Lanzarote: el papel de la crisis - Fundación César Manrique

the polarisation of poverty, the dictatorship of international capital, the systematic violation
of human rights and the debilitation of democracies erode and dilute collective interests,
which are reduced to a form of volatile, fizzy water. On a scenario where the landscape is
devoid of moral and utopian horizons, it is becoming increasingly necessary to bring
influence to bear on the nearest civic niches - the district, the city, the province, the
community and the transversal spaces - while using the new communication technologies
to advantage so as to bring dispersed individuals and groups together and devise answers to
international organised power as, to a certain extent, occurred in Seattle and Davos.
Citizen participation is destined to play a decisive role in the reorientation of collective
interests, starting off with the management of the territory and natural resources. It should
become an indispensable scion in our anaemic democracies: new sap, to work as a catalyst.
However, in the absence of new models for a participatory society, there is no alternative but
to persevere in the Herculean task of making a demand from all fronts for solidary, rational
patterns in the exploitation of resources, trying to weaken autocratic economic reason in the
process, with a view to putting human considerations inherent in man’s plural dignity on the
table. Otherwise, while in-depth analyses of the ecological failure of the present economic
model are being carried out, the discourse on sustainability will continue to rot on the
rhetorical palate of political power and the market mandarins. These are the ones that have
swotted up on all the new vocabulary, peppering it with inflections of the voice and
bibliographical references, the sole intention being to devour it so that nothing may hinder
the continued construction of the world with the usual materials and thirst for power.
IV. Light is finite
Paradise also fades away because, like men and the world, paradises start to agonise. Today
or tomorrow. They die in our arms while, in a half-stupid, half-distracted gesture, we insist
on pressing harder and harder on the stiletto with which we have pierced their hearts. Light
disintegrates in our hands: it passes out and dissolves. Lanzarote is an island unique in its
singularity, a pioneer in the concern to make a tourism-based economy compatible with the
conservation of its territory and its wealth of natural and cultural resources. After three
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