Arturo Escobar Quotes

The idea of progress has a couple of contradictions … it leads to Eurocenterism….

The world dominion of western thought, forms of organisation, technology and military force is not God-given, nor eternal, nor greatly appreciated by the rest of the world.

Whenever a Third World country accepts a structural adjustment loan and hence the imposition of a structural adjustment program, it has in effect delegated the task of running its economy to a foreign, non-elected body sitting in Washington DC.

To those who say derogatory things about colonialism, I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing.

We should be obliged to admit that Europe is Americanizing herself with disconcerting rapidity.

Don't fall into the trap of imagining that the West can remake societies

Unlike 30 years ago, people now admire the wealth of the West and lament the poverty of China; they stare awestruck at the power of the Western armies and scorn the cowardice of the Imperial troops; they enjoy the fairness and ease of the Customs and detest the fault-finding of China’s own tax collectors; they praise the orderly governance of the Western-Administered cities, and resent the harassment of our officials, big and small.

Global elites need to recognize that the masses that they spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to their consultations

The domination of western values, beliefs and way of life has angered many from the east and in developing countries.

The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can know, and it is inevitable under the contemporary form of colonization.

Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? Is it a legacy of our colonial years? We want foreign television sets. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported?

The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture.

It is through the European that civilization arrives ... precisely because of their superiority, the civilized people our responsible for an evolving world.

After WWII .... the West exchanged the old racist coinage for new currency. "Uncivilized" became "underdeveloped". "Savage people" became the "third world". There was a genuine change of heart away from racism and toward respect for equality, but a paternalistic and coercive strain survived.

Can one name a single nation that has not turned to the West in its quest for civilization?

The industrialized world was dominating the processes of change in the Third World, in particular in the Islamic world. And, that domination resulted in educational processes that were shaped by the First World.

The need to colonize a country in the old fashioned way is gone. Even in Iraq they will pull out. But Iraq will have McDonald's, Iraq will have American interests in there, America will be able to do its business there. They don't necessarily need to send in troops - they send in men in suits and they colonize the place financially. It's a cultural and financial imperialism

My America is called Europe. It is my place of dreams.... Today the United States isn’t a solution, it’s a danger! ... Most of the things I like are in Europe... I hope Europe will show us a road to follow.

It is necessary today to have money, much money, to enjoy the right to speak ... Silence to the poor!

The Bretton Woods agreement will enthrone a world dictatorship of private finance more complete and terrible than an Hitlerite dream. It offers no solution of world problems, but quite blatantly sets up controls which will reduce the smaller nations to vassal states and make every government the mouthpiece and tool of International Finance. It will undermine and destroy the democratic institutions.

The things and ways the West took to the rest have become the ways of the world.

The raw fact is that every successful example of economic development this past century—every case of a poor nation that worked its way up to a more or less decent, or at least dramatically better, standard of living—has taken place via globalization; that is, by producing for the world market rather than trying for self-sufficiency.

While modern changes were intrinsic to Western historical development, they were largely seen by Muslims as alien and enforced.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. … I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

The Secretary General has endorsed a propaganda exercise for international finance institutions whose policies are widely held to be at the root of many of the most grave social problems facing the poor all over the world.