A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

trary it activates reciprocity: the gift, exchanges based on symbolic value
and communal use that facilitate a better quality of life for everyone. With
ubuntu we feel connected also with the men and women of the indigenous
peoples, the montubios 134 , the mestizas, children, adolescents and
grandparents, among others.
For the African descendants of Ecuador the notion of ‘common goods’,
‘common good’ or buen vivir is close to this concept of ubuntu, which
means being on good terms with others, sharing, dignity, listening to
and revering grandparents, respecting nature and taking from it [only]
what we need. Thus the empowering notion of ‘people’ questions the
notion of ‘common good’. We recall the call of Evo Morales, President
of Bolivia, to act as peoples, to do justice as peoples faced with institutions
(in developed countries) that are corrupt, that are incapable of finding
solutions for the world and are powerful enough to plunder [other]
peoples’ lives. Now the voice of the peoples must reach the decisionmaking
level which, up until now, has not happened 135 (2010). From this
viewpoint, wisdom would involve continuity between knowledge, actions
(?) and feelings, [as practised by all human beings, in an elliptical movement,
a spiral of dynamic, sustained and interpretative relationships]
However, it is not possible to achieve the ‘common good’ without the
historical debt to the people of African descent being repaid. 136 Nor are
words enough, offering to accept blame does not change the living conditions
of our people. There needs to be more thinking, re-thinking and
above all – as our grandparents in the south of Colombia in the Patía Valley
used to say – we should start to ‘feel-think’. Let us ‘feel-think’ this
134 Montubios: the inhabitants of the rural areas of Ecuador’s coastal region, where
it is more mountainous and far from the beaches. Mestizas: people of mixed race
135 Reflections of the Head of State in a press interview in Ecuador, 2010
136 In South Africa, after the apartheid era, ubuntu tribunals were created to make
reparations by getting the oppressor society to ask pardon to the Africans who had
suffered from this discriminatory institution, the idea being to generate social transformation
through awareness of this practice. We should remember Michel Foucault’s
discourse on power and action.
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