ABSTRACT
For Pablo González Casanova, “people” is a reality that unites the diverse from experiences of persecution. A common thread of this thesis can be found in the Latin American independence struggles, in the peasant resistances of the early twentieth century, in the youth of 1968, in the poor popular and Christian sectors of the seventies and in the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions. It is an experience that breaks with imposed models and advocates the construction of reality by discovering it. This is the reason why González Casanova uses the concept of people differently from the European philosophical version and in consonance with the spirit of the persecuted and forbidden Latin American thought that materialized in the politics of liberation, democracy, and socialism. The characteristics of González Casanova’s concept of people are related to those of ideological pluralism. Such pluralism exists not only because of the diversity of sectors that are grouped together but also because of the character of organization and collective leadership, the nation as the basis of unity, the practice of “democracy from below”, the politics of alliance, ecumenism, the staggered awareness, and the work of community with solidary interests. In this way the different subjects that make up the people combine their struggles to make a common front. The combinations raise the struggle for democracy and social justice and against authoritarianism in all its manifestations. It is a combination of struggles on the formal constitutional plane, of national liberation, and against big capital. In them there are links between democracy, socialism and national liberation, democrats, autonomists, socialists, and nationalists.
