A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

the mangrove resources, thousands of people have been able to study
because it provides education, food, clothing, but fundamentally culture,
because in each of the mangrove roots there is culture, there are myths
and legends. As the mangroves disappear so also does history disappear.”
(Interview with Juan Zambrano, July, 2009, in Vivanco, 2010: 272)
In the declaration of the International Mangrove Network, dated May
2009, it was decided that the law on food sovereignty, which was approved
in a first debate by the National Assembly, infringes on our lives
and our biodiversity by giving a free hand to the large industries, the
transnationals and agro-business for world food production. The destruction
of the mangrove eco-system by industrial shrimp aquaculture is an
infringement against the human rights of the local communities as it displaces
them from their territories, impoverishes their economies, and
violates their rights to a healthy diet – not to mention the rights of the
fishermen and artisanal harvesters if they are prevented from access to
their ancestral activities (Vivanco, 2010: 273). We should remember that
mangroves have vital ecological functions for the planet: they desalinize
the water coming inland enabling land to be cultivated to produce food
as well as feeding animals, which in turn reproduce themselves, having
started life in this natural and cultural environment.
Capitalist economic crisis:
political economy for ‘development as freedom’
In response to [Enrique] Dussel’s quotation, we wonder what kind of
reproduction and production of life he is referring to, as to live fully there
is one crucialo condition, which is freedom. For the Afro-descendant
peoples this principle was shattered by the slave trade and despite the
fact that 519 years have passed still the young Afro-descendants – as
for example in our town – suffer from all kinds of humiliations and [anticipaciones],
experiencing a negative identity based on race, which
leads even to death due to xenophobia. 141 The criminalization and delin-
141 This is another example, like the Durban agreements of 2001 that, ten years
later have been forgotten, as has been pointed out by María Inés Barbosa of the
UN Health Programme
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