I've been invited to Davos four times, and this was the first one that after the meeting I felt so lucky to be Chilean, Latin American, and part of the so called "new world." After listening the speeches and lectures of several experts, and the informal comments in dinner parties and over coffee, it appeared to me that the "old" or developed world seemed so tired, self absorbed and out of answers! And the main focus of a lot of business leaders, academics and entrepreneurs was in the historically considered underdeveloped world, now the star. A lot of entrepreneurial projects, frugal innovations, new business examples are from China, India, Africa, Latin America ... It was refreshing to see how the vitality, energy and hope of countries that before were considered second class were now so visible and valuable.
Also, I felt lucky of coming from a place where there is a lot to be done yet. Davos is a small ski town in the Swiss alps, and offered to me a great image to make this point. Like several European towns, it's perfect. Beautiful, well preserved, with a great combination of the old and the new. It's perfect to be there, but I thought: how is it for young people to live in places like this, when there' s nothing more to be done, except make things worse? I felt that maybe it wold be frustrating the feeling that your generation doesn't have a strong mission in the development of your country. On the contrary, in Latin America -- as in the rest of the "new " world" -- we have a strong sense of the things that we need to achieve, with our own hands, to become a developed country in the next 20 year maximum. And we have the urgency, the drive, the motivation, to get there as fast as possible, and in our own terms. Specifically in the case of LATAM, we have a lot of accomplishments so far, both economically and politically. So our road to development is hard but full of optimism.
Many people in Davos, when they realized that I come from Chile, talked to me about the miners. And they where fascinated by the strength of the miners, of course, but also, for the creative and original way that was used to get them out of the mine with success. They said to me: we couldn't have done it.
I think that the energy, curiosity, vitality and drive explain this success. These are the same reasons why I think that the face of this century will come from places like this. Not perfect, but real and alive, and wanting desperately to be better. I'm happy to be part of that. And it's time that the "old" world, especially the United States, look with more interest and attention what's happening here.
I hope that President 's Obama next visit to Latin America this month will be a sign of a new era of much more visibility of our region in the United States.