A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

Minga is a mutual practice which simply calls for collective work. In this
sense, people talk of “minga to mend the community school”, of “minga
decoration of the city” or even, of “Global minga”. 150 The essential sense
in such cases is collectively to look after an asset of common interest.
It effectively amounts to the combination of a collective will to preserve
a public good, or rather we could say, what are conceived of as “common
goods”, on different social and geographical scales. This is the
sense underlying the proliferation of working practices generically designated
by the word minga. We can speak of a global minga to achieve
the declaration of the Common Good of Humanity. However, considered
in its sociocultural context, minga is a much more complex institution
with deep historical roots and multiple dimensions: social and
economic, ecological and ritual, political and normative. Etymologically,
it comes from the Kichwa verbal root minka- 151 which means «to entrust»,
«to take care of something». From this point of view minka designates
collective work, though not just any collective work but that
which is done as an act of solidarity, be it towards a person, a family or
a larger community. Community and individuality include the relationship
with the place and other forms of life living there, as we saw in the tale
of the hunter. Nor is this a question of just any kind of solidarity: the
practice of minka goes beyond the sense of solidarity understood as a
momentary adhesion to the cause of others. On the contrary, the act of
taking care of something implies responsibility to look after it, a responsibility
that makes sense in the construction of the social, such as in relationships
and interactions that transcend the human (the ukuy ants,
the machakuy runa). Minka entails a normative and continuous social responsibility
derived from assuming the care of something or someone
as a permanent mode of coexistence. Thus, on the everyday social level,
150 I refer to a rallying cry formulated in English: Global Minga in Defense of Mother
Earth and Her Peoples, October 12-16, available at: http://intercontinentalcry.org/
global-minga-in-defence-of-mother-earth-and-her-peoples/
151 The orthographical difference is to differentiate the use of the word in Spanish
and Kichwa. In the context of Spanish it is written minga; while in the Kichwa context
it is written minka-, the verbal root or action to which other meanings can be
added by using suffixes; the hyhen indicates this semantic opening.
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