Narrated by Martin Sheen
Starring: John Christensen, William Easterly, Susan George, Chalmers Johnson, Alvaro García Linera, John Perkins, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, Eric Toussaint and Michael Watts

DVD ISBN: 1-59587-129-2
CLS Catalog: CLS1093

It's become conventional to blame the culture and climate of poor countries and poor people, at least in part, for their own plight, as if corrupt dictatorships, ethnic warfare and raw-material economies were somehow intrinsic to Africa and Latin America..Diaz's film argues that all those things were the result of a lengthy historical process. Africa's dysfunctional and often anti-democratic regimes definitely aren't helping matters, for example, but they themselves -- along with the dire poverty they can't manage -- were produced by the European and North American powers' relationship to the global South, from 16th-century colonization right through 21st-century globalization.

What's most profound, and also most controversial, in this analysis is the question of how much this pattern of exploitation continues today.”
- Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

"A fascinating history lesson showing that the world's wealth disparity began with the Europeans' military conquest of other continents, enslavement of indigenous people and colonization that resulted in the seizure of land, minerals and other resources, and forced labor, and that it continues today due to the existence and enforcement of unfair debt, trade and tax policies."
- Jennifer Merin, About.com

"It's an eye-opening work, a persuasive and compelling argument you don't usually hear about on what is terribly wrong with our global financial system and the poverty it produces around the world."
- Dimitirs Angelidis, Epsilon Magazine