When we set out on a project, we very often leave disasters in our wake. Focused as we are on achieving our goals, we do not stop to think about the damage caused by our actions, and if we do notice, we try our best to downplay its importance. “Collateral damage” is an expression that was popularized by United States presidents when attempting to minimize civilian deaths in its wars against countries at a disadvantage; it is a euphemism for what is destroyed with total disregard, be it the lives of Iraqi children in a military offensive, people’s health for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry, or a family’s privacy when one member becomes a public figure. The topic chosen for our dossier arises from a conviction: that overlooked zone of harm, those victims, buried under the weight of our will, deserve our recognition. In the opening article, Fran Ruiz traces the history of the term and the way in which governments have used it to sugar coat the crimes committed by their armies or their legislators. The essay written by the Chilean Diego Zúñiga, speaks to us about the writers whose obsessive search for glory took its toll on the lives of their children. In a journalistic piece, Laura Sánchez Ley describes the aftermath of the murder of Luis Donaldo Colosio for the Aburto family. Laura Leucona warns that in light of the feminist struggle, legislation around gender identity can have negative consequences when it is made carelessly. How many ways can we too become collateral damage? In “The limits of the I,” Fernando Clavijo offers some answers, explaining how our body constitutes a territory devastated by bacteria, which inhabit and destroy it as they face each other in battle, but also by public health policy or medical research. This dossier intends to detach the notion of “collateral damage” from an exclusively political context, and apply it to other areas, in order to highlight the irresponsibility or the indifference with which we often trample over those who stand in our way.
Imagen de portada: Adrián Villar Rojas, Today We Reboot the Planet (detalle), 2014.