A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

corruption of the oligarchic governments and above all the neoliberal era
aggravated the situation of the more vulnerable strata of the population,
particularly the indigenous peoples. The reaction was, as Pablo Dávalos
(2009) has said, anti-neoliberal in character and, we can add, an opposition
to the multiple and systemic crises.
The indigenous movements very quickly realized that they formed part
of the victims of the neoliberal phase of capitalism and to express their
struggles they sought concepts that were the opposite of this logic (Floresmilo
Simbaña, 2011, 21). At the same time many other social groups
were concerned about the destruction of the ecosystem. All this helped
to revive and reconstruct traditional concepts like ‘buen vivir’, “a category
that is continually being constructed and reproduced”(Alberto
Acosta, 2008, quoted by E. Gudynas, 2011, 1). José Sánchez Parga
states that the concept of ‘alli kausay’ (good life) “in the sense of the
quality of life, is not foreign to the recent past and has nothing to do
with tradition, but rather more to do with the biography of indigenous
individuals (2009, 137; “those who want to ‘make their lives their own’,
rather than leave them to the mercy of factors that are alien and hostile
to them” [Gudynas, 2011, 4]).
To help to understand the concept better, we give the word to those
who are engaged in the current struggles, starting with indigenous personalities
themselves. Luis Macas, who is a former president of the
CONAIE (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador), talks
of the community space, in which there was reciprocity, sharing, social
responsibility, consensus - in other words, buen vivir. Humberto Cho -
lango, nominated president of the same organization in 2011, described
sumak kawsay as a new model of life (as opposed to the Western concept)
and that it is applicable not only to the indigenous peoples but to
the whole planet (2010, 92). This notion presupposes harmony with
Mother Earth (ibid. 96) and the conservation of the ecosystem (ibid. 93).
For Manuel Castro of the ECUARUNARI (the organization of the Quechua
indigenous people of Ecuador), the notion implies community sharing,
social equality, equity, reciprocity, solidarity, justice and peace. It also
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