EDITORIAL

CONSTRUCTION OF SENSES.

By Alfonso Insuasty Rodriguez.

Abstract.

We are witnessing a confusing time, so it is necessary to strengthen, through diverse means, the capacity of asking oneself and questioning the context, to effectively transform an unwanted state of affairs, to mobilize the capacity of assuming specific responsibilities, such as Camilo Torres Restrepo claimed ( 50 years after his death) when he spoke about the “Effective love”, the love that transforms, that which is effective, which not only reflects and characterizes, but which is vitally and existentially committed.

Key words. Autonomy; Memory; Development; Development; and Formation.

Isabel Rouber states in her text reproduced by the El Agora USB Journal, in this edition, “the power of capital fails through again, and their representatives know it. Therefore, their defensive policies become more aggressive. If the door is ajar, you know, it will end up open... And they defend themselves; Hence their dangerousness and ferocity. These are times of civilization collapse and as such, we must understand them and reflect on them.” (Rouber, 2016).

It is a confusing time. Everything mingles. Either fights no longer make sense or they end up refining the role of the hegemonic power, which denies human beings, but that contradictorily reaffirm them in their speeches. It is a time in which it is urgent, as it was stated by Hugo Zemelman, the recovery of the subject, who is located in certain contexts being able to effectively transform, to ask oneself, and to question the context, but especially, with the ability of really committing oneself and taking one’s responsibility such as Camilo Torres Restrepo claimed ( 50 years after his death) when he spoke about the “Effective love”, the love that transforms, that which is effective, which not only reflects and characterizes, but which is vitally and existentially committed.

The hegemonic model imposes different forms and more and more it becomes media oriented, but what does not vary is the direct or indirect use of force, of physical violence. This model goes step forward, with its economic reading marked by profit, accumulation, permanent growth and its speech revolves around development as its religion, progress as its ethics, an ethics trapped in the discourse of the market, dynamics that give rise to the advancement of major infrastructure projects, which require greater speed, greater management; in this universe the human being is lost, is trapped, like nature, it is a resource that matters in so far as allows such a “progress”, such a “development.”

For example, the extractive economy, the manner how the international market retakes presence by reactivating various treaties, which end up favoring multinationals over the traditional way of extracting the resource to the point of reforming regulations and generating, in the collective imaginary, the idea that such traditional practices of small and medium-sized national mining are illegal and environmentally destructive activities, and that such a situation will be saved only and exclusively by delivering the extraction activities to those who know and care for the environment, foreign multinationals, this is an example of the aforementioned (Juarez, 2016). The model learned from experience and today it is presented to us with different faces, such as being “green,” “eco-logical.”

This reality leads to important impacts in the communities, regionally, locally, right there, at the same time. They articulate different and multiple answers, which are designed from the communities and attempt to define their place in the defense of good living.

These processes, which are generated from the local communities, although they advance at different speeds, they acquire a special value in so far as they claim values, principles that allow us to “be human” and which require to “integrate nature as a political entity.”

It is worth saying that while communities reflect, propose, and articulate, they try at all costs to survive the impacts that this model brings along. This model starts accommodating and learning from such struggles, generating, in this way, new dynamics of domination even with a friendly face.

It had been warned for some time, for example, that it is water the resource for which we would be witnessing new global orders, new divisions and dynamics of repositioning of capitals. Today, it is an overwhelming reality. Water and public utilities are axes of dispute, including the dynamics, which have been generated with regard to a conception of the provision of utility services, which are moved under the dynamics of private interests, as it is stated by Professor Luis Alfredo Bohórquez Caldera (Bohorquez Caldera, 2016), Irene Piedrahíta Arcila, Carolina Peña Padierna (Piedrahita Arcila & Peña Padierna, 2016) and Alfonso Insuasty (Insuasty Rodriguez , 2016) in their texts.

It is the population and the communities, which suffer directly from the impact of the model, but still they continue resisting and making proposals from their feelings, thinking, always looking for own alternatives and, at the same time, demanding institutions that they be taken into account, such is the case of the struggles that victims of this armed conflict, which has been developed in Colombia, propose to the way the issue of the recovery of memory for historical truth has been understood and how the repair has been developing from an essentially compensatory approach, thus avoiding the recovery of the social fabric, which makes the defense of the territories possible and thus, the generation of diverse and pluralistic projects and life plans (Villa Gómez & Insuasty Rodriguez, 2016); (Moreno Camacho & Díaz Rico, 2016).

In this situation, it is important to combine multiple efforts, from the academy, the educational proposals, within and outside the system, the academic and popular research, from the organizing strengthening, mobilization, from the articulation of the different active forces of society in order to rescue the value of social and community proposals, as well as its culture, life and existence. In this context, Afredo Ghiso says, “the dialogues and the exchanges, then, have not been, nor are alien to these contexts, and it is in them that the theoretical, methodological, and practical references of current proposals for training of social educators and projects of critical social pedagogy, have been configuring, in Latin America.” (Ghiso, 2016).

And it is in this sense that proposals like the recovery of the memory and from the communities that they play an important role. That which gives them identity and which still survives is the case of experiences raised in relation to the recovery of nutritional practices of some families located in the Commune Eight of Medellin (Colombia). In order for them to understand their conditions of possibility in the African descent community that by personal, group, cultural, political, or economic factors, have been forced to migrate to a context different from theirs, where their practices and lifestyles have undergone some changes (Alvarez Torres, et al., 2016).

The Franciscan philosophy proposes alternatives based on the human being, the recovery of values, such as fraternity, hospitality, respect for difference, by sister nature, the value of the encounter, of truth and, and it demands from those who may assume it as a movement of their will, the serious and strong commitment in the defense of life, on the other, of the collective.

Bibliographical References.