A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

clearly) and there are subtitles in Quechua. This is more of a mockery
than a genuine recognition of the Quechua cultures of the country: the
highest percentage of illiteracy in the country is found among the indigenous
peoples (28.2 per cent), while the degree of functional illiteracy is
around 45 per cent (SIISE, 2008) - without even mentioning that the indigenous
cultures are basically oral cultures.
The political implications of difference
At the time when development projects were at their height in Ecuador,
many communities sought to differentiate themselves from the others
in order to be acknowledged as unique on the ethnic map that the State
was elaborating. Its presence on these maps meant concrete projects,
money and the entry of one of its members into the nascent indigenous
bureaucracy. They were continually seeking roots, traditions and limits
that proved their authenticity, their cultural difference. But apart from
the projects, there were no certainties: the families were the same in
the upper and the lower parts of the territory; the women were debating
whether to maintain traditions or leave for the cities; the youth were
asking new questions about ideas and about solutions; the economic
structure of the indigenous world was changing faster and faster; participation
in national policies was requiring new strategies to resist the
progress of neoliberalism.
There were two forces at work here: on the one hand, “the intention
of dominating in the name of cultural supremacy” (Bhabha 2002:55),
which was being implemented by the State and the international organizations
that drew up and certified the ethnic maps. But, on the other
hand, the conflicts that were taking place within the indigenous worlds,
with some of them requiring “one model, one tradition, one community,
a stable reference system and the necessary denial of (?) certainty in articulating
new demands, practices and cultural strategies in the current
political climate, which practises domination or resistance”. (Bhabha.
2002:55)
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