Opinion Sur
This is Opinion Sur’s 100th edition. We thank you for having supported us with your interest throughout these years shared.
We do not want to fall into the temptation of speaking about our own history and the efforts that had to be invested in order to produce these hundred editions. We simply want to highlight the importance that ‘developing a strategic thinking’ has had and still has.
The complexity and acceleration the processes that our countries and the global village go through; the urgencies that cloud the way; those groups that generate fear and false urgencies to smuggle what attempts against our wellbeing; the imposition we suffer of values, policies and behaviors that damage the environment, affects social cohesion and the meaning of democracy; all that and much more demands having strategic references with which to collate decisions, proposals and everyday attitudes. Those mid-term references must be explicit, justified and, most importantly, aligned with our people’s interests, needs and emotions.
There have always been minorities with privileges acquired by strength or craftiness: they preach their own vision as if it were the only truth. That hegemonic thinking disarms and disorients those who have not had the chance to know other perspectives and to evaluate for themselves what each one of them implies, encloses, defends, who they favor and who they harm. Hegemonic thinking imposes only one voice and prioritizes on its own what counts and what is not worthy of consideration so that then, through the educational and social communication media they control, it can make a thousand echoes silence other contributions. Therefore the importance of thinking freely and independently, standing up for our rights, our worldview, our proposals, the singular ways in which we choose to set our course, from our place on Earth but always in relation with the brothers and sisters of other latitudes. This is how we conceive the work of developing strategic thinking and also the proposals we formulate in order to take it to a tangible level.
We want to dedicate this very special issue to the memory of two dear and admired friends: Guillermo O’Donnell, distinguished political scientist who fought restlessly for a real democracy and contributed with a lucid and brilliant critical thinking, and Monte Factor, exceptional human being who always, and especially in hard times, encouraged and motivated everybody that had the fortune to know him.
100 issues of Opinion Sur is an important milestone in our journey towards a new world.
Cordial Greetings,
The Editors
