I believe that I properly understand the article “Injustice 101” by Eduardo Galeano. He writes about the corruption and hypocrisy of the modern system, which may be described as a Capitalism or a free-trade system. Dividing the world into the North and the South, Galeano notes that these terms “do not always coincide with geography” (Galeano, 1997, p. 3). North is a half of the world that spreads the ideas of free trade all over the world, taking all its fruits to itself, leaving “as gifts its most polluting industries, its nuclear waste, and other garbage” (Galeano, 1997, p. 16). Galeano cites countries of Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East as examples of the South that are depressed by the North. Europa and the USA are examples of the North; they produced the modern paradigm and globalized it ruthlessly and predatory. I liked how Galeano emphasized the hypocrisy of the modern world, where wealthy people think that their wealth is not related to poverty. Also, he underlines a problem of equalization and inequality, which is very crucial and one of the main ideas of the essay, with others that I mentioned above.
I am confusing with the absence of an alternative; the author does not suggest something definitively; he just criticizes. However, somebody can extract a wrong conclusion and a wrong understood call to action that Galeano did not even include in his text. I think he should have been more concrete in this question. Yes, the world system is very corrupted, but there is no advice on what to do with this fact.
I think I can answer your question that you put in the end. I believe that Galeano, underlining that tourists are picturesque for natives, means that these tourists are incarnations of what they saw only on screens, in commercials, and in movies. That is, a propagandized “Northern” style of life is not really attainable by most people of the South, though it is presented as an ideal. Therefore, it is an ironic author’s note that also reveals cruel truth.
Reference
Galeano, E. (1997). Injustice 101.