Latin American Agenda 2012

The 2012 English edition of the Global  Latin American Agenda is now ready.

Please address requests to
Dunamis Publishers, 6295, rue Alma, Montréal, QC, H2W 2W2, Canada.

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Introductory note by Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga:

The liberating phrase, the Good Life [el Buen Vivir] in the Andean translation called Sumak Kawsay, comes forward to greet us as a Gospel of

Life that is possible and dignified for all persons and all peoples. It is the Good News of  the Good Life  in face of the bad life of the immense majority and which confronts that insulting and blasphemous “

good life” [la buena vida] led by a minority that is trying to be the only
group allowed into the common house of humanity.

The Agenda proclaims the “Good Life-Good Life Together because we cannot imagine a good quality of human life without a good co-existence among humans. We are relationship, sociability, communion, love. It is abundantly clear that a good personal life also has to be communitarian; but it is better to bring it out explicitly so as not to fall into assumptions that don’t pay attention to what we need to understand and embrace vitally, radically. I am myself and also the whole of humanity. There are two problems and two solutions: other people and myself. This cannot just be “taken for granted;” we need to shout it aloud.

CIMI, the Indigenous Missionary Council of Brazil, in its Week of Indigenous Peoples 2011, launched a three-part document of conscientization and commitment to the Indigenous Cause with its theme: “Life for All and for Always.” They then added: “Mother Earth cries out for
the Good Life .”


CIMI in Brazil defines it this way: “The concept of the Good Life goes in the opposite direction of a model for development that considers the Earth and Nature to be consumer products... It is a system of life set against capitalism, because this latter has become a model of death and exploitation...We need to think about  the Good Life  as a system for a viable life, taking into account the historical dimension and the possibilities that it offers for the future. To bring this about, we need to consider the Good Life  as an alternative to the capitalist model, creating a historical memory by taking life and hope into account, precisely not from the perspective of the conquerors,” but rather always and radically
from the perspective of the life, hopes, lamentation and blood of those who have been conquered. “In order to practice the Good Life  we need to listen to what those who struggle each day for a more fraternal and just world have to say.”

Professor Dávalos says that “social movements, and especially the Indigenous movement, have proposed a new paradigm of living and living together that is not based on development or the idea of growth but rather on different concepts such as of conviviality, respect for nature, solidarity,

 reciprocity, complementarity.”

CIMI’s document calls for “life for all and for always.”
It is the “always” that walks with the anxiety and hope of mortal humanity throughout history. We cannot think about living well without simultaneously considering dying well. Death is the last great particularity of life, the ultimate verse of the sonnet. If there is no response to death, there is no response to life. By being grateful for and by drawing on everything that philosophy and science can offer by way of “quality of life,” we make a definitive call to hope. Good Death-Good Life.

Jesus of Nazareth, prophet of the great Utopia (”Be good as God is good, Love as God loved us, Give your life for those you love”) proclaimed with his life and death and with his victory over death, the Sumak Kawsay of God’s Reign. Jesus is, in his own person, a lasting and universal paradigm of  the Good Life,  the Good Life Together and the Good Death.