A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

Interculturality or interculturalizing?
There are a number of questions we could pose. Where does interculturality
come from? Is there an interculturality that is a distinct category,
a fixed entity, or is it a requirement ‘lite’ for obtaining funding? What
does interculturality mean for States that, although they recognize socalled
interculturality, are busy blasting indigenous territory ‘with blood
and fire’ to implement mining projects for neo-development? Or are
there genuine activities, linked to everyday life, that assume a questioning
of oneself, as well as asking who ‘The Others’ are? And is it possible
that a State can be intercultural while it maintains its old institutional
structures which certainly continue to be colonial?
Various writers have presented interculturality as a dialogue. However,
the conditions for dialogue have not been analyzed in depth. Little is said
about the power relationships that open up an almost invisible gap between
those participating in the dialogue. Nor is mention made, at the
outset, of the ventriloquism that some elements of the population have
developed to negotiate on behalf of the indigenous populations with the
State (Guerrero, 1994). The leftwing mestizos have to admit that for
many years they have served as the ventriloquists of the indigenous
population. 122
The reflections here focus mainly on two issues: posing the question
about interculturality and where it comes from, and stressing the idea
that interculturality does not exist as an complete entity that will just
happen one day. The capacity of human beings to differentiate themselves
is intrinsic and it is therefore impossible to pin down a moment
or a specific situation as Interculturality. It is to be found in everyday efforts,
in actions that represent an advance or a retreat. This is how interculturalism
as a utopia was conceived by the indigenous communities
and organizations of the 1980s.
122 In the case of Ecuador, the misunderstandings between the present government
have been sustained by the great ventriloquist exercise that the leftwing mestizos
(now in power) carried out in the 1990s
251