A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

3 Afro-descendants Women
THE WOMEN OF AFRICAN DESCENT
GABRIELA VIVEROS PADILLA and MARISOL CÁRDENAS
Following the text on “Common Goods to the Common Good of Humanity”
by François Houtart, proposing reflection on and the construction of
a new alternative paradigm, which has been disseminated through the
support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, we would like to present our
considerations based on the experience, history and emerging politics
of the people of African descent, especially those from Ecuador. Taking
into account the four major themes singled out, we start by explaining
the problematic and then consider possible solutions, based on the realities
as we have experienced them.
The text emphasizes that by ‘Common Good’ is meant a state of well
being (bien estar) or living well (buen vivir), which is the universal basis
of the lives of human beings. We shall however be expressing some
concern about this and about the application of examples on which to
reflect. Then we shall expound some of the most significant dimensions
of the crisis that our people are experiencing and, finally, we describe,
based on the notion of agency, various suggestions that we feel should
be included in the proposal for the integral common well-being of the
diverse peoples of our country and of the world.
Conceptualization of the ‘Common Good’ starts off the work and while
there is mention of moving on from the res publica, we should consider
some of the notions from which such moving on is desirable. The current
paradigm has become a scientistic category, but the new paradigm
risks overlooking the fact that so many of our original and descendant
cultures are thousands of years old, memories that have been forgotten
or sanitized. Another example concerns the theme of the public and of
the community: these are ideological constructions that have a different
historicity. In parts of the text this is implicit, but we feel it is crucial to
raise the issue so that it is clear when it is expository and what kind of
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