From social protest to tranformation

To protest before a crime or an injustice is legitimate and also valid since it creates conditions to amend the situation; however, just protesting is not enough to transform the circumstances that originated the crime or the injustice. There is a gap from protesting to transforming that is necessary to overcome with skill and determination. It is necessary to proceed from denouncing episodes to recognizing the processes that generate them; especially when it is not about occasional but recurring episodes, for example repeated acts of corruption or exploitation of weaker and helpless actors. Recurrent episodes demand integrating the view that is focused in the immediate circumstances into a more comprehensive vision that can understand the true nature of the politic, economic and social system we live in.

Transforming with some intention –and not merely in order to go anywhere else but the present- requires imagination, conceiving a ‘towards where’. That ‘towards where’ can be called our referential utopia which we refer to in one of the articles in this issue of Opinión Sur; it constitutes a reference to guide the course and stay in it as we go along. We will then have to see how to mobilize the instruments and resources we have as a society as to materialize the chosen trajectory, taking into account that there are multiple and diverse variables intervening in a process of transformation and that, no doubt, there will also be several circumstances that are very hard to anticipate. The effort to channel the ensemble of people and factors towards the chosen course refers to the political strategy that coordinates the concrete actions needed to proceed from protesting to the desired transformation. Thus the importance of politics and the leadership we learn to choose.

In the march towards transformation there are traps that need to be unraveled and unmasked; they are not a few and they reproduce in several forms according to countries and eras. The other two articles in this issue take on some of those always disguised threats: what lies behind investment promotion policies and certain hidden features of external ‘cooperation’.

We trust this issue will be of your interest.

Cordial Greeting.

The Editors