Around that time a double movement began: the colonization of time and the invention of the European Middle Age; and the colonization of space and the invention of the America and of the Old World. There was no Old World without a New one. And the Old World was later divided between the imperial Old World (Atlantic Europe) and the colonial Old World (Asia and Africa).

The first civilizations to suffer the consequences of the formation and expansion of Western civilization were the Incas, the Aztecs and the Mayas. One of the drastic consequences was the dismantling of the communal system of social organization, that today indigenous nations in Bolivia and Ecuador are working to reconstruct and reconfigure. From the European perspective, the communal may sound like socialism or communism. But it is not: socialism and communism were born in Europe as a response to liberalism and capitalism. Not the communal system. The communal system in Tawantinsuyu and Anahuac, as I imagine social organizations in China before the Opium War and the arrival of Mao Zedong, were not created as responses to liberalism and capitalism. They had to adapt and still are adapting to capitalist and (neo) liberal intrusion.

A recent proposal to re-inscribe (not to recover or to go back to the past) the communal into contemporary debates on pluri-national states is “El sistema communal como alternativa al sistema liberal” by Aymara sociologist Félix Patzi Paco. But there are others as well. Evo Morales’s discourses are full of references to the communal. Nina Pacari, ex-chancellor of Ecuador and recently appointed to Evo Morales secretary of foreign relations is another example as well as the collective work of CONAMAQ (Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Colasuyu). No need to explain this in the same way that there is no need, for example, to explain a reference to the Jakobins or the French commune, in the re-orientation of the European left.

Therefore, the communal shall not be confused with “the common”, which is becoming the new keywords and the re-orientation of the European left. Now the idea of the “common” is part of European history imaginary. It could be taken up of course by Marxist oriented left in non-European parts of the world who would prefer to be “modern” instead of taking the bull by the horn, and without fear, to think from their own histories instead of adapting and adopting solutions that emerged from other historical trajectories.

The communal, on the other hand, is indeed a form of social organization that was disrupted, as I said, by the European invasion of what became America. It subsisted for 500 years, and the Zapatistas are re-inscribing it in the form The Caracoles. The reconfiguration of the Ayllu as is being advanced in CONAMAQ in Bolivia, doesn’t mean to go back to the past. The reorganization of the Ayllus and Markas means to re-inscribe the social organization of one of the four Suyus of Tawantinsuyu. In this case Qollasuyu which is the Suyu “underneath” the soil of the Bolivian nation. When Alain Badiou talks about the common and refers to Jean-Jacques Rouseau, the Jakobins and the Chinese Cultural Revolution–but only the Marxist side of Mao Zedong. But there is another side of Mao Zedong, one cannot surmise that he is proposing to go back to the Enlightenment or to Mao. One may regret, in the second case, that Badiou is only taking into account the genealogy of European thoughts and not asking what Chinese are thinking today in terms of dealing with the invasion of the West. What is relevant for Badiou and the European left may not be relevant for Chinese thinkers, leaders and the civil and political society. Or if you wish, the European left can celebrate Mao and Evo Morales, although what Mao was trying to do and Evo Morales is doing, has not much to do with the European left, but with their own histories, memories, subjectivities.

The point being that an idea of the “common” that goes back to eighteenth century France and twentieth century China, is not necessarily “preferable” to the idea of the “communal” that goes back to the socio-economic organization of Indigenous civilization, in the Americas, disrupted by European civilizers who created the conditions for eighteenth century France to happen.

The idea of the communal is not grounded in the idea of the “comuna”, although in Bolivia the idea of the “comuna” was taken up, not by Aymara and Quechua intellectuals, but by members of the Creole and Mestizo/a population, which is an important aspect of the debate in Bolivia, between the colonial left (meaning, the left of Marxist bent that unfolded in European colonies) and the Indigenous projects of decoloniality. Not that one is good and other is bad, for we know that there is no safe place; but we should know that the left of European genealogy of thought (and the same genealogy in modern/colonial states) doesn’t have the monopoly to imagine and dictate how a non-capitalist future shall be. The communal is an-other story which cannot be subsumed by the common, the commune or communism. This is not of course my decision, but the way I understand the dignity of people who do not want to be civilized either by the right nor by the left.

II
Aymara sociologist Félix Patzi Paco is a controversial figure in Bolivia and in the current process of thinking and working toward a pluri-national state. Creoles and Mestizo intellectuals suspect that Patzi Paco is working toward the hegemony of Aymara’s people which means on the one hand a project that is not pluri-national because its aim is to reverse the white (mestizo/creole) hegemony and, on the other, it ignores the many nations that currently exist in the state of Bolivia, including other indigenous nations as well as peasant organized communities. Since the objection is coming from leftist voices (generally whites by South American standards) seriously engaged in building a pluri-national state–and not, for example, from the right wing of the low land–the tension between the left ingrained in European traditions and decolonial indigenous voices ingrained in a long history of confrontations with European traditions reveals a common threat: the dividing line between leftist and decolonial subjectivities and genealogies of thought; briefly the difference between the diversity of the population of European descent (spiritually white) and the diversity of the population of Indigenous descent. Mixed of course but always through power and the colonial difference.

Patzi Paco launched a proposal toward the re-conceptualization of a “communal system” as an alternative to the liberal system. In the Indigenous intellectual tradition shall be distinguished from the common proposed by the European left. The genealogy of thoughts, history and sensibility are far apart in these two proposals. It shall be seen how and if they can work together in the future. The commons is being thought out as the pressure of the multitude to transform, through increasing and radical demands, the current complicities between the state and the market (capitalism). The communal comes from a non-western cosmology and sensibility, entrenched some how with western cosmology where the European left is inscribed, but endowed with particular visions of the organization of the economy and of governability. Notice that “sistema liberal” here means the advent of the modern/colonial state in Bolivia (and other regions of the non-western world), after independence from Spain, controlled by an elite of creoles and mestizos that lasted until the election of Evo Morales as president of Bolivia, in December of 2005.

Patzi Paco’s proposal, published in 2004, did not loose its relevance and its insights. I will risk a summary, in a few pages, hoping to do justice to a proposal that deserves to be further debated. I will make some changes in the vocabulary. I will substitute “workers/trabajadores” by “persons.” In spite of the fact that Patzi Paco makes clear distinctions between “communism” (in the Marxist trajectory) and “communal” (in the indigenous experiences in the Andes), he remained attached to the word “workers” that detracts from his proposal. Indeed, what he is proposing demands a different characterization of social roles. For that reason, the communal system is open to “persons” (Indians or not) as well as to different types of “works:” in a communal system the distinction between owner and waged worker as well as boss and employee in administrative organizations (banks, state organizations) vanished as well. To understand the scope of Patzi Paco’s proposal it is then necessary to clear our heads of the image of “Indians = peasants” that the coloniality of knowledge and of being imposed upon all of us, over five hundred years of control of knowledge and rhetoric of salvation.

One motivation of the proposal was to redress the image of Indian nations that prevail among social scientists, in Bolivia and from other countries and to provide a vision of Indian society and nation that is not shaped by disciplinary concerns but that comes from the history and memories of Indians themselves. As sociologist, he is not rejecting the disciplines, and particularly sociology, but he reverses his role. Instead of listening to the dictates of sociology, he uses sociology to communicate and organize his argument. The end result is a clear case of border epistemology.

Patzi Paco’s main objection to disciplinary studies of Indian nations is that they limit their investigations and report to:

–The common culture
–The language
–The territorial space

By so doing the “core” of communal organization, that in the Andes is the Ayllu, is bypassed or ignored comes to the fore. The proposal is then basically a description of the system of economic management and the system of political management, that he considers as the “core” of the communal system while the elements just mentioned constituted the “context” (e.g., entorno). So basically, most of what we know about Aymara and Quechuas in Bolivia is knowledge of the “context” but not of the “core” of their socio-economic organization.

There are several disclaimers that precede the presentation of his main thesis. One is the common myth among non-Indians that Indians are a homogenous community. Patzi Paco dispels the myth by drawing on class distinction. Among Indians there are professionals, retailers, manual workers, etc. On the other hand, there are Indians industry owners who exploit Indian labor. In a society where the communal system co-exists with the liberal one and market economy, industry owners have re-functionalized Andean reciprocity in order to obtain longer labor journeys (12 instead of 8 hours) for low salaries. That this would happen is not surprising and it doesn’t offer a counterargument against the communal system but rather support arguments against the mythical view of Indian society by the Creole-Mestizo society.

Identity is another issue that requires clarification. Both “indigenistas” (non-Indians who are pro-indians) and “indianistas” (Indians themselves who engage in identity politics like forms of identification with Indigeneity through clothes, long hair, rituals) operate at the level of the “entorno” (environment) rather than at the level of the two basic nodes of the system: economic and political organization.

Thus when Indianistas and Indigenistas refer to the ayllu, their reference is made to “territorial geographic organization” (which is a state conception) rather than to the “core” of the ayllu which is the economic and political organization. Patzi Paco’s proposal will focus precisely on this. The question Patzi Paco asks: how to solve the paradox between, on the one hand, the denial of Indigenous identity and its reinforcement, on the other? He mentions some positions among Indianistas and Indigenistas who argued for the need of a mental revolution in order to solve the paradox. Patzi Paco’s opinion is that this position is utopian since it is impossible to revert the process when nations are traversed by global flows (music, television, cinema, videos, internet).

Patzi Paco will address all these issues through his theory of communal system. In personal conversation he mentioned that has has been observing for several years that there was an incongruence between the attention paid to surface symbols of Indians (whether they have cell phones and adapt symbols of not Indian culture) but less attention was paid to the fact that the ayllu remained, changed, but remained as ayllu. The reason why they survived for three hundred years of Spanish colonialism and two hundred years of Bolivian republic, was not taken into consideration.

The question was how to structure the argument to make it effective. One night the light came in the name of Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems. Patzi Paco draw on two concepts, system and environment (e.g., entorno), that he also renders in terms of “center” and “periphery” (not in the geopolitical sense of the terms but to characterize a given social organization). As I suggested before, this is not a case of application of Luhmann’s theory but its reversal. This is one of the obstacles that decolonial thinking has to solve. One way to go is border epistemology or border gnosis, a problem that is not a problem for the re-orientation of the European left in thinking “the common” since the re-thinking takes places, internally, within their regional genealogy of thought. Badiou doesn’t need to deal with “Chinese thoughts” but Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong had no choice but to be confronted with “European thought” from the right and from the left.

As Patzi Paco explains, Luhmann is concerned with social stability while he is interested in social transformation; furthermore, Luhmann’s analyzes modern society in which different fields are self-constituted (the political field, the economic field, the religious field, the artistic field), while in the ayllu this situation doesn’t obtain. In his own words:

“Asi una sociedad organizada en subsistemas, para Luhmann, es una sociedad que no dispone de ningún órgano central. Es una sociedad sin vértice ni centro. Mientras mi planteamiento consiste en que toda sociedad tiene su esencia o centro y una periferia. Esta diferencia es sin duda comprensible debido a que la preocupación de Luhmann es la de preservar la sociedad moderna, por eso podemos ubicarlo dentro del paradigma de una teoría general de la estabilidad. Mientras que nosotros proponemos una teoría de transformación.”

If then, social organizations are structured around two pillars of the system, which constitute its core (political and economic management) and its environment (or entorno), then both the liberal state in Bolivia and the Indian organizations around the ayllus are both characterized by their system and their environment. This hypothesis explains that state multiculturalism (or the pluri and the multi as the expressions went) was an attempt from the Bolivian state to co-op the environment of the ayllu while ignoring, at the same time its core: the political and economic management. Here resides the second strong motivation to bring to the foreground the communal system and to confront it as an alternative option to the liberal system.

We can see now that both the “common” and the “communal” describe two horizons of expectations, one coming from the history of Europe and concocted by the European left and the other coming from the colonial histories of the Americas and concocted by Indigenous decolonial thinkers. What counts here is that a break through took place: the awareness of the indigenous leaders, Indian communities and non-Indian middle class supporters, that a de-colonial path to the future was opening and global futures cannot longer be though out in terms of “good” universals that shall replace the “bad” universals of official Christianity and liberal capitalist civilization.

I can anticipate two kinds of smiles here: a) Romantic Indianism for the first case (Bolivia) and b) Imperialist pretensions of having a world homogenized by the communal system (global reach, not globalism or globalization in the neo-liberal sense of the word). Whoever has been following the events in South America since the Zapatistas uprising, and in the Andes in the past 15 years, would have a hard time convincing me and others that this is romantic political theory. The second, we (all on the globe) are at the point in which abstract universals are no longer tenable: global reach of communal systems (which will not necessarily be based on Aymara-Quechua experiences if the system is worked out in China or South Africa) doesn’t mean monotopic universality. What it means is that de-colonial options toward global futures have in the communal system both a philosophy of life, a non-capitalist economy where the main reward in life is to accumulate wealth, a non-liberal voting system to elect the candidate who propose themselves as candidate; and a non-communist organization in the hand of a omnipresent state. But what is it the communal system?

Briefly stated:

Entendemos por concepto comunal o comunitario a la propiedad colectiva de los recursos y al manejo o usufructo privado del mismo. Por eso esta categoría debe ser entendida no sólo como algo referido a las sociedades rurales o agrarias, aunque son las que han sabido adaptarse muy bien a los cambios contemporáneos. De ahí que, sin duda, nuestro punto de partida para el análisis de los sistemas comunales son las sociedades indígenas. A diferencia de las sociedades modernas, las sociedades indígenas no han producido los esquemas de diferenciación ni tampoco han generado la separación entre campos (campo política, campo económico, campo cultural, etc.).

I would like to propose here a change in the vocabulary. Patzi Paco remains within a sociological vocabulary shared by liberal and Marxists: “property” albeit with the modifier “colectiva.” But “collective property” may be a confusing expression if we want to clearly distinguish between a communal system and communism or the commune. I would rather look for an expression like “collective rights to resources and group/family rights to use the fruits of their labor” (which means that people are not exploited by other people who appropriated the fruits of their labor as is the case in capitalist economy).

As I observed before, Patzi Paco looks at both the liberal and the communal systems in their core and their environment or “entorno”. In their core, there are both organized and consolidated on two pillars, economic and political/administrative managements. The difference lies in the type of economy and the political organization, both constituted by two types of “entornos” that Patzi Paco describes as “internal” and “external.” Internal “entorno” is generated within the system itself, liberal or communal. Crucial here is how both the system and the entorno are “coupled.” Patzi Paco introduces the concept of operational coupling and structural coupling. Through operational coupling a system, communal or liberal, can appropriate elements from the “entorno” of other systems. Thus, actors living by the rules of a communal system can appropriate elements of the entorno of the liberal systems, for example technology. Indian insurgencies that controlled the city of La Paz on a couple of occasions that ended with the presidency of Sánchez de Losada and later on of Carlos Mesa, were organized following the habits and the logic of the ayllu using cellular phones. The liberal system can, by means of operational coupling, appropriate elements from another system, the communal, and “include” them next to the elements of the “entorno” internal to the liberal system. This is a common strategy to build the rhetoric of “inclusion” without modifying the core, political/ administrative and economic management.

Thus, the two pillars of the communal system (as of any other social system, sultanates, kingdom, modern-European liberal societies or modern/colonial societies in British or independent India or colonial or independent Bolivia) are then “the system of economic management” and the “system of political/administrative management.” The fact that the two systems of management could be distinguished doesn’t mean that the economy and the government of the Sultanate shall be equal to the British State; and that the current organization of the modern states shall remain forever the model for the management of the community. Theoretically then the questions are how the Andean communal system differs from the Bolivian version of the liberal system, but how it could be similar to any other social systems in the present that has been affected and disrupted by five hundred years of Western expansion.

Now, I am not suggesting here that Patzi Paco’s modeling of the communal system shall be like the architect design for either remodeling an old building or building a new one. We know that people can be pushed to do what they do not want to do to a certain point. José Carlos Mariátegui saw it clearly and distinctively when he referred to building national-states grounded in liberal principles, in Peru after independence, in early nineteenth century. He stated:

“A society cannot be transformed artificially, still less a peasant society (here he is referring to Indians society indeed) deeply attached to its traditions and its legal institutions. Individualism has not has not originated in ay country’s constitution or civil code. It must be formed through a more complicated and spontaneous process. Destroying the “communities” did not convert the Indians into small landowners or even into free salaried workers; it delivered their lands to the gamonales and their clientele and made it easier for the latifundista to chain the Indian to the latifundium.”

Patzi Paco’s conceptualization of the communal system cannot be thought out as a replacement of the current modern/national state for it will not result on a plurinational but on a mononational state with different configuration. But for the same reason, it should count in the discussion for a pluri-national state for the current modern/colonial and mononational state could not offer a solution for a pluri-national state. Ignoring Patzi Paco’s proposal by the progressive left may end up in an excuse to prevent Indigenous and peasant leaders and communities to intervene in de-colonizing the current mono-cultural state that have been disputed by the white (creole-mestizo) right and left. A pluri-national state cannot be the left in power with the support of the Indians against the extreme right of the lowlands with the support of the international market.

III.

The United Nations will honor President Evo Morales with the title of “Defensor de la Madre Tierra.” In fact Evo Morales has been very vocal and clear advancing de-colonial views of Western conceptualization of Human/Nature relations, particularly since Francis Bacon’s Novun Organum (1620). The move by the United Nations support recent conversations and celebrations of the declaration of “the rights of nature.” But the “rights of nature”, like “human rights” are necessary in a society in which “mother earth” is indeed “exploited” as provider of “natural resources” for a society based on the Industrial and Technological Revolutions, both part and parcel of a liberal and capitalist civilizations. There was no need of “the rights of nature” for example, in Tawantinsuyu or in Ancient China for there was not Industrial Revolution that needed to deplete natural resources to produce artificial commodities and to dump the waist and the dirty the water on “nature” whose rights have been violated to produce artificial commodities, industrial and technological. The United Nations’ move responds to honest liberal intentions but at the same time silencing the process of the de-colonial Pachakuti (a Andean philosophical concept meaning a radical turn around of time and space) that the idea “of the communal system” is bringing to Bolivia, South America and to the world: the communal system doesn’t propose a more equitable distribution of wealth, but an horizon of life where wealth is not the goal. The goal, as it is being repeated today and inscribed in the Ecuadorian constitution is “el bien vivir” and “el bien vivir” cannot be attained through an economic system the promotes gains and accumulation at the expenses of human lives and of all living systems simplified under the name of “nature.”

[1] ) http://www.conamaq.org.bo/

[1] ) http://www.lacan.com/essays/?page_id=99).

[1] ) See for instance the recent conference at Birbeck College, London, on “The Idea of Communism,” http://www.lacan.com/essays/?page_id=99.

[1]) For the contextualization of “grupo comuna” see http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0718-090X2005000100006&script=sci_arttext. Four names associated to it are Alvaro Garcia-Lineras, current Vice-President of Bolivia, Raquel Gutierrez, Raul Prada, also working in the government and Luis Tapia..

[1] ) Sistema Comunal. Una propuesta alternativa al sistema liberal. Una discusión teórica para salir de la colonialidad y del liberalismo. La Paz: CEA (Comunidad de Estudios Alternativos), 2004. I will refer particularity to chapter V that contains the proposal.

[1] ) During his visit to UNC-Duke Consortium of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, in November of 2004/

[1] ) Translated by John Bednarz, Jr with Dirk Baecker. Stanford: Stanford U.P., 1995.

[1] )  Since the book by Patzi Paco, published in Bolivia, is not of easy access, I am quoting here from the reproduction of the main chapter (chapter 4), printed as “Sistema Comunal: Una propuesta alternative al sistema liberal,” in Las vertientes americanas del pensamiento y el proyecto des-colonial

[1] ) op.cit, 70.

[1] ) These concepts were introduced originally by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela El árbol del conocimiento. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Univrsitaria, 1984. They were used without explicit reference by Niklas Luhmann.  But this is issue is for another discussion.

[1] )  Esteban Ticona, personal communication.

[1] ) Jose Carlos Mariategui, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality [1927]. Translated by Marjori Urquidi. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1990.

[1] ) At the time I was writing this article, no information is available in English, in Google. But it is all over the place in Spanish. http://spanish.china.org.cn/international/txt/2009-08/28/content_18419184.htm

It called my attention for two reasons. The first I explain here is that I saw it coming: the struggle of the twenty-first century will be a struggle for the control of knowledge. Up to this point the control of knowledge was not yet at the same level of conflict than the control of authority (international relations, military budgets and nuclear control agreements) and the control of economy (free trade, Doha Rounds, NAFTA, etc.). The second reason I stopped, opened and read it, was a ” coincidence.”

The coincidence was that on April 26 the NYT published an op-ed, signed by the Chair of the Religion Department at Columbia University, Dr. Mark C. Taylor titled ” End the University as We Know it”

There is a flat paragraph (just showing half of the story) in the call for papers, which is somewhat recast in the article by Taylor. The paragraph is the following:

“One of the paradoxical characteristics of our time is that some of the most creative thinking comes from business, politician and other community leaders rather than academe. The World Universities Forum has been created in the belief that there is an urgent need for academe to connect more directly and boldly with the large questions of our time. In much the same way that the World Economic Forum has forged a role of global intellectual leadership for politicians, business people and community leaders.”

Why does the author of this paragraph focus on a paradox and I see a flat paragraph hiding half of the story? Common sense will say that indeed the paradox is true. And that is exactly the point that Taylor is making in the NYT op-ed. The paradox is truly cast in terms of the World Universities Forum. Although in the past two decades (particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union) universities (particularly in the United States and Western Europe but also around the world, from Argentina to India) has embraced corporate values (instead of the humanistic values of the Kantian-Humboltian type of university that was dominant from the 1900 to 1945), the corporate university become prominent recently. It should not surprise us then that recent re-orientation of universities became strictly connected to corporate values and corporate needs. The crisis of Wall Street was not just a financial crisis, it was an epistemic crisis: it showed that the rational models in computers, the calculation of consumer reactions, the extreme confidence in numbers and computer models, was all just fine as an entertaining kids game, not serious knowledge. Kids are fine to forget about ” reality”that is why they are kids. But arrogant and unethical grown ups belong to the category of “crimes against humanity” that Human Rights organizations have been successful in pursuing and penalizing (Pinochet, various truth commissions around the world, Milosevich, etc.). There were a few who inflicted self-penalty and committed suicide, which the media exploited telling long stories and showing pictures to make believe that the guilty also suffer. So, there is something wrong in a paradox that promotes, from The Economic Social Forum, the rethinking of the university and of knowledge production. What is wrong is that half of the story is being told: an-other knowledge is needed.

I suppose that the organizers of the World Social Forum are already examining the consequences of The World Universities Forum. It will be indeed great and necessary, but much more is needed beyond what the World Social Forum may do. What is needed is a global epistemic and conceptual discussion of the de-colonial politics of knowledge: a massive and global debate about learning to unlearn what is presupposed in the call for papers and in Taylor’s article. What is needed then is a network of Worlds Epistemic and Ethic Fora toward communal futures, which means de-westernizing and decolonizing knowledge and education.

II.
The World Universities Forum embodied corporate interests and the transformation of the university being thought out presupposes knowledge at the service of corporate values and horizon of life. This horizon, in its more acceptable formulations, would be “development and freedom” as argued by Amartya Sen. The problem is that ” development”is not a taken for granted horizon. Arguments showing that beyond the rhetoric of development the seed of exploitation of human labor and natural resources continues, has been mounting since 1990. The problem is that while Davos has the resources provided by development projects, those who suffer the consequences, or are aware of the devastating consequences of development, do no have the same resources (institutions, main stream media, book industry) to promote a communal, rather than corporate, life horizons.

Thus, while many of us who see that “development is the problem”and would agree with organizers of The World Universities Forum and with Mark Taylor that the university is in need of transformation, we do not agree in what transformations are needed. And we do not believe that these decisions can be only taken at Davos. While defenders of corporate values in research and education are entitled to their own arguments, they are not entitled to act as if the final truth lies in devastating global futures of which we are having plenty of examples (food crisis, Wall Street, virus caused by lack of hygiene among food producers, water crisis, growing economic differences between the shrinking global economic elite and the global poverty masses). “Development and growth”are not the answer. Mark Taylor has a good point: universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, need to be regulated. Who will do the job and with what purpose? If we, all of us, want to live well instead of living better than our neighbors, as Bolivian President Evo Morales has been stating based on the tradition of Aymara philosophy instead of the tradition of Greek and European enlightenment philosophy of life, for which “nature” has to be known and dominated, then regulation has to be pluri-versal and not uni-versal and the main office of universality set on Davos.

The problem with Mark Taylor’s recommendations, what I surmise are Davos too, are only formal. And they are only formal because the supposition is that there is one, only one way to go: “forward, development, improvement of the existing horizon of life”which began to be formed and spread during the sixteenth century, in the Atlantic, under the leadership of Europe, the labor of Africans and the lands taken away from the Indians in the Americas and the Caribbean. It is not Greece we should place at the center of modern/colonial history if we really want to democratize the economy and put education at the service of economic democracy. However, after Wall Street the debates are not about economic democracy but about saving capitalism. And that the way of life, the ethics and the subjectivities (produce, save and accumulate; consume, consume, consume and be happy), cannot be solved with a transformation of the curriculum and the expansion of technology that, today, is part of the problem: water pollution in small towns, where metal extractions are being implemented by transnational corporations in Argentina for example (Cerro de Fátima), that polluted the water in order to wash the stone and the detritus and extract mineral to produce more cell phones, ipods, mini and maxi computers, etc.)

III.-
III. 1. The paradox mentioned in the call for papers that creativity lately takes places outside of the university is partially true. Indeed, biographies of political celebrities, comedians and anchors of economic programs like Lou Dobbs, are more successful in quantity of book selling than most faculty publishing academic books. “Success”in selling is one story. It has to do with information and books as commodities. “Creativity”is another thing. An area of impressive creativity in between the university of the world outside of the university has been the all kind of investigations, from violations of human rights, violations of security measures like in the case of the pork shine in Mexico recently (May 2009), all kind of water pollution incurred by mining corporations who are careless about the consequences of water pollution and endangering the health of communities along the river, Monsanto, Singenta, Dupont and other corporations speculating with food stock prices to increase gains at the expense of millions of human beings suffering the consequences of magnificent economic gains.

If as Taylor says in his article, universities need to be regulated like Detroit and Wall Street, so do the corporations, not just the universities. The World Universities Forum at Davos could be one of the places, together with the World Social University Forum initiated in Porto Alegre, as well as many other organizations like the Indigenous Summit of the Americas and the extremely well conceived, creative, ground breaking, life-oriented Amawtay Wasi (House of Knowledge), Universidad Pluri-cultural de los Pueblos y Naciones Indígneas del Ecuador. From the leader of Amawtay Wasi to Taylor’s article and the organizers of the World Universities Forum, and many of us, are all in agreement that the university as we know it today needs to be re-oriented to respond to the most pressing needs of our time. But of course, not in its totality, and here is where Taylor’s article is in need to be strongly amended. Two amendings are most pressing:

a) What are the needs of our time cannot be decided uni-laterally. And even less, what are the solutions. If there is an agreement between Bolivian organizations, the leader of the Summit of the Americas and the leaders of World Universities Forum, in consultation with all involved parties, that water is a pressing problem, the solution cannot be determined at Davos: Davos is not the United Nations but only a group of interest, a particular group of interest that advocates “development and economic growth”under the conviction, the belief, or just the interest that economic growth and development is the way to freedom and happiness. That is not a commonly shared view, not even a majority view;

b) It would be detrimental for the future of society and life on the planet if the university turns completely to support corporate values. It is crucial that the University remains the place of free thinking and research, where “creativity”is not valued in relation to pressing needs but will indeed contribute to anticipate future problems. What is crucial is that research at the university will contribute to “regulate corporate toxic excess in massive production and corporate legal excess in hiding and persecuting creative researchers who reveal their violations of the law and of human rights.” The World Universities at Davos could make a significant contribution to regulate the excesses of the values it defends. A just world and democratic economy, needs the collaboration of all sectors involved, and not just one, the economic elite more often than not supported by States drawn into corporate values (like the late G.W. Bush’s administration).

c) And that touches to the problem of tenure. It is imperative for a free and creative community of researcher and free thinkers, that tenure be maintained. It is imperative that researchers and free thinkers doing investigation to regulate the excesses of the corporate world and politicians be not only granted tenure but the necessary security of their life and families, and not be prosecuted, killed and sometimes forced into suicide. What could be done is that a sector of the university, say 25% of it, be organized around “creativity and corporate values”and that sector of the university will not grant tenure but it will work under contract regulations connected to the corporations. In other words, the corporate sector will be allowed to use university facilities and hire their researchers under contract.

III.2. Let me illustrate my previous considerations. I offer three examples, although there are thousands of them from the multiple denunciations prompted by the Bush’s administration, including parallel ones like the Enron scandal, the Wall Street jambalaya, Katrina’s negligence (which could have been taken advantage of “creative research,”but creative research that prevents and denounce do not deserve the same attention as “creative research”like Wall Street that expands to the limit of the sky the financial planetary growth and the paradise of globalization).

1) The creative research of organization such La Via Campesina and Sovereignty of Food are two unparalleled developments of the kind both creativity and research that shall be supported by all organizations working toward “democratic economy”(instead of “saving capitalism”), for the well being, full participation of the population of the planet. Beyond the creative, looking forward, imaginative in devising and implementing measures to build social organizations not pushed and managed by corporate and state interests, they do creative research to unveil the strategies used by corporations, in many cases with the assent of the state, to prevent such development. Corporations interested in exploiting natural resources are not interested in having “competitors”like La Via Campesina who are not competitors in the same terrain, but organizations that are de-linking from the rules of the game established by corporations who are interested in increasing gains and not let people improve their quality of life. Monsanto, or any other corporation, cannot decide what quality of life is for peasants who are producing their own knowledge, leading their own life, and not competing with Monsanto in terms of gain but competing in terms of the vision of life and quality of life.

One of the major roles of the non-corporate sector of the University, the free thinking and research sector, confronted with the problems of our time is, precisely, to contribute to regulate the corporations and the state, rather than leaving the state and the corporation to regulate the university. In a balanced situation, indeed, the three entities should regulate each other. One of the main changes, that is not clear in Taylor’s article and in the principles of the World Universities Forum, is that there is no zero point of regulation. Corporations are entitled to defend their interest, but they have no right to impose their interest to other sectors of society.

For example, there has been a significant amount of controversy over the combined project, Bill’s and Melinda’s Gates-Rockefeller Foundations to enhance agriculture in Africa. The controversy has been detailed, and creatively researched, and professionally reported by the etc.group , in March/April 2007. One can not doubt that both Foundations have the best intention to improve conditions in Africa, but it so happened that African Farmers and organizations like La Via Campesina have their own ideas of how to improve conditions in Africa, but their ideas have been mostly ruled out and African actors and agencies are placed in a position of “receivership.”Experts in the West, living in the West, with life experience in a developed country supposedly know what is good for people living in Africa. Christian missionaries operated on the same principles for over 500 years. That we move from theology to economy and international relations shall not hide the fact that the philosophy is the same.

And that is the main problem we, all as students and faculty at the university and citizens, will face with projects like the World Universities Forum if the leaders of such organization do not open up their projects to promote and enhance “critical research toward economic democracy and communal”(not communist, communal—based on the principles of Indigenous organization and not on the European commune after the enlightenment); and “critical research destined to regulated development enterprise which, with good or bad intention, will continue to operate uni-laterally.”

2) Second case. “Consider, for example, a Water program” Taylor suggests. And he continues “In the coming decades, Water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of wter will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges.”

Indeed!!

This is indeed a good point. Aymaras in Bolivia reminded us once and again, during the “water war” that ended up expelling the multinationals run by the giant Bechtel, of a basic truth that coloniality of knowledge managed to make us forget. In that process Aymaras insisted in that “water is a human right, not a commodity.” Any creative investigation to solve the water problem shall start with this crucial point. To do research to solve the problem of water while at the same time maintaining it as a commodity, is a problem without solution.

Now, there are two trajectories under which research to solve such problems could be done. One would be under the horizon of life guided by ideals o economic development and social modernization. In this case water will be a commodity and research may be more oriented toward generating gains for the corporations than solving problems for the humanity.

The second trajectory would be to do research demonstrating why water problems could not be solved as far as water remains a commodity. This kind of research (technically, ethically and politically) had to show a) that a new type of economy is needed; b) that the knowledge of local Western experts has to be complemented with the knowledge local communities that for centuries were successful in solving water problems; c) Western local expert would have to submit themselves to the needs and knowledge of communities to help solve the problems and not to bring with solutions based on abstract knowledge and not in living experiences and knowledge accumulated for centuries. This second trajectory of research, creative research, would have to unveil the danger of coloniality; that is, of the ideology of economic development and of modernization

For example, in Water Wars (2002) Indian scientist and activist Vandana Shiva reports about the principle and structure of knowledge that for millennia allowed people in desert zones to build balanced systems of irigations that insure the water availability under adverse climatic conditions.

Another example that requires precisely the kind of “creative research around problems” that Taylor asks for. Recently in Argentina, noted scientist Andrés Carrasco denounced the poisoning of soya seeds, covered up under the rhetoric of increasing productivity and economic growth (that is, rhetoric of growth, development and modernization). Not surprisingly, the corporate sector (which one would surmise would support world university forum in Davos and most likely the kind of research promoted by Taylor). The end result is that is no longer the state but the corporate world repressing creative research.

These are indeed a paradigmatic examples to understand that “creative research”toward communal futures and economic democracies, has to solve the combined problem of the ignorance of Western experts and the knowledge of non-Western ignorant (ignorant, of course, from the perspective of Western experts).

One day the experts from the West came, with technology, tubes and water-pumps, all explained in their rhetoric of modernization and development. Technology will solve the problem. They dug into the dry desert and splashed water …for a while. The millennial system of irrigation built in the process of building knowledge by doing and living, was dismantled by the ignorance of the expert. The local generated knowledge in the process of organizing their life. The expert acquires knowledge to help economic growth by ignoring his ignorance by imposing his or her expertise.

Another example, a extremely creative research by Vandana Shiva about “the disappearing knowledge system”and the “appearing of the monocultures of the mind.”
Western experts go to an Indian Forest or to the Amazon. They see timber and weeds. They are ignorant about properties of the “weed”that has been organized and transmitted by millennia by local knowledge of people living in the forest, to which the local knowledge of the expert living in the city or university, is totally clueless. But the expert has the support of the corporations and of the local state where the timber and the weed are. So, weed are being destroyed because of uselessness and tress too because timber is needed to enhance development.

Yes, the university needs to be reformed. Students and future generations need to understand that corporate values at the university are reinforcing the uni-lateral view, which beyond being uni-lateral, is deadly. The struggle for the control of knowledge is imperative in the twenty-first century. Knowledge controlled only by the corporations and States supporting corporate values will be the last weapon for a ruling corporate elite managing a totalitarian society with the sweet chants of consumptions and happiness.

3) Another case. The Amazon Rainforest is the world’s greatest natural resource – the most powerful and bio-actively diverse natural phenomenon on the planet. Yet still it is being destroyed just like other rainforests around the world. The problem and the solution to rainforest destruction are both economic. This is a case in which accumulation of wealth at expenses of life promotes the production of objects over the reproduction of life. Common sense will say that this is totally irrational, but the rhetoric of modernity is constantly converting the irrational into the rationality of progress and development. highlight production instead of regeneration. Thankfully, this viable economic alternative does exist. Many organizations have demonstrated that if the medicinal plants, fruits, nuts, oils and other resources like rubber, chocolate and chicle, were harvested sustainably – rainforest land has a much more economic value than if timber were harvested or if it were burned down for cattle or farming operations. Sustainable harvesting of these types of resources provides this value today as well as more long term income and profits year after year for generations to come. However, viable economic alternatives are important but not yet enough: it is imperative to shift the geography of reasoning and understand that the ” conquest and domination of nature” is one of the most detrimental principles of modernity.

This is no longer a theory. It is a fact and it is being implemented today. Today, entire communities and indigenous tribes earn 5 to 10 times more money wild harvesting medicinal plants, fruits, nuts and oils than they can earn by chopping down the forest for subsistence crops – another reason why so much rainforest land is lost year after year. This much needed income source creates the awareness and economic incentive for this population in the rainforest to protect and preserve the forests for long term profits for themselves and their children and is an important solution in saving the rainforest from destruction. Once again, while it is crucial to have economic incentive in a still capitalist economy, de-colonial future horizons do not accept that economic incentives are the only ones. Economic incentives make sense only in the philosophy of capitalist economy. But, as I am arguing here, economy and capitalism are not the same, and non-capitalist economies are thinkable and available. Democratizing the economy will be one specific and concrete way of thinking de-colonially and promoting de-colonial creative research.

4) A couple of examples from the Humanities, although the Humanities shall be the overarching frame for critical investigation toward communal futures and critical investigations unveiling excess in the name of development and growth hiding personal and group economic private interests.

4a) Taylor reports the following, in his op-ed published in the NYT:

Just a few weeks ago, I attended a meeting of political scientists who had gathered to discuss why international relations theory had never considered the role of religion in society. Given the state of the world today, this is a significant oversight. There can be no adequate understanding of the most important issues we face when disciplines are cloistered from one another and operate. on their own premises.

Certainly; for many of us dwelling in the modern/colonial history of the South Atlantic since 1500, international law, theology, political economy (before it existed as such) and racism, went hand in hand. Francisco de Vitoria in Spain, and his followers in Spain and Portugal, had to deal with questions of divine, natural and human law; recognize the humanity of the Indians, but at the same time, justify the Spaniards right to disposes from their land. About half a century later, when Hugo Grotius was working at the service of Dutch interests, and defending Dutch interests from those of Spain and England, was rehearsing Vitoria not vis-à-vis Indians in South America, but Indians in India. Indeed, here is an issue of enormous relevance to investigate, not as a historical treasure trove, but in the very fact that we are living under the same presupposition, although the make up has changed somewhat. But most interesting, is that there are already significant numbers of “creative scholars”doing “creative research”at various universities; research I suspect leaders of the World Universities Forum are not well informed (perhaps Taylor is not even aware of it), perhaps not interested. But if they are not interested, it doesn’t mean that the issue is not interesting.

I was recently in a dissertation defense. The dissertation’s fist sentence was something like: “Human beings are political animals, we’ve known it since Aristotles.”I will accept that Aristotles said so, but from the fact that Aristotles said it doesn’t follow that indeed human beings are political animals. Certainly Aristotles is entitled to his own opinion and he certainly had reason and needs to make such an assertion. Aymara and Quechua intellectuals in the Andes, when the Spaniards arrived with the same Aristotelian convictions in their shoulder, I suspect their (Aymara and Quechua intelligentsia, man of wisdom as much as Aristotles), would have reacted with a strange expression on their face, a sound of surprise, and looking at each other would have said in their language: “what are these guys talking about.?”

4b) Let’s take the case of the artist. Artists are not necessarily at or interested in the University. However, more and more departments of Art History, Literature, Drama, Film and Video, etc., are hiring “artists”since the “scholar”doesn’t have the same experience. This is indeed a welcome change at the University that, I hope, will transform that sector of the university in the next decades. Immanuel Kant’s (invoked by Taylor) devised three primary disciplinary formations in the radical transformation, in Europe, between the Theological University in the Renaissance period and the Secular University that, in Europe, unfolded after the Enlightenment. Unless we decide that artist do not have nothing to do with “crucial issues of our time”and that their role is entertainment and enjoyment when the world population is not concerned with survival, death, war, violence, and the like, their role at in the Future De-Colonial and Humanistic university is essential.

Why? For many reasons, but let’s just take one, which is the most crucial and perhaps the most invisible for the leaders of The World Universities Forum at Davos: the distinction between labor and work. This distinction which can be found in Karl Marx was elaborated in the sense I am taking it here by Hannah Arendt in her book The Human Condition (1958). The basic distinction is this: in a communally organized society you have to work to live. In a capitalist organized society, you live to work: this is labor. Labor is a force of de-culturation, it takes your soul out of you, like in the slave system, as you labor for somebody else. The trick of a capitalist society has been build a type of subjectivity in which the religious belief is that you are “free to choose”between labors. That was the justification for the end of slavery when labor was needed for the new stage of capitalism. William Walker, the character played by Marlon Brando in Queimada (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1969), says it is all in front of the governing elite in the Island. “Gentlemen, said Walker during a business meeting, what is more convenient a wife or whore?” Walker response is longer but the essence is this: whore you pay by the hour, wife you have to take care and invest in her. While “labor as freedom”is the rhetoric of modernity, the other side, the “labor as cheaper service”is the logic of colonialilty.

V
Now, imagine that part of the curriculum, the interdisciplinary and international curriculum in the new, de-colonial university, will elaborate on the distinction of labor and work, and the distinctions between a concept of economy that promote “creative research to accumulate wealth”and a concept of economy that will promote “creative research toward communal life?”Remember, not communist, but communal. Communism did not make the distinction between labor and work and turned the exploitation of labor in the direction of the all powerful state instead of doing in benefit of private investors and corporations. Because the society we are envisioning and the university we need are communal, not communists, corporations should be allowed to have their creative research corner to improve “commodities”that will be no longer such but “goods”for the well being of the community which will not report gigantic gains to the corporations. Therefore, the corporations will maintain their previous name but their function will change: they will work toward the communal not toward the board of trustees and the shareholders accumulating money without labor and working in their own interest. However, this work will be unethical as far as their work is possible because of the labor of others. That is why capitalism and communism are brothers who do not get along. Global Fora for de-westernizing and de-colonizing knowledge and transforming the university toward a non-capitalist horizon of life is what we all shall strive for: a democratic economy that will allow the plu-versality of communal organization in different parts of the world, allowing people to live and re-create languages, histories, religions, values, etc., that over the past five hundred years have been eroded by the belief (in the West and among elites in the non West) that Western life-style, industrialization, technology and the like was the point of arrival in the history of Human civilization. While Western civilization has made a great contribution to the history of the humanity, the achievement is not a good enough reason to expect that everybody else does the same. There is a global consensus, among de-westernizer and de-colonial that that cycle has been close, and that global futures will be decided by many and not by one (be that United States, European Union, China or a globally spread Islam).

Desde hace más de un año los medios de comunicación y el clima generado por la catástrofe de Wall Street (a poco tiempo de la catástrofe de Iraq y la catástrofe del huracán Katrina), pareciera mantener en vilo a la población mundial. Entre tanto, el Tsunami el azotó Indonesia en diciembre del 2004. Los diseños “naturales parecieran haberse puesto de acuerdo con los diseños del “globalismo”político y económico propulsado por el proyecto neo-liberal.

Estas catástrofes son de distinta índole, aunque están relacionadas. Katrina afectó a la mayor proporción de habitantes pobres de New Orleáns, en su mayoría gente de color. El Tsunami de Indonesia, no distinguió entre turistas ricos y nativos pobres. La invasión de Iraq provocó la muerte de un número indeterminado de Iraquíes, aunque arriba de los 100 mil, y de unos 5 mil soldados Estadounidenses, también ellos de distintos colores. Con epicentro en distintas regiones (New Orleáns, Indonesia, Iraq), las catátrofes naturales y políticas afectaron por igual a pobres y ricos, a hindúes y budistas, a musulmanes y cristianos. No obstante, las elites gubernamentales y económicas de Estados Unidos no sufrieron en carne propia ni el drama de Iraq y de Katrina, y menos aún el de Indonesia.

La crisis de Wall Street parece haber invertido el proceso. El informe de Global Issues más reciente estima que más de la mitad de los habitantes del mundo (3 billones y medio de personas), viven con menos de $2,50 por día. Al menos 80% de la población mundial (es decir, alrededor de 5 billones y medio de personas), viven con menos de $10 por día. De modo que 20% de la población vive con más de esta cantidad. Pero que significa vivir con $20 en vez de $10 al día en términos de la crisis financiera? Según UNICEF 25,000 niños mueren cada día debido a la pobreza. Alrededor del 80%de la población mundial habita en países donde las división económica creció en el último cuarto de siglo.

A cuantas personas afecta “dramáticamente”la crisis de Wall Street? Quizás a un 10% de la población mundial, es decir, a unas 700 millones de personas, lo cual es significativo, pero es una cantidad mucho menor de los 6 billones para quienes la crisis de Wall Street es un problema ajeno. Para este 80% de la población no hay drama en la devaluación de sus ahorros para la jubilación. Tampoco hay drama en posponer la compra de un nuevo yate para el próximo verano en el Mediterráneo o, siendo más modesto, cambiar el Suburú 2003 (que ya está viejo), por un Saba 2010.

Los debates en programas radiales y televisivos, los artículos periodísticos de todo tipo sobre el futuro del capitalismo abundan en los últimos meses. Una de las conclusiones, aún de los críticos, es que a pesar de todo no hay otro sistema mejor. Imagino que se refieren al socialismo. El cual es un capitalismo de estado y de regulación en vez de ser capitalismo de empresa privada y de libre mercado. Tanto las ideas socialistas en el siglo XIX como su primera versión histórica en la Unión Soviética, no escaparon a lo que ya era un tipo de economía de acumulación. Más allá del capitalismo y el socialismo, había y hay otros sistemas económicos posibles. El sistema comunal (no comunista) sería otro, por ejemplo, Por lo tanto, el capitalismo es el mejor sistema que se conoce para los 700 millones de personas hoy, esclavizados ambos, los delincuentes de Wall Street y la clase media consumerista. Al igual que el amo y el esclavo en la sociedad esclavista, ambos estan involucrados en un sistema de miedo y de muerte que el el amo se empeña en mantener.

Los debates de los expertos están enredados en las reglas de juego y las reglas del juego determinan que el problema es “el futuro del capitalismo;” que la preocupación será como salvarlo; y que la pregunta nos lleva a pensar en cómo será el capitalismo en el futuro. Ahora bien, si el capitalismo que es el mejor sistema que conocemos tiene hoy como consecuencia 6 billones de pobres y 700 millones de gentes con disponibilidad económica y una minoría (quizas un 1%, es decir, 700 mil muy acaudalados y acaudaladas) de super-ricos. Pues ya sabemos entonces de qué se trata—la pregunta sobre el futuro del capitalismo indica que se trata de salvar y mantener estas proporciones, teniendo en cuenta el crecimiento demográfico en el planeta en los próximos 25 años.

La cuestión en serio no es por lo tanto el futuro del capitalismo sino el futuro de la economía, de una economía que asegure una vida digna para los casi 7 billones de personas en el planeta. Una vida digna no significa un igualitarismo comunista forzado ni tampoco una ilusión de oportunidad y libertad. Desarrollo liberal y libertad no van de la mano. Por otro lado, capitalismo y economía no son sinónimos. Mientras que debates y tecnicismos se dirijan a salvar las instituciones y al reciclaje de las ciudades y no a dignificar el vivir y convivir de las personas y la regeneración de la vida y la grandeza planetaria, iremos por mal camino. Mientras se continúe distinguiendo democracia como un asunto político y desarrollo como un asunto económico, no iremos muy lejos.

La alternativa económica no es entre capitalismo y socialismo (el argumento clásico de F. A. von Hayek en su libro The road to serfdom (1944)), sino entre una economía democrática que administre la escasés (sistema comunal) y que estimule la reciprocidad más que una economía que promueva la privatización de la vida, que confunda acumulación privada con crecimiento colectivo, que imagine un mundo en que el que la acumulación no tiene límites. Estamos viendo que la con-fusión entre acumulación privada y crecimiento sin límites fue la inconsciencia suprema del globalismo (globalismo y no globalización) neo-liberal.

No esperemos que la reunión de los G20 ponga prioridad en este cambio ético político. No obstante, seamos consciente de que este cambio no es sólo posible y necesario, sino que está ocurriendo más allá de los 700 millones de personas entrampados en la debacle de Wall Street. La economía comunal es el horizonte más allá del capitalismo y del socialismo.

El anuncio de “misión cumplida,”proclamado con sonrisa complaciente y fatal ignorancia por parte del presidente de que el Islam era algo distinto al comunismo soviético, continuó con un costo creciente de vidas iraquíes y de soldados estado unidenses, amén de periodistas, dipolomáticos y actores de organizaciones no-gubernamentales.

El período de gobierno del presidente George W. Bush se cierra con un estado de emergencia provocado por la elite financiera de Wall Street en una carrera loca por acumular sin límites y por una urgencia de control financiero basado en el principio de des-control (desregulación) de la economía. Este proyecto, iniciado en la presidencia de Ronald Reagan, apoyado la primera ministra de Inglaterra Margaret Tatcher, y las teorías del economista Milton Friedman, se basaba en la confianza irracional en la racionalidad y en la creencia de que la economía es el camino de la libertad. Por lo tanto, la desregulación económica, escapando al control del estado, cumplía una promesa semejante a la libertad del individuo que en el siglo XVIII se sacudía los controles de la iglesia.

En 1905 el periodista británico J.A. Hobson publicó su libro memorable: Imperialism. El argumento puso de relieve el anti-patriotismo y anti-nacionalismo de la elite económica de Inglaterra cuyas urgencias imperiales en la carrera por acumular ganancias, iban totalmente en contra de los intereses nacionales. La crisis de Wall Street es una repetición del escenario, un siglo después.

El desmoronamiento aparente de los dos pilares de la presidencia de Bush, nos sugiere que éste fue un gobierno profundamente anti-patriótico cuya retórica, a partir de la invasión de Iraq, se organizó en torno al patriotismo. La triquiñuela es bien conocida en los tejes y manejes de la política, y sus práticas fueron también identificadas en las maniobras de Karl Rowe (Deputy Chief of Staff de la administración Bush). La triquiñuela consiste en inventar un enemigo y atribuirle éste lo que en el fondo es mi propio proyecto. Esta táctica es ya clara en la campaña presidential de John McCain. En suma, tanto la invasión de Iraq como la crisis financiera de Wall Street, manipuladas o no en su resultado, son dos acontecimientos que, en el fondo, aseguran el control de la autoridad y el control económico, por parte del estado, a espaldas y con consecuencias serias para el futuro del pueblo y de la nación estado unidense.

Al decir esto no estoy sugiriendo que haya que defender el patriotismo o el nacionalismo. Estoy poniendo de relieve, por el contrario, que patriotismo y nacionalismo (o comunismo en Lenin y Stalin) pueden ser meras excusas en un proyecto de dominación y control cuyas consecuencias trágicas las conocemos por varias experiencias del siglo XX.

Los presagios circulan de que la elección de McCain como presidente y Sarah Palin como vice serían el paso siguiente a un tipo de control político y económico avalado que funcionaría a dos vertientes : una, sobre la población estado unidense y la otra frente al capitalismo policéntrico que corroe medio siglo de hegemonía y la creencia de que el liderazgo global unilateral estaba finalmente inscrito de aquí a la eternidad. En algunos corredores se murmura la analogía política entre Sarah Paulin e Isabel Martinez de Perón.

La urgencia con la que John McCaine suspendió la campaña presidencial para asistir a los debates, en Washington, sobre el rescate financiero de $700 billones es sintomático. En verdad, el rescate es un proyecto republicano, como lo fue la invasión de Iraq. La aprobación del rescate implica que, sea McCain elegido presidente o no, la estructura de la política exterior en el Oriente Medio y en Asia Central, está ya anclada y la política económica (nacional y global) estará anclada con la aprobación del proyecto republicano para responder al “estado de emergencia.”

Hank Paulson—todos recordamos–presentó un proyecto en tres páginas y pidió discreción absoluta en el manejo de los $700 billones. Varios comentaristas subrayaron la simetría entre el discurso de Bush para urgir y justificar la invasión de Iraq y su discurso para urgir y justificar el rescate financiero. A McCaine le urge apoyar este proyecto puesto que más allá de su elección o no a la presidencia, contribuye a dejar sentadas las bases republicanas del control político y económico, sea quien fuere elegido presidente. Por esta razón Barak Obama mantuvo una posición distanciada y crítica. El aparente desmoronamiento de los dos pilares de la administración Bush, bien podría dejar intactos sus cimientos. De ser elegido presidente, Barak Obama se encontraría con la casa sólidamente apuntalada por los dos pilares de la administración Bush, y con los muebles un tanto empolvados por desmoronamientos que si bien no fueron planeados ab initio, pudieron muy bien ser estratégicamente empleados. El proyecto neo-liberal republicano podría así continuar, más allá de su aparente final. Si asi fuera, las consecuencias podrían ser dramáticas.

Most of McCain’s formulaic attacks on Obama are extremely superficial and obviously addressed to a sector of potential Republican voters who are more concerned with the baseball championship underway in the early Fall or the beginning of the basketball and football seasons, than in who would be elected President of the United States and what may be the future consequences. Well, let’s say that the nonsensical and empty formulae accumulated by McCain and his campaign team are, yes, addressed to “Joe the Plumber.”

Besides Joe the Plumber, any Republican of consciousness would realize that the socialization of wealth implies creation of wealth. Would you believe that Obama is planning to stop creating wealth and just distribute whatever there is now? What McCain really means is not “socialization”vs. “creation”but “socialization”vs. “accumulation”, and for sure he knows that accumulation means to “privatize gains and socialize losses”as has been said already many times in general, but in particular about Wall Street’s suicidal wealth creation.

Now, if you look for the connecting lines between the social formula and the personal-racial gaff (“that one”) and if you go back and rewind what happened in the last debate between the two presidential candidates, you may see what I saw. It was obvious in that debate that Obama has been cornering McCain in each of the debates. But I only saw it in the last one. What I saw in the last debate was not only the already known and accepted brilliancy and intelligence of Obama (face to face to a supposedly “nice guy”and supposedly sharp politician), but that Obama’s strength (which also explains his calm and relax performance) is that Obama knows something that McCain doesn’t know. It is in this respect that Obama’s indictment “McCain doesn’t get it”may have a meaning that Obama did not intended. Or, perhaps he did.

The point here is that when referring to Obama as “that one”, McCain made obvious to the rest of the world that he only knows the Reason of the Master. While Obama, calm and relaxed, knows both the Reason of the Master (in front of him) and the Reason of the Enslaved (the legacies of enslaved Africans in the history of the United States).

In academic lingo I would say that Obama dwells, inhabits “double consciousness”as it was existentially described and argued by Afro-American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), from 1904 (more or less the same year that Max Weber was defining the “spirit of capitalism”) until the end of his life. “Double Consciousness”is an experience common to a large part of the US population (as well as of the world population). Chicana intellectual and activist, Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004), inhabited “new mestiza consciousness”, a parallel existential experience among Chicanas and Chicanos. In the Caribbean, the same kind of existential feeling was conceived through the dialogues between Prospero and Caliban—Prospero only knows the reason of the Master while Caliban knows both, the reason of the Master and the Reason of the Enslaved. Caliban dwells, inhabits a world, a memory, alien to Prospero. That is the reason why Prospero could refer to Caliban as “that one”and, in that same reason, to think that “creation of wealth”is Humanity’s destiny. Prospero understand only his world. He dwells (like Joe the Plumber), inhabits a “Mono-Consciousness”he assumes is Uni-versal.

While McCain invokes Joe the Plumber, promising more and more football, basketball and baseball games, Obama intends to wake up both the double consciousness of people of color as well as the consciousness of millions of white men and women who may have been unaware of people in this country inhabiting a double consciousness and being invisible, but now reaching a social status that was not supposed to be ear-marked for the white population, but only for people of color. In between the two ideal demographic groups, there is the awakening of the younger generation, those born in the 1970s and after who are aware of the radical transformation of subjectivity (that is, consciousness) that “That one”is bringing.

“Creating wealth”is a formula that attempts to maintain the cosmology associated with capitalist economy. But indeed, it is a formula for maintaining the “socialization of capitalist cosmological consciousness”—that is, the enchantment of enslaved consumers at the service of Master creating wealth. “Socializing wealth”doesn’t mean, in this context, bring Marx back. There are many working class whites supporting McCain—Ohio is the hub. It means rather “socializing double consciousness”not only among “those ones”like Obama, but mainly among “those ones”like McCain and the experts of Wall Street and “those ones”in main stream media. “Socializing double consciousness”means that a de-colonial future begins to take hold in the United States, that has been lately encouraged by the financial crisis of Wall Street and the dubious subjectivity that neo-liberal economic policy and media enthusiasm, engendered during and after the glorious Ronald Reagan years.

ADDENDUM

MY VIEWS ON BARACK OBAMA, HILLARY CLINTON AND EVO MORALES
January 3, 2008

After Barack Obama’s surprising performance in the Iowa Caucus, I made some notes. I added some observations on January 3, 2008. The more Obama gained ground, the more I couldn’t refrain from looking at what was going on in the US from the recent experience of Bolivia and the parallels between Evo Morales Ayma and Barack Obama in spite, of course, of the enormous differences between the two countries. However, the “two countries” belong to the same racial histories of “the Americas”, that is, South, North, Central Americas and the Caribbean.

When the Presidential campaign started, last year, I would have unconsciously inverted the order. I would have said, “My views of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Evo Morales.”At that point I thought, as many others, that Obama has a lot of potential but lacks experience while Clinton entered the candidacy with a lot of experience and questionable credibility. However—I told myself—no Presidency from now on could be worst than the one of George W. Bush and his team, those who are politically defunct as well as a couple of those who still remain in place in political agony. I entertained for a while the fantasy that a Clinton-Obama ticket would be a good team since there would be a mutual compensation of experiences and credibility. Furthermore, the ticket would bring together a white woman with a black man, something that has been unheard of at least in the history of the US.

Then I forgot about my fantasy and just followed the campaign, who was getting how much money and who was moving up and down in the polls.

And Iowa came.

When I heard on the car radio that Obama came out in first place I said to myself, “Bah!, que c’est bizarre.” A mixture of Argentine reaction mixed with a French expression I learned during my years of graduate student in France. Then I read an op-ed in La Nación (a good and traditional Argentine newspaper leaning to the right) by Mario Diament in which he interpreted the outcome of the Iowa Caucus as “the racial revolution in the US.” Then I read David Brooks in the New York Times who manifested his surprise describing in Iowa as “two earthquakes”: Obama coming ahead among the Democrat and Mike Huckabee among the Republicans. And I was still far from Bob Herbert’s exhilaration describing the “Barack Obama phenomenon.”

Nevertheless, and whatever the result of New Hampshire’s primary next Tuesday (January 8, 2008) will be, the Iowa’s Caucus has planted a flag in the political and social imaginary of the U.S. On a different scale, it looks very similar to the situation in Bolivia—in 2005– when it became clear that Evo Morales entered the political and social imaginary of the country as an earthquake.

Now—apparently—the time has come to think about racism-genderism and political theory or, better yet, about racism and epistemology (that is the racial foundations of the principle and construction of knowledge in the Western world, from Machiavelli to Hobbes and Leo Strauss). To have Hillary Clinton as President would be another chapter of a general tendency in Europe and the Americas: Angela Merkl in Germany; Michele Bachelet in Chile; Christina Fernández de Kirtchner in Argentina. To have Hillary Clinton as President would mean that, finally, the US citizens realized that they are already behind in trusting a woman with leading their country. In other words, to have Hillary Clinton as President of the US would mean something entirely different than having, just for the sake of the example, Angela Davis. On the other hand, if the final stretch of the race would be between Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, one can surmise that the color line will not make much of a difference. The difference will remain at the level of the political parties (Republican or Democrat’s agendas) but both imagined Presidents would remain within the realm of Western concept of nation-State in Western political theory.

Enter Barack Obama. Would a black man make a difference over a white or a black woman as president of the U.S.? Condoleezza Rice has given ample proof through her life that her main goal was to show, to herself first and to the world second, that a black woman is as capable as a white man and equal to a white woman. She succeeded and I admire that determination. However, having a capable and brilliant black woman entering in the structure of a the modern State doesn’t change the fact that the modern Western State was conceived from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, implemented and controlled by white men. This is just a statistic, not essentialism. And it doesn’t mean either that white males perversely imagined the structure and politics of the State at their own image and sameness. Honest liberals assumed that what was good for them was good for Western and Christian Europe and what was good for Europe was good for the world. If you do not believe me, just go re-read with this caveat forewarning in mind both Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws and John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government.

I believe that the enthusiasm showed by many, and among them the three columnists I mentioned above, has indeed some grounding. However, having a black man as president representing the Democratic Party or (just for the sake of the argument) having a black woman like Condoleezza Rice as could-have-been a candidate for the Republican Party it may change something but not much. What it changes is that we are at the point in which a black woman or a black man can take care of the business of the State designed, implemented and controlled for over four hundred years by white men. Tomasi di Lampedusa’s dictum remains as valid today as a century ago: “Things have to change in order to remain as they are.”

I share Shalbe Steele’s view although I am not sure about his conclusion. He may or may not win, to early to say. Steele thinks that Barack Obama cannot win the presidential elections. Why?

Steele distinguishes, among Blacks politicians, between bargainers and challengers. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are challengers. They can hardly become president of the U.S. Barack Obama is a bargainer. To his credit, he is the first bargainer in the sphere of the State. Another bargainer is Bill Cosby. But Bill Cosby, as well as Angela Davis, does not operate in the sphere of the State but in the sphere of society. The former is an entertainer in the civil society; the later, is an activist in the political society. Steele thinks that although being a black bargainer is not still enough to win. He is seen, among Blacks, as not Black enough while among Whites, he is still Black.

But let’s suppose Obama will win; that he will be nominated as the candidate of the Democratic Party and be elected as the next president of the U.S. Here is where Steele’s may be right: Obama talks about “changes”but it is not clear what changes he wants to make and toward what ends. He is note different to all other Democratic candidates who are also talking about changes. However, the difference Obama should make is related to his being the only Black candidate among Whites, men and woman. Because of that, one would expect that when Obama talks about “change”he means something different in relation to the other candidates. And here may be the problem. The problem is simply that Obama is still operating within the frame of party identity politics, that is, within the frames and expectations of the Democratic Party. Let me explain.

Evo Morales, in Bolivia, cracked the code of the liberal State and capitalist economy. As expected, he has to confront right wing politicians, wealthy landowners and transnational corporations. He is a challenger who brings to the foreground the Indian conception of social and economic organization. He is not proposing to replace the liberal tradition, which is endorsed by a considerable number of Bolivians, but to insert Indian traditions, into the reorganization of the State and of the economy. Thus the concept of a pluri-cultural State is grounded in this shift in doing politics. However, Evo Morales has to confront also the question of genderism, whom define themselves as “the exiled from neo-liberalism.” While Evo Morales cracked the code of the (neo) liberal State in the domain of racism by legitimizing Indian knowledge and postulating the need to de-colonize the state and the economy, the political society of women contest that decolonization is not possible without de-patriarcalization, as “Mujeres Creando” (a conglomerate of women across sexual and ethnic identities) would have it. In spite of the confrontations between decolonization and de-patriarcalization, something remains clear: both Evo Morales and Mujeres Creando are bringing to the foreground new ways of thinking and doing based on the memories and experiences of Indians and women, both South American white and of color. What Evo Morales has, Barack Obama hasn’t.

Let’s suppose now that Obama will be the next president of the US and that he will act as an honest liberal (as John Rawls has it). In circumstances which are extremely different (such as Bolivia and the US), Obama would confront problems similar to those Morales is confronting, from the right of course, but from Black challengers such as Sharpton and Jackson. He is already being critiqued by both. One would expect that he could be confronted also by women’s organizations in the political society, both white and of color. And here is where Steele has a strong point: Obama doesn’t have a radical proposal as Evo Morales has. If he wins, things will remain as they are. While even if Evo Morales looses his position as president, what he achieved already is a landmark. Evo Morales showed us that economy based on accumulation and states based solely on (neo) liberal principles are indeed deadly. Economies of reciprocity and political philosophies re-inscribing models of social organization that has been cast out since the European Renaissance are indeed of the essence. I am not preaching the return of a pure Indian state or a pure Islamic state. I am just saying that a pure Western liberal state is not longer sustainable.

Transformations cannot be done within the existing system of thoughts and ethics in which political economy and political theory are imbedded. Transformations cannot be achieved within a system of thoughts and ethics that is not concerned with living well (as Evo Morales will have it) with living better than my neighbor; a system of thoughts and ethics in which employment is related to consumption. If Obama wins—as Morales did in Bolivia–it would be certainly an important step. It will show that white males are not the only one capable of conducting the State. But if Obama wins, most likely he will be absorbed by the system while Morales has shown that another way of thinking and of being is necessary.

1) On Tuesday, January 26, 2008, the Human Rights Foundation (with offices in New York) sent a letter to President Evo Morales Ayma expressing their concern for the violation of Human Rights in the New Constitution. The Human Rights Foundation underscored two areas in which violations of human rights were taken place: the violation of the rights to property and the violation of the rule of law in Indigenous communities who were taking law in their own hands. The first violation—the right to property–was a violation of the landowners rights, particularly in Santa Cruz. The Human Rights Foundation was taking a step in defense of landowner rights to keep their extensive masses of land. The second violation, was the indiscriminate application of “communal law,”the violating the “liberal state law”by actors implementing indigenous law. The first violation made of landowners, indirectly landowners in Santa Cruz, victims of human rights violations. In the second case, Indians were the perpetrators of human rights violation.

Vice Minister of Coordination with Social Movement and Civil Society, Sacha Sergio Llorenti Solis responded to the Human Rights Foundation. Now this letter is difficult to find on Google. It doesn’t matter how you do the search, you get the letters from the Human Rights Foundation to President Evo Morales and Vice Minister Sacha Llorenti, but not the letter from Sacha Llorenti. Thor Halvorssen replied and summarized some of the points made by Sacha Llorenti. There are indeed several versions of it on Google, including dramatic pictures in which civil society has been attacked by Indian mobs.

I have in front of me a hard copy of the official letter from Sacha Llorenti’s letter, dated January 28, 2008 (MPR-VICCORD. MS-SC N0015/09) addressed to Thor Halvorssen. And there is a summary in Spanish published by Agencia Boliviana de Información.

I have not found yet a similar expression of concern, by the Human Rights Foundation, of the attacks perpetrated by the civil society, in Sucre, against Indians and peasants. There is not much available information in English either. Indians and peasant injured are as dramatic as the picture of white victims shown in the letter from Human Rights Foundation posted on Google (shown in the previous paragraph). Documentation of civil society violence and violation of Indian and peasant human rights abound in Spanish. Here are some examples:

Several videos can be found in YouTube; and articles in Terra Magazine, as well as in Indymedia.

Sacha Llorenti’s letter to Halvorssen defended the democratic process in the writing of the New Constitution and focused on Human Rights concerns in the “indiscriminate”application of communal justice. The case invoked in the original letter by the Human Rights Foundation to President Evo Morales was the case of Benjamin Altamirano the Mayor of Ayo-Ayo, indigenous himself. The set of events that ended in his death are very complex and controversial. The Human Rights Foundation letter simplified the case to make it fit their own argument and interest.

The basic narrative is the following. The community of Ayo-Ayo accused Benjamin Altamirano of corruption and mistreatment, and they denounced to the State department of Justice. This was in 2004; much before Evo Morales became president. The year 2004 is quoted in the original letter from the Human Rights Foundation to President Evo Morales. The Bolivian President, at that time, was Carlos Mesa. The Bolivian court of justice followed suit after the accusations by the community and initiated a legal process. In the end, Altamirano was declared innocent. When returning to his community he was captured and assassinated. Anti-Indian prejudices, among Bolivians (mainly creoles and mestizos/as of the middle class) and main stream international press, made the quick assumption that the killing of Altamirano was an act of communitarian justice by the Ayllus (Indigenous socio-economic organization similar to oykos in ancient Greece), of Ayo-Ayo.

Jumping to the conclusion that Altamirano’s assassination was an act of communal justice, and not a crime, will be like linking the rhetoric and the acts of the KKK to the United States government. Saying that the government of the United States supports the rhetoric and the acts of the KKK is equivalent to saying that the government of Evo Morales, and Evo Morales himself, as an indigenous, supports un-ruled acts of violence. Since the reader has access only to the Human Rights Foundation reply to Sacha Llorenti, but not Sacha Llorenti himself, the reader is “forced”to believe in the summary presented both in the Spanish and in English.

The main point of contention is Sacha Llorenti’s charge, to the Human Rights Foundation, of lack of information and understanding of Bolivian history and social situation. Such charges are, in fact, common among experts in Indigenous laws in South America and in Spain. See, for instance, the report written by Bolívar Beltrán Gutierrez on the indigenous penal system in which, interestingly enough, Benjamin Altamirano’s case is referred.

In personal conversation with Aymara intellectual, Marcelo Fernández Osco author of La Ley del Ayllu, he stressed the unawareness from the side of the Human Rights Foundation that the Political Constitution of the Bolivian State is an obvious case of juridical coloniality, regulating the State according to the interests of a minority of European descent, and modeled after the spirit of the French Revolution; which is the case for all the Political Constitution of all Latin American States. The community of Ayo-Ayo is an obvious case of why the Political Constitution of the Bolivian State needed to be re-written in such a way that Liberal and Ayllu conceptions of the State and Democracy can co-exist in armony. The letters from the Human Rights Foundation made evident the lack of knowledge of the other side of the equation, the law of the Ayllu. The ranchers and land owners of the low lands, as well as the elite in Sucre, in accordance with the Political Constitution of the Bolivian State are violating, with their demand of autonomy and property rights, Indigenous human rights by disavowing the rights Indians communities have to live in armony with the land; not the land as property. The letter from the Human Rights Foundation is also mute about the slavery living conditions of many Indian families working under landowners rule.

2) The events in Sucre are not “directly”related to Altamirano’s case and Indigenous violations of human rights. They are indirectly related. The special rapporteur on human rights of Indigenous individuals and communities posted a strong sign of alert. In this case, it is the civil society of Sucre who is violating indigenous and peasant human rights. The international press is denouncing the outrageous barbarism perpetrated under the leadership of the “Band of Four”in the very civilized city of Sucre.

The events in Sucre are indeed signs of radical global changes. And the Human Rights Foundation’s misinterpretations are also evidence that the changes taking place are making obsolescence of entrenched ways of thinking and revealing how feelings and group interests taint our views of what constitute legal violation of human rights; who is violating property rights; and who is denouncing the violation of both as a superior, objective, and transcendent observer who is not tainted itself by its own subjective view of justice, law and property. Property rights violations, one of the concerns expressed in the letter from the Human Rights Foundation to Evo Morales, were not addressed in the letter by Sacha Llorenti. The issue should be brought into the picture because it is not unrelated to Altamirano’s case and to racist violence against Indian and peasants, in Sucre. The very day in which Santa Cruz province was voting on the referendum for its autonomy, the New York Times published a revealing article about a US citizen, named Larsen, a native of Montana, who bought land in Santa Cruz in 1969, and now he seats on an extension of about 350,000 acres.

The article is titled: “American rancher resists land reform plans in Bolivia”. Think of it. Imagine a science fiction world in which an article is published saying “Indigenous Bolivian resists tax reduction in the United States.” Now it so happens, according to the Human Rights Foundation’s interpretation, that the New Bolivian Constitution is violating property rights. That is, is violating Mr. Larsen’s rights to his property, which was acquired through “legal”procedures between the Bolivian government in 1969. These were turbulent years. Military controlled the state and although promised to maintain land reforms implemented by the revolution of 1952, there were obviously some loop-holes. Most likely Mr. Larsen benefited from them and was able to acquire the land.

At stake here is for Mr. Larsen and the Human Rights Foundation that land is a commodity and that it can be economically possessed. For Indigenous people that is not the case: land is not a commodity, and nature is not a passive entity that shall be dominated and exploited, as Sir Frances Bacon stated at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in his Novum Organum. The idea that land is property and that is that was imprinted in the literature of the conquest in the sixteenth century. Dominican legal-theological Francisco de Vitoria, a balanced mind comparable to today’s honest liberals, struggled to find a legal and moral way justifying Spaniards taking possession of Indian lands. He went through complicated but very compelling arguments, stating that just because Indians were unbelievers, unbelief was not a good reason to deny that Indians have rights to property. Vitoria finally found reasons to legitimize Spanish expropriation of land: Indians were not mature enough. A racist decision, enveloped in ethical language, stamped for even both that the idea that land property is a universal of the human species and that Indians are an inferior race of the human species.

The unprecedented situation in Santa Cruz and in Sucre, is that land owners and Mestizo State officers and members of the Civil Society, rebels against the government. The ethno-class that came to power, in all South America, gaining independence from Spain and Portugal, are resisting the coming into being of ethno-classes (peasants and indigenous), who have been dominated and exploited since the glorious days of Spanish independence. And Sucre was the city that witnessed the beginning of struggles for emancipation.

But there is still an issue that Vitoria took for granted and has been accepted since: that Vitoria’s Indians (indeed, people from Tawantinsuyu and Anáhuac), would have to accept their relation to land as that of property, as a commodity. It did not occur to Vitoria (and none of the Spanish missionaries from different religious order), to ask that question. If they would have asked and listened to the answer, they would have understood that property was not the way Vitoria’s Indians related to land and nature.

3) Sacha Llorenti is right in pointing out that members of the Human Rights Foundation who wrote the letter misunderstand (it would be more exact to say “ignored”) the other side of the coin: that there is an Indian rationality which is not compatible with the rationality manifested in the Human Rights Foundation’s letter. Sacha Llorenti did not address the question of property rights, but the same charge could be made, on this matter, to the short-sided and partial view of the Human Rights Foundation.

Indeed, one cannot but be surprised to an statement appearing in the Human Rights response to (paragraph #3 of the letter dated 31 de enero de 2008), to Sacha Llorenti. Thor Helvorssen (President) and Armando Valladares (Secretario General), who signed the letter, accused President Evo Morales of making public a false accusation against the Human Rights Foundation. Helvorssen and Valladares’ letter transcribe the following allegedly Morales’s statement, pronounced in Chanel 7 (a state managed TV channel):

“Esta ONG tiene una clara filiación derechista y entre sus miembros aprece el hijo de Vargas Llosa”

The counterargument is interesting to say the least. The first counterargument is to dispel the accusation that Vargas Llosa’s son (both, father and son are well known for their neo-liberal positions and harsh criticism to leftists as well as Indigenous movements in Latin America), is to say Nobel Prize Elie Wiesel is one of the member of the committee whom, the letter clarifies “was prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp.”With all due respect to Mr. Elie Wiesel, who has nothing to do with the situation, one wonders to what extent having been prisoner in a concentration camp is a warranty for the statements and accusations made by the Human Rights Foundation (or by the signers Helvorssen and Valladares).

The second counterargument is more philosophical but equally questionable. The signers of the letter address the accusation that the Foundation is a right wing institution: “For the Human Rights Foundation, human rights are neither from left nor from right; as human rights they are just human rights and as such they shall be respected, protected and guaranteed by all and every democratic state in the world, with independence of the political ideology of their government”(translation into English mine, WM).

Who speaks indeed for “human”in human rights? The signers of the letter are apparently assuming that “human rights”are a transcendent entity, some kind of dive or natural law, and that the Foundation has direct access to them. As such, the Foundation arrogates to itself the transcendental power of the observer who observed without being observed. The Foundation really knows what “human rights”are and the “human rights”they know (such as the right to private property), shall be respected. The Foundation operates under the assumption of an epistemology without parenthesis: and objectivity of “human rights”that cannot be contested; that can only be obeyed.

The point I am trying to make is not to advocate in favor of President Evo Morales and Sacha Llorenti’s arguments. My point is that Evo Morales and Sacha Llorenti have a point and that the Human Rights Foundation is reluctant to hear. The Human Rights Foundation is not the proprietor of “human rights”, and since they are not, their role will be enhanced and more helpful if they step down from their role of observer from above and be more aware of what interests they are defending and representing. The fight for human rights is a noble cause in which we all should be involved.

And it is in such spirit that I am here writing.

An institution such as the Human Rights Foundation shall not assume that because it is a Foundation it has the right of property to human rights; and that it is an institution from where you can observe but cannot be observed–what Chilean scientist and intellectual Humberto Maturana calls “objectivity without parenthesis.”

Huntington’s first line may be in time as memorable as the first line of Don Quixote or that of One Hundred Years of Solitude: “The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants,” stated Huntington, “threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures and two languages.” The second sentence may also be remembered; but it is longer and more complex. “Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.”

Today we can say with certitude that in every generalization there is an exception. Gonzáles is a complex exception, for sure. Although he has assimilated in the mainstream U.S. culture as well as one could imagine, he has become indeed a peril and a real Hispanic challenge. Gonzales, the Times reported on March 30, 2007, has worked for President Bush since 1994. In each of the jobs he’s held, Gonzáles has been the first Hispanic to hold such positions .

However, and in spite of having the merit of being the First Hispanic in many state jobs, he did not pursue the agendas of Hispanics or Latinos but, rather, that of Mr. Bush. That is a perfect case of assimilation in Huntington’s sociological analysis. He assimilated but he is, no doubt, a peril. Not for Huntington, of course. He’s a peril for the Latinos and Latinas and for the future of democracy in this country as well as in the globe.

I am not, of course, making Gonzáles responsible for every wrong and for the growing injustice and inequalities in the world. I want to draw attention to the easy ways in which Hispanics or any other ethnic “minoritarian” group is easily and generally cast as marginal and disruptive. They are threats endangering the supposed homogeneity of those who claim, like Huntington, that the Hispanic challenge is a peril for the United States (by which he means the U.S. Anglo-ethnic population).

What became clear is that Huntington’s alarms are representative of the alarms of an ethnic group (e.g. Anglo-Americans) fearing that other ethnic groups (Afro-American, Hispanics, Native-Americans, etc.) would challenge the control the Anglo- population enjoyed for more than two hundred years. The exact meaning of “minorities” is not quantitative and demographic. It is one engrained in the social and racial matrix of power. Power, as we know, is ubiquitous and no one can “have” it. Power is a matrix, a structure that situates people, ethnic groups, gendered and sexually categorized people in a particular stratum of the social fabric.

We are all situated in a “matrix” of power where decisions are made by those who have managed to occupy positions already marked in the matrix of power. To get there is difficult because positions are already taken (over centuries), and positions are taken by groups marked by ethnicity and gender. For example, Huntington belongs to the club of Anglo-American males, while González to Latino males. It is unlikely that Huntington would like to assimilate and become a Latino. But it is quite understandable that Gonzáles would like to assimilate and become an Anglo. Not in body and blood, of course, but in spirit.

If you think of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, you have still another remarkable case. Rice had to overcome both her gender and ethnic handicaps. For a Black woman to occupy such a powerful position in a structure of power mainly occupied by Anglo-males is indeed a remarkable achievement. One U.S. trademark is precisely the possibility that a particular born in a “minority” ethnic group and in a “disadvantaged” gender group, can go all the way to the “top” where the “majority” ethnic group and the “advantaged” gender dwell.

Here we have identity politics and affirmative action in a nutshell: the politics of assimilation that President Bush played well by appointing Collin Power, Rice and Gonzáles. But once the White House’s quota has been fulfilled, Bush forgot about people in New Orleans. Rice did not pay attention at the very beginning also. It was reported at the time that she has been seen shopping in a New York quality store the day after the waters in New Orleans broke the leaves. Identity IN politics began to replace the politics of identity. Identity IN politics is not looking for assimilation but for radical intervention: the views, needs and dreams of the racially governed are filling the political landscape of the nation. That is what Huntington sees as the Hispanic challenge. By contrast, the challenge for Hispanics with a new vision of the nation is Attorney General Gonzáles.

Now, let’s return to the Hispanic challenge. One can assume Huntington will prefer that people forget about their dignity and surrender to his own way of life, subjectivity, and political vision. Instead, what he has are workers doing their job for low wages and no social security and health insurance. He has intellectuals reminding everyone of 1848, when the U.S. moved the frontier to the South by appropriating huge extensions of land from the Mexican State and leaving thousands of Mexicans within U.S. borders. Huntington’s reasons to expect a form of Hispanic surrender (he talks about assimilation) assume that “Anglo-Americans” are in their own country. Hispanics are “foreigners,” even if millions of them were already U.S.-born already. This reason is the one endorsed by most U.S. citizens and the reason behind all the tension behind immigration laws and the racialization of Latinos and Latinas . The Hispanic challenges are, in Huntington’s mind, the challenges of dissenters who are not ready to do what Huntington thinks they should do. Turning the table and looking from a Hispanic perspective, the abuses committed by the Attorney General should alert us on the Anglo-challenge to peace and justice in the United States. For it will be difficult to argue that Gonzáles is bending the law for his own––and Mr. Bush’s––benefit because of the perils that Hispanics represents for the United States of America. It would be more reasonable to think that the Hispanic Gonzáles was appointed Attorney General and entered the hall of possible corruptions that the existing structure of power allows.

We cannot say the same about Rice who has played the game, thus far, according to the rules. She has, as every honest Democrat and Republican, acted by the book. It adds to the merits of her effort to serve the structure of power that has been put in place and occupied by white males in the history of modern Europe and in the building of the United States of America. Beyond Rice’s honesty and Gonzáles’s dishonesty, there are hundreds, if not thousands of Afro-Americasn and Hispanics, women of color, gay and lesbians, Native Americans, honest and progressive Muslims, and dissenting people around the world who do not want to endorse and assimilate to the neo-liberal project of managing global democracy. Thus, Huntington’s Hispanic challenge, eleven years after the “clash of civilizations” , alerts us that either the United States is a regional case of a global conflict in the structure of powe,r or that the global conflict in the structure of power (or the “clash of civilizations”) has, in the United States, its manifestation in what Huntington’s labels the “Hispanic challenge.”

I remembered that conversation the very day in which George W. Bush was elected President of the United States. Those of us who voted for Al Gore spent several hours speculating on why if all political analysts, on all major US television channels and major news papers, recognized that as incumbent vice-president Al Gore should have been elected (which for the majority of vote, and legally, he was) the next president of the U.S. but he wasn’t: “We US citizens (I am one since 1984) have what we deserve”, I told to myself for a long time. Time has proven that that was indeed the case.

We have seen the lies, the corruption, the clientelism, the self-serving interests that unfortunately is one version of democracy that is still at work. And a combination of enormous mistakes, the pressure of international critiques and opposition and the slow, undecided at times but relentless attentiveness of democrats contributed to show that we, US citizens, deserve nothing that we can be proud of. Examples to illustrate the self-serving, narrow and wrong-headed interests defended by the government of the US in the past six years abound. I would like to give three from my own collection.

Just take a few minutes, read and contrast George W. Bush’s Presidential address on January of 2007, justifying the need to send more troops to Iraq with the Inaugural address, in the same month of January, delivered by Rafael Correa, elected President of Ecuador. Correa’s discourse was nothing like the empty set of promises citizens are used to hearing from presidential candidates. His key expression, (“this is a change of era and not just an era of changes) shall be taken seriously; as well as his critiques of the “inhuman”aspects of globalization to which the government of George W. Bush has greatly contributed. But nothing has been more revealing than the enormous mistake made by the “American people”in electing and re-electing George W. Bush, with the complicity of the legal procedures lead by James A. Baker III than the growing visibility of An Inconvenient Truth, the well known documentary by Al Gore. It is not just the “success”of the documentary I am referring to but to something much larger than the popular commodity that the documentary has become. And of course, there is a danger of consumerism. The danger is that consumers will be satisfied with “having it”or proud that “I have seen it”, disregarding immediately the process of which the documentary is a particular moment and the dangers that An Inconvenient Truth reveals and alert us with desperation. And the point is this: if you are a US citizen concerned with the idea that “terrorists hate us and they want to kill us”, you may be overlooking the fact that US citizens and denizens, as well as citizens and denizens of this wonderfully globalized world, may die—and if not die live under miserable conditions—because the planet—which doesn’t hate us—will end up killing us because we hate her (the planet, Mother Earth, Pachamama, Gaia). Now, when we contrast the mission would-be President Al Gore would have set for the global leadership of the U.S. and the one we have suffered in the past six years, the conclusion is clear: we, citizens of the US living in the best nation of the world, have what we deserve. Unfortunately, people of the world are also suffering the consequences of what we, Americans , deserve.

Fortunately, Al Gore is not alone. His message, of global reach, and his role as intellectual and activist (perhaps too much for a President of the U.S) is not a solitary enterprise. People around the world have been realizing that governments and international institutions (e.g. United Nations, World Bank, IMF) are not going to do the job that will save the planet and the majority of its inhabitants. We are witnessing these days another example of the conflict between private interests and human survival: the nascent project of “agro-combustible”to replace the political and economic problem presented by the fact that oil is under. The recent visit to South America tried to solve, was not for the survival of the planet and those of us who live in it, but for the self-interests of an elite that has governed the country and “lead”the world in the past five years. While it is expected that “agrocombustible”would help solve the political and economic problems presented by nonrenewable natural resources, the consequences it will have for “food sovereignity”is mostly disregarded. Fortunately, Al Gore has become in the US the most visible figure of a global process of which “food sovereignty”is one among many.

I am not here campaigning for Al Gore’s candidacy in the next elections. I am just underlining the fact that, looking in retrospect to November 4th, 2007, we have what we deserve, both as citizens with the right to vote and as citizens who support a legal system that allowed James A. Baker III to “extend an offer”to George W. Bush for the presidency of the US. And I am stressing also that, as Al Gore himself states in An Inconvenient Truth, terrorism is not perhaps our biggest danger for survival.

PS: After Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, Paul Krugman published a series of pointed articles some among them asking and answering why Republicans are so uncomfortable with the turn of events. Well, i will re-state my case: we got what we deserved.

About three months after the Zapatistas’s uprising, in January of 1994, a young Indian woman interviewed by journalists in a Chipas market was asked what she thought about the Zapatistas. And she responded: “The Zapatistas returned dignity to us.” Who, one may think, took dignity from her and the “us” she was referring too? The Mexican government? The Free Trade Agreement? Spanish colonizers or the native elite of Spanish descent that controlled the state and the economy since Mexican independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century? In the case of President Jalal Talabani we know who is the agency of the indignity. And I am not referring to James Baker, III and Lee Hamilton as specific individuals, but as to the belief system or the set of assumptions (to give it a name) that they (Baker and Hamilton) took for granted when undertaking the mission and writing the report. That belief system or set of assumptions were the same that guided Baker and Hamilton, without realizing that their action was offensive toward other human beings (and in that sense racist) are part of the same world that the young Indian woman assumed had taken the dignity away from the Indian and herself. The world in question is described as the guiding principles of Western Civilizations, Eurocentrism or EuroAmericanism and, in its most recent version, Globalization and Neo-Liberalism. Or, in other words, of the imperial/colonial matrix of power that structured the modern world from the European Renaissance on. In building that world, the rhetoric of modernity, progress, development, peace and happiness has been the cover up of the underlying logic of coloniality: imperial management by diplomacy, army, finances, regulation and exploitation of labor, and international forced relations.

The question is that the young Indian woman in Chiapas and President Jalal Talabani are two examples of a mounting global awareness. It is a de-colonial moment of awareness leading to the de-colonization of the structure of knowledge that sustains a system of values and beliefs leading to humiliation at a global scale on the name of peace, democracy and happiness.

En la conferencia dictada en la Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar Josepth Stiglitz expuso brevemente su teoría de la información imperfecta y sus implicaciones para el trabajo hacia una sociedad democrática y justa. Afirmaba que, en el proceso, las universidades tienen un papel importante que cumplir (y esto lo decía en la ocasión en que se abría la carrera en Ciencias Económicas en la UASB):

“Las universidades tiene un papel central en este sentido. Creo firmemente que, además de perseguir el conocimiento por el conocimiento en sí mismo, las universidades tiene una función significativa en el desarrollo de la democracia. Mejorar nuestro entendimiento del mundo y de todo cuanto nos rodea es la misión central de la universidad; sin embargo, una función particularmente importante de las universidades es promover el desarrollo de la democracia (2002, 225).”(1)

Estoy de acuerdo con Stiglitz en que una de las funciones principales en la producción de conocimientos es promover la democracia y que las universidades tiene un importante role que cumplir en ese sentido. Lo que el apunta, en vez, como conocimiento por el conocimiento mismo es en verdad una lacra puesto que esa función produce sujetos académicos que se afincan en la auto-asisgnación de la verdad del conocimiento y terminan en una arrogancia conservadora y constipada que consiste en escudarse en sus conocimientos para descalificar lo que se no pueden controlar con sus principios mesquinos. Pero hay más. Estando de acuerdo con Stiglitz, voy a subrayar aspectos que no estan implicados en su recomendación. Sospecho, además, que no sólo no están implicados sino que Stiglitz no los ve. No estoy diciendo que perversamente Stiglitz esté haciendo uso de la información imperfecta que su teoría condena, sino estoy sugiriendo que la colonialidad del saber produce barreras inconscientes aún en personas brillantes y honestas como el mismo Stiglitz.

La producción de conocimientos para promover la democracia se produce tambien en espacios no-universitarios. En este sentido podríamos decir que no se trataría del desarrollo de la democracia (metáfora económica), sino de la expansión espacial social de ella. Desarrollo conduciría a que la clase dominante, en el Estado y en el Mercado, munida de una conciencia ética cada vez más crítica (y en ese sentido teorías como la de la información imperfecta tendrían esa función), sea más generosa (un término que no empleado por los defensores oficiales—es decir, en los discursos del estado y del mercado) con la sociedad civil (el sector social que es en general “civilizado”y conservador porque está integrado al estado y al mercado) y la sociedad política (el sector social crítico y disidente frente a las funciones de control y de represión del estado; a la inoperancia del estado frente al patriarcalismo y el racismo, etc.; y frente a la explotación que significa, en las empresas y el mercado, la reducción de los gastos para aumentar las ganancias). La expansión social de la democracia significa la participación de actores y proyectos que emergen de la sociedad política frente a las limitaciones de la teoría política del estado moderno (construido sobre la base de la experiencia e historia europea y traducido a estados coloniales en las ex-colonias de los imperios tanto capitalistas como comunistas).

Ahora bien, hay un tipo de conocimiento cuya función es fundamental para la expansión de la democracia y que no se produce necesariamente en las universidades. Un conocimiento gestado en la experiencia social, histórica y personal de individuos y colectivos sociales. Un conocimiento que surge desde el mismo actuar político al mismo tiempo se conviente en pensamiento que revierte sobre el actuar. Por otra parte, cuanto este tipo de conocimiento busca su lugar en la universidad, la universidad lo rechaza o le pone dificultades bajo la excusa de que no se sujeta a las reglas disciplinarias de la producción de conocimiento. Surge aquí un tipo de pensar y actuar que voy a caracterizar como “pensar/pensamiento descolonial.”

El pensar/pensamiento descolonial no tiene sus antecedentes ni en Grecia ni en Roma, ni en la lengua griega ni en la latina. No tiene sus antecedentes en estas lenguas pero estas lenguas están implicadas en sus orígenes. En la medida en que la lengua griega y latina son fundacionales para el pensamiento imperial en la Europa del Atlántico a partir del siglo XVI; ellas no son el antecedente del pensar descolonial sino parte de la violencia que provoca y general la necesidad de este pensar. Lo que provoca el pensar descolonial es la simultánea formación en el siglo XVI, consolidación y proyección global desde entonces hasta la invasión de Irak por Estados Unidos y del Libano por Israel: esto es, la formación de la retórica salvacionista en la que se funda la idea de modernidad y la oculta necesidad de control, explotación y muerte de la lógica de la colonialidad, escondida bajo la retórica del triunfalismo salvacionista de la modernidad. El pensar/pensamiento descolonial surge en Tawantinsuyu y Anáhuac, en las dos civilizaciones invadidas y destruidas por la invasión European, principalmente Castellana (Waman Puma de Ayala, insurgencias como el Taky-Onkoy; insurgencias en Nueva España), etc.; Portuguesa (insurgencia Tupi entre 1549 y 1553; rebeliones de esclavos africanos en la medida en que la importación de esclavos aumentaba drásticamente entre el siglo XVI al XVIII); y en las plantaciones del Caribe, en el cimarronaje de los esclavos Africanos desligandose de las plantaciones y formando su propio pensar y organización social (“el pensamiento cimarrón”como lo caracterizan Juan García y Edisón León). Waman Puma de Ayala nos dejó el legado de una teoría político-económica descolonial en las colonias hispánicas. Y Ottabah Cugoano nos dejó el legado de una teóría política descolonial sobre la base de su experiencia en las plantaciones del Caribe y de su vida en Londres. (2). El pensar des-colonial re-surge, a su manera y en distintas historias locales, con la expansión imperial de Inglaterra y Francia, en Asia y Africa, a partir de finales del siglo XVIII. Mahatma Gandhi, en India; Amilcar Cabral en las colonias portuguesas de Africa; Aimé Césaire y Frantz Fanon a partir de la experienca de la colonización francesa en Martinique; Fausto Reinaga a partir de la expriencia de la larga historia colonial de Bolivia; Gloria Anzaldúa, recogiendo la experiencia de la colonialidad entre las Latinas/os en Estados Unidos, etc.

Hay pues una vertiente del pensamiento des-colonial que surge y acompaña la historia imperial/colonial moderna (es decir, capitalista), y se contrapone a la retórica de la modernidad y la lógica de la colonialdiad. En qué consiste el pensar des-colonial? Cuáles son sus caracteristicas y cuál es su singularidad frente a otros pensares disidentes y críticos que ha generado la modernidad, como por ejemplo el marxismo y la desconstrucción?

En primer lugar está el desprendimiento epistémico. Anibal Quijano sitúa el desprendimiento del Eurocentrismo como primer paso del pensar descolonial. (3) Que significa aquí desprendimiento epistémico? Quizas se pueda aclarar diferenciando el pensamiento descolonial de la crítica de Marx al capitalismo. Enrique Dussel hizo una lectura del momento crítico en la obra de Karl Marx, sobre todo en su desmontaje de la lógica del capital. Dussel señala de qué manera Marx empleó los intrumentos analíticos de la ciencia del momento para de-velar la lógica que explica la diferencia en la acumulación entre el empresario y el obrero. (4) Lo mismo podría decirse de Sigmund Freud al des-cubrir la lógica del inconsciente semejante a como Marx des-cubrió la lógica del capital. El hecho de que ambos sean Judíos, es decir, víctimas del colonialism interno en Europa, pueda explicar la sensibilidad que llevó a ambos a producir conocimiento para la liberación del sujeto en lugar de hacerlo para el desarollo. Por eso mismo, tanto Marx como Freud fueron crucificados por la inteligencia que promueve la civilización, el progreso, el desarollo, las buenas costumbres y la normatividad blanca, masculina y heterosexual.

Ahora bien, antes, mucho antes, de que Marx y Freud des-cubrieran la lógica del capital y la lógica del inconsciente, intelectuales como Waman Puma de Ayala y Ottabah Cugoano des-cubrieron la lógica de la colonialidad. Waman Puma la des-cubrio en dos niveles. En su “nueva corónica”dejó en claro que la historia de la cacería habia sido escrita por los cazadores y no por los leones, como dice un dicho popular entre los afro-andinos. Y por otro lado, puso también de manifiesto no sólo la dimensión crítica sino tambien la prospectiva: que un “buen gobierno”tendrá que estructurase, en los Andes, a partir de la experiencia e historia social Andina—articulada con la hispanica—pero no en la imposición de las formas hispánicas de govermentalidad. El gobierno de Evo Morales actualiza, quinientos años despues, un proyecto de des-colonización que Waman Puma había imaginado sin antecedentes a finales del siglo XVI y comienzos del siglo XVII.

Ottobah Cugoano dejó al menos dos principios básicos para el pensamiento descolonial. Uno es la complicidad imperial, en el comercio de esclavos, entre España, Portugal, Holanda, Inglaterra y Francia. Para Cugoano hay una lógica común en la política imperial de estos países que sobrepasa las diferencias nacionales y comerciales entre ellos. La lógica de la colonialidad aparece así des-cubierta detrás de las diferencias imperiales. El segundo y radical principio, re-articulado muchos años después por Eric Williams (Capitalism and Slavery, 1944), es que el comercio de esclavos convirtió a seres humanos en mercaderias y, en consecuencia, en entidades desechables, descarbables. Las vidas humanas descartables y desechables tienen su retórica justificativa en el racismo y constituyen el lado más oscuro de la colonialidad que se mantiene hasta hoy y se propaga: comercio de mujeres, comercio de niños, comercio de órganos de los cuerpos humanos, devaluación de las muertes de personas en Irak y en Líbano, etc. Como consecuencia, Ottobah Cugoano sugiere un principio fundamental en la descolonización del estado y la sociedad: que la soberanía no debe establecerse en la relación de la persona con el estado (puesto que el estado estaba y sigue estando relacionado a una etnia y por lo tanto a un concepto limitado de lo humano y de la humanidad) sino de persona a persona: no hay persona que tenga el derecho de controlar, posser, dominar a otra persona.

Estos ejemplos nos ayudan a establecer las diferencia entre la crítica Eurocéntrica al eurocentrismo en la obra de Marx y Freud, por un lado, de la crítica de-colonial al eurocentrismo en la obra de Waman Puma y Ottobah Cugoano. La crítica de Marx y Freud no sólo se realiza en el interior de la lógica epistemica que critican sino que responden a la misma formación subjectiva (e.g., el sujeto moderno) al que critican. Tanto el obrero como el patrón; tanto la familia burguesa como el patriarcado, constituyen la diversidad de lo mismo. En cambio, Waman Puma y Ottobah Cugoano son ajenos a la subjetividad del sujeto moderno y tangenciales a las categorías de pensamiento forjadas a partir del griego y del latin y explayadas en las lenguas Europeas modernas e imperiales. El desprendimiento proviene entonces de pensar en la experiencia de sujetos fracturados por la colonialidad y en categorías ajenas a las del griego y del latin y de sus lenguas secuaces modernas. En tal sentido, Waman Puma y Ottobah Cugoano son pensadores fronterizos, construyen una epistemología fronteriza que es la metología del pensamiento des-colonial y la condición necesaria del desprendimiento epistémico. (5)

El proceso histórico en América del Sur/Abya Yala y el Caribe, hoy, comienza un proceso de desprendimiento epistémico y político. En Bolivia este lenguaje es claro y contundente en el gobierno de Evo Morales. En Ecuador, en el lenguaje de Pachakuti y de la CONAIE; como así también en el trabajo intelectual y político de Afro-Adinos y Afro Andinas (Juan García, Libia Grueso). Lo hemos vivido y presenciado en tres intensos días de las jornadas Insurgencias políticas y epistémicas, realizadas en la Universidad Andina (Julio 17-19, 2006).

Pues bien, volviendo a la sugerencia de Stiglitz, sí, de acuerdo . La universidad debe contribuir a los procesos democráticos en dos direcciones: produciendo pensamiento (critico por cierto) des-colonizador y trabajando conjuntamente con el pensamiento y hacer des-colonizador fuera de la universidad, tanto en los proyectos de la sociedad política como en el caso de Evo Morales y Hugo Chávez, des-colonizando en las prácticas de Estado y en la filosofía económica.

Notas:

(1) “Teoría de la información imperfecta: implicaciones de la política económica.”En Comentario Internaciona, 3, 2002, 219-226.

(2) Este argumento se explicita en mi articulo “El pensamiento descolonial, desprendimiento y apertura. Un manifiesto.”Por publicarse en el libro editado por Santiago Castro-Gómez y Ramón Grosfoguel. Bogotá, Setiembre de 2006.

(3) “Colonialidad y Modernidad/Racionalidad”. En Perú Indigena, Vol. 13, No. 29, pp. 11-20. Lima, Perú. Reproducido en Heraclio Bonilla (comp.): “Los Conquistados”. Flacso-Tercer Mundo, Bogotá, 1992. En Inglés Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality. En Goran Therborn, ed. Globalizations And Modernities. FRN, 1999. Stockholm, Sweden.

(4) “El programa científico de investigación de Karl Marx”en Hacia una filosofía política-crítica. Sevilla: Desclée, 12, 2001, 279-302.

(5) Exploré la simultánea aparición del sujeto moderno (Cervantes en Don Quijote, Descartes en Le discourse de la méthode) y el sujeto colonial (Waman Puma), en el siguiente ensayo: “De-linking: Don Quixot, Globalization and the Colonies.”In Quixotic Offspring: The Global Legacy of Don Quixote.”Maclester International: Macalester College, 2006, Volume 17, 3-39.