''Latin America in the New Global Capitalism''

From NACLA
By William I Robinson

''During the mid-1980s, I would travel from my home in Nicaragua to San Salvador, El Salvador, where I frequented the campus of the Central American University. At lunchtime we would exit the main campus gates to one of the city’s principal thoroughfares, the Autopista Sur, dotted by rustic locally owned restaurants serving El Salvador’s signature plate, pupusas. Today, there is not one pupusería outside the university gates. The skyline is instead blighted by an endless array of signs beckoning diners to all the well-known transnational fast food chains, from Burger King to Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken to Panda Express and Pollo Campero. This “McDonaldization” or “Warlmartization”—the globalization of what were once local and national retail sectors—has taken Latin America by storm. In the 10 years from 1990 to 2000, transnational supermarket and retail outlets increased their percentage of the Latin American retail market from 10% to 60%. By the 21st century, Walmart became Mexico’s largest private employer, controlling over half of all supermarket sales.''

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