Overview

The history, economy, logic, and philosophy of the colonial enterprise still endure in 21st-century capitalism, crushing rural communities. The power of decision only remains in the hands of transnational capital, which is considered to be the bearer of the spirit of global development, before which nothing is and nothing can have life. It imposes the radical decision to make its megaprojects and organises the territory as its own. It is necessary to substitute this manifest destiny of the exclusionary and hegemonic being for the recognition of the Other as different and to do justice to the hitherto crushed ones, with a regime that defends their rights and with economic alternatives that include them.

The seminar focuses on the case of Colombia, but with its links to the state of affairs in Brazil and in other countries of the Americas.

Bio note

Héctor Hernán Mondragón Báez - Curator of the Observatory of Human Rights under the Centre for the Study of History of Latin America (CEHAL - PUC-SP), since May 2017. Was Oak fellowship 2000 Human Rights at Colby College, Maine, United States. Professor between August 2010 and June 2017 of the General Coordinator of Specialisation , Professional Development and Outreach, at the Pontifical Catholic University PUC in São Paulo, in the courses "Latin America: Historical Problems and Perspectives of the Present", "Dictatorships and Revolutions in Latin America" and "History of social movements in Latin America: new approaches". He is currently a curator at the Human Rights Observatory of the Latin American History Studies Centre - PUC, São Paulo. In 2011 and 2012 he was a consultant to the Latin American Institute for an Alternative Society and Law - ILSA, in Bogotá; in 2007-2008 of CECOIN - Centre for Cooperation with the Indigenous. Between 2008 and 2011 he was coordinator of the Agriculture and Trade Group of ASC - Continental Social Alliance. Advisor for ILO and UNFPA on labour migration; UNDP and the OAS on indigenous peoples; of IOM on decrees for displaced by violence; of IICA on peasant economy; and the World Bank on the Peasant Reserve.

He is the author of numerous articles and two books entitled "Los Ciclos económicos en el capitalismo: «Crisis ¿por qué y hasta cuándo?» (2009); "La estrategia del imperio" (2007, in Portuguese "A Estratégia do Império" 2009) and “Otra vez el socialismo” (1997). He also co-authored "Desarrollo y equidad con campesinos" (1998) and "Economía campesina, soberanía y seguridad alimentaria en Bogotá y la región central" (2011). Author of the Handbook Trabajador del Campo (1997) and the booklets Crisis Económica (2009) and Megaproyectos (2010), from ASC.

Activity under ECOSOL-CES