The Institute for Alternative Policies for the Southern Cone (PACS) is a civil society organization founded in 1986 by Latin American economists returning from exile after more than a decade of corporate-military dictatorships. The Institute was born in the midst of the construction of a constitution aimed at deepening democracy and political participation. Since then, it has placed itself at the service of social movements and collaborated in the critical production of research and the development of practical work that opposed the force of neoliberalism. The work carried out contributes mainly to the debate on “development models” and points to the need to build alternative socio-economic policies to the logic of capitalism.
PACS is an institution that has for more than 30 years joined the anti-capitalist struggle, with an important Latin American identity, becoming a pioneer and arduous defender in the struggle for the integration of peoples. For PACS, life has always been above profit. And utopia is not just a dream but needs to be built every day. PACS has therefore worked and is working to help build a world of social, environmental and political justice, where workers, individuals and collectives are free from the bonds of oppression and are able to confront and overcome socio-economic and environmental threats.
We are a multidisciplinary team of mostly women, made up of popular educators, communicators, social scientists, internationalists, biologists, psychologists, economists, researchers, administrators and activists. Together with self-organized collectives and other partners, we start from the territories, from the critical debate on the capitalist, racist and patriarchal development model, towards strengthening alternatives for economic, social and environmental justice.
Additional Notes
One of their three axes of work is ‘Critiques of and Alternatives to the Current Model of Development’