Introducción. La velocidad en los mundos lentos

During the last century, mechanical colonization has transformed the peripheral areas of South America by altering the daily existence of local societies, offering unprecedented possibilities for action and at the same time introducing new inequalities and forms of environmental dispossession. In this scenario accidents becomes a diagnostic phenomenon to understand in its full dimension the relational and multidimensional –technical, economic, social, cultural and environmental– impact of machines. Speed introduced by mechanization redefines the «slow» worlds, establishing a dialectical relationship between the machine and its context.