Opinion articles

Civilization is an immense historical and cultural construction that over time accumulates the contributions of individuals and societies. It is an immeasurable repository of the data of the lives of men from all times and latitudes that keeps an order defined by the great lines of human creation, such as religion, the customs of coexistence, the construction of dwellings and the raising of cities, the development of science and the application of technology; and, the right, stellar product that regulates behaviors and actions allowing them, prohibiting them or demanding them, in the motley natural and social scenario.

On that luminous and dark platform of the human, from the earliest times, man has used natural resources for his survival and projection, searching for them, extracting them and processing them, building civilization, which since its dawn has depended on the natural environment mercilessly exploited and destroyed. Therefore, it can be argued that social existence has meant the extermination of many forms of life and that we go for everything that is missing, following that fatal path handcuffed.

In the areas of legal practice and especially in legal education, it is often heard that some lawyers, professors and students affirm colloquially –because it would be more serious to do so at the level of formal discourse– that civil law has been superseded by civil law. constitutional and that the approach to deepen in the classrooms should be this especially, arguing that in this branch of the legal is the solution of all cases, while civil law could be an obstacle to the realization of its objectives. This is likely to be the case, that is, the constitutional approach finds limitations in civil matters, however, so that the legal system can dispense with the specific contributions of other branches of law and specifically civil law, it would have to propose, elaborate and approve a new institutionality that replaces the ancient categories that make it up: domicile, affiliation, capacity, competence and many others that are consubstantial, not only to that area of ​​law, but to the entire legal system.

Constitutional law represents the political approach of each society regarding the interests that circumstantially and historically prevail. It is located at the top of the hierarchical pyramid of legal norms and requires that the others that are at lower levels respect its provisions and remain consistent with it. The level of technical sophistication of the constitutional is lower than that of the branches of law that are subordinate to it, because its importance lies in the strength of its political perspective and not in its technical and dogmatic structure. Ecuador has had twenty constitutions that represent as many political points of view that have been circumstantially imposed in its republican trajectory.

It is always possible to design structures in a better way, all of them, whether they are purely conceptual or material. The twenty constitutions that have regulated social coexistence in Ecuador, each one at its time, were new political and legal architectures conceived to change and improve. Many today think that we must have a new constitution so that what we need as a people is attainable. Our approach, that of Ecuadorians, has always been outward-oriented and we have cared very little about generating cultural architectures that involve new ways of thinking and, in general, changes in the local collective idiosyncrasy, which is marked by the idea that transformations most important are in the external structures.

Social architectures are the result of the culture of peoples. The designs of how institutions should work and how people should act should come from social needs. That has always happened with strong cultures, which have created legal structures to meet their objectives. We, traditionally, have taken the institutionality of others and from there, we have obstinately tried to repair it, reform it, adapt it so that it responds in a better way to what we want as a society. Without much success.

It is so overwhelming, locally and globally, the perception that politics is a decadent scenario in which dark personalities thrive, far from virtues, capable of any action that strengthens their own positions that have nothing to do with the collective needs at hand. which they claim to serve, that I have hesitated to use a quote from one of the texts with which I work with law students. However, not to do so would be to abandon the ideal and also, it is true, to disregard honorable political practices that, despite the fact that it is hard to say due to a kind of intrinsic disbelief inherent in this type of statement, of course they exist and validate the reference that I am writing to continued: “… Kant's idea of ​​what politics is involves articulating a complex conceptual framework in which politics is subordinated to morality through law. This means that in order for politics to achieve the highest possible good in the world, it must bow to morality and law because only then will it be possible to create the conditions that make both freedom and happiness viable.”

Global politics has as its protagonists traditional powers that always seek to strengthen their interests through trade relations and also through other mechanisms when possible and the positive returns are foreseeable. In Latin America, a region plagued by corruption and social inequity, countries have opted for leftist governments and that trend is likely to be consolidated in this year's presidential elections in Costa Rica, Colombia and Brazil.

Humanity is swiftly and fatally projected into realities marked by fire by scientific discoveries and their technological applications. The entire planetary society, in one way or another, is at this level of civilization, existing human groups that are at the forefront of this way of life and others that follow it because they make it their own and become, like them, dependent on those cultural expressions that mark the social scene of all.

Virtual platforms that allow the synchronous interaction of individuals and groups regardless of their geographical location, teleworking, cloudworking, artificial intelligence, digital technology, cybersecurity, cyberattacks, "metaverse", space race, vaccine production, "bitcoin", social networks, geoengineering and other technological activities; These are just some of the social forms that will have global prominence in this year that is beginning.

“The hopeless truth is not born in the face of stubborn adversity or in the exhaustion of an unequal struggle. It comes from the fact that we no longer know our reasons for fighting or, precisely, if we should fight ”. This quote from Albert Camus, a French philosopher and Nobel Prize winner for Literature, who lived through the European disaster of World War II, is found in his book Morals and politics. As a reflection it makes sense for everything and everyone, since the probable and shameful abandonment due to unwanted circumstances has no justification or argumentation that can validate it as a possibility and even less as a practice.

Ours, in Ecuador, is critical at the highest level since corruption in its various forms is shown on a daily basis in a defiant, almost invincible way and also because it manifests itself omnipresent when we do not respect the authorized capacities for meetings of people, or at to know that for years an illegal system for the sale of vehicle license plates and driver's licenses operated, also due to the reported overpricing in public works and the lack of reliable inspection processes, due to the absence of drugs in the public health system, infrastructure of education destroyed, supply-demand of bribes and kickbacks for all procedures, narcogenerals, abuse of power with flagrant cases of nepotism, virulent aggressiveness in the streets, anger and extreme poverty. And for the pain for Zaruma, pierced with death by illegal mining in full view and patience of all. And thus, the tragedy of the crisis ... established.