Programs and Areas of Institutional Action

Introduction

ILSA has for decades been involved in the promotion of a critical vision of law expressed in different manners, from the defense of the alternative use of law by alternative legal services for social organizations through the recognition of juridical pluralism to a criticism of legal formality and the incorporation of contemporary debates on the realization of rights, constitutional transformations and gender perspective. It has proposed a critical discourse and practice of law intended to respond to the changing economic, social and political contexts of Latin America and Colombia. The knowledge that ILSA has developed about law is based on a serious analysis of the principal capitalist transformations, and
especially on the production of legislation that the new forms of governance and domination have deployed and institutionalized. Simultaneously, ILSA understands law as an expression of the complex dynamics of social struggles. In these struggles, new forms of production are put at stage. Those could be characterized as “bottom-up” and range from resistance to the possible alternatives. In this regard, efforts have been directed towards a sophisticated and holistic understanding of human rights theory. In line with this perspective,
analysis and considerations of the impacts of recent transformations in Latin America represent a challenge for ILSA’s intellectual and political projection, for its idea of law, and for its work with social movements and actors in the future.

Signs of erosion

After several decades of neoliberal hegemony, the signs of erosion and weakening of the economic and political project in the region are inarguably visible. An example of this is an ncrease in the so-called alternative left or center-left governments that took place during
the last decade. However, what at first glance seems to be the natural result of the end of he capitalist era requires important efforts in theorization and examination of the social truggle’s trends. This would help clarify both the sense of transformations and the new
configurations of law in this historical moment. On one hand, the Latin American political rocess has shown that alternative choices are projected in an important number of ountries through diverse social and political movements. Under important individual and social
leaderships with multifaceted origins and experiences, as well as with political pograms and differentiated understandings of society, capitalist strategies seem to aintain the fundamental orientation that was developed clearly by the neoliberal model’s adaptability
shown even in the policies of some of the “progressive governments.”