A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

nature and human beings.It is the human dimension of affective and
spiritual fulfilment. People do not live isolated, but in a family and in a
social and natural environment. One cannot live well if one is damaging
nature” (X.Abo, 2010, 57). It is a spirituality that involves peace and the
construction of ‘a land without evil’. Xabier Abo says that such a vision
goes beyond sumak kawsay. Nevertheless, the Bolivian author J. Medina
affirms that, as a philosophical category, the concept of suma qamaña,
as it is formulated, is relatively recent. This is yet another indi ca tion
of the dynamic character of this culture and its knowledge.
Thus it is not a question of idealizing the pre-Colombian societies, ignoring
the contradictions existing among the autochthonous peoples of
today – which exist in all human groups. The relationships of authority,
the status of women, respect for human life were not always exemplary
in these social groups and the character that today we call ‘imperialist’,
of the Inca and Aztec reigns cannot be denied. The divinization of the
Inca, for example, was an evident sign of the deterioration of the tributary
relationships between local bodies and central power. Nowadays
indigenous organizations have their conflicts about ideas and about
power, there are dubious alliances between some leaders with political
and economic forces, and ideological differences that range from neoliberalism
to socialism. In other words their social groups, like others,
have their own histories, aspirations and lives. This is why they deserve
to be socially recognized, after half a millennium of oppression and destruction.
To remember sumak kawsay is to revive the ‘practical utopia’ of its traditions,
which guided the collective ethic and hope for the action of its
communities. It is the specific contribution that the original peoples of
Abya Yala propose for the construction of a new civilization. They do it
with their own cosmovision, an important element of a multiculturalism
that can be converted into interculturalism.
There are similar notions in other indigenous peoples, like the Mapuche
of Chile, the Guaranís of Bolivia and Paraguay, who refer to ñande riko
(harmonious life), and the Achuar of Ecuadorian Amazonia to tiko kavi
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