A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

nous and Peasant Coordinator) of Guatemala, concerning the Mayas of
the pre-colonial epoch, “What the Spaniards found here was a profound
respect and recognition of space, the universe and the human being.
They all constituted the same element: life itself” (2008, 40). It was in
fact the colonial discourse that created the socio-cultural category of ‘indigenous’
(José Sánchez Parga, 2009, 93), expressing an unequal relationship
between the superior colonizer and the despised colonized
peoples.
For centuries the world visions of the conquered peoples were transmitted
clandestinely by oral tradition. The same social relations established
by colonialism between indigenous, whites and mestizos (mixed
blood) were reproduced after independence, autonomy being exclusively
defined vis-à-vis the metropolitan power, and leaving power in the
hands of the classes that descended from the colonizers. As time went
by there were linguistic changes. According to José Sánchez Parga, already
30 per cent of the indigenous population of Ecuador do not speak
their mother tongue (2009, 65) as a result of internal migrations and urbanization.
However, the wave of indigenous emancipation that swept
over many of the original peoples of Latin America created a new dynamic
which, in some countries has led to constitutional changes and
induced the indigenous movements to return to their traditional points
of reference. Some of these, like ‘pachamama’ have survived the centuries
while others have acquired new political functions like sumak
kawsay (Ecuador) and suma qamaña (Bolivia). This shows the dynamism
of the indigenous culture that has prevented the populations from becoming
museum objects and, as Eduardo Gudynas (2011, 5) has written,
they have embarked on a process of the ‘decolonization of knowledge’.
Quite rightly, Rodolfo Pocop Coroxon declares: “The peoples of Abya
Yala (America) are not myths or legends: we are a civilization and we are
nations” (2008, 43).
As from the year 2000, the crisis accelerated the process. In Ecuador,
in particular, and already from the 1990s, the consequences of the war
against Peru, the effects of the niño phenomenon, the repression and
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