside" before turning to documentaries. He made "The Empire in Africa" about Sierra Leone. The drama of the new film, "The End of Poverty?", is as startling as anything he could invent. The title is a play on a book by economist Jeffrey Sachs - without the question mark - who, Diaz told IPS, "runs all around the world with Bono and these guys claiming that if we bring mosquito nets and fertilizers, it will end poverty." For example, Diaz is incredulous that Sachs's book ascribes Bolivia's economic failure to high altitude. He points out that 30 years ago, Sachs advised the Bolivian government to privatize everything, and today the country is essentially owned by foreign corporations.