Communal Systems in Central and South America
Discussion
The Revival of Communal Systems
Walter Mignolo:
"The first civilisations to suffer the consequences of the formation and expansion of Western civilisation were the Inca, the Aztec and the Maya. One of these consequences was the dismantling of the communal system of social organisation that some indigenous nations in Bolivia and Ecuador today 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 so the communal system. The communal systems in Tawantinsuyu and Anahuac (Inca and Aztec territories, respectively), or societies in China before the Opium War, eventually had to deal with capitalist and (neo-)liberal intrusion, as well as European responses to such intrusions; but they themselves pre-existed the capitalist mode of production.
A recent proposal to re-inscribe (not to recover or to turn back the clock on) the communal into contemporary debates on pluri-national states is El sistema communal como alternativa al sistema liberal [The Communal System as an Alternative to the Liberal System], by Aymara sociologist Félix Patzi Paco. There are others as well. Bolivian president Evo Morales’s speeches are full of references to the communal, as are Nina Pacari’s, former chancellor of Ecuador, who has been recently appointed secretary of foreign affairs. So, too, is the collective work of the National Council of the Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ), a representative body of the indigenous peoples of the Bolivian highlands. They feel no need to explain these references, just as the Jacobins or the Paris Commune require little elaboration for the European left."
Inscribing Communal Law in the new Constitutions
"Both Ecuador and Bolivia have recently introduced radically new constitutions, in 2008 and 2009 respectively. Central to the Bolivian document is the proclamation of its status as ‘a social unitary state of pluri-national and communal law, free, independent, sovereign, democratic, intercultural, decentralised and with autonomies’. The recognition of Bolivia and Ecuador as states composed of numerous distinct nations, each with its own political, legal, cultural forms of organisation, and the right to self determination – along with the new Ecuadorian constitution’s own commitment to pluri-nationality – has raised a great deal of excitement and controversy both within the two countries and internationally. It is, undoubtedly, both a recognition of the political clout that indigenous movements have acquired, and a recognition of the differences that colonial domination and the independent state created in its wake have not managed to erase. Felix Patzi Paco was the Bolivian minister of education from 2006 to 2007, during which time he conceptualised a programme for the ‘decolonisation’ of education."
The Difference between the (native) Communal and the (left) Common
"This is a crucial point, as it highlights the difficulty of equating the communal and the common. The latter is a keyword in the reorientation of the European left today. And that should be no surprise: the idea of ‘the common’ is part of the imaginary of European history. Yet the communal is an-other story: it cannot be easily subsumed by the common, the commune or communism. (Though this does not mean they cannot be put into conversation with one another.)"