IPDAL supported the organization of an academic conference with the former President of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo.

At the European University, in Lisbon, the former Head of State spoke about “Globalization in the Era of Populism”. In an auditorium filled with students of various nationalities, Latin American ambassadors and diplomats were present, among other IPDAL guests such as the Representative of the Organization of Ibero-American States in Portugal.

President Zedillo’s intervention began with a historical retrospective of trade agreements between countries and economic blocs, declaring that regional integration movements are the result of the political will of democratically elected leaders.

The current director of the Center for the Study of Globalization, at Yale University in the United States, argued that populism is the greatest threat to democracy and explained that, since the last half of the 20th century, it has been a characteristic phenomenon in Latin America, which has only recently returned to other regions of the Western world.

The economist, who was Head of State of Mexico between 1994 and 2000, also considered that populism is not an ideology but a political narrative that, refusing dialogue, bases its growth on polarization and confrontation, at the same time promoting and feeding on antagonistic feelings, fear and revolt in societies.

For President Zedillo, populism exploits the weaknesses and problems generated by globalization to disseminate a Manichaean discourse, where the responsibility for all evils always lies with external forces and never with the decisions of the States themselves or their leaders.