– Epistemologies of Rebelliousness, the Legacy of Abdullah Öcalan
This is a prologue written by Rosario Aquim for the colombian edition of the book "Sociology of Freedom", written from the Imrali prison by Abdulah Öcalan.
I. Between vines and bars: creating a crack in the cell of the world.
An invitation from the rebellious Amazon to walk with Öcalan, to think about freedom from our own roots and scars.
There is no prison more perfect than the one that becomes invisible. The one that is embedded in our bodies, in our ways of loving, in our colonised lands, in the words we use to pretend to be what we are not. From the Bolivian Amazon – my land of water, resistance and memory – I read Sociology of Freedom, whichpierced me like a bolt of lightning, awakening the dormant sap of the struggles, from where the almond trees, unwavering guardians of time, endure human pettiness.
This book does not come from an ivory tower, but from a cell, from a prison-island in Turkey, from where a man in chains dared to free his thoughts and, with him, those of an entire people. And from there, like a sacred echo, his voice touches those of us who struggle from other corners of the world.
I came to know of Abdullah Öcalan’s work thanks to a Kurdish activist, journalist, and researcher, the current representative of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) in Latin America. It was through his words and his committed presence that Öcalan’s radical thought began to take root in me, in my readings and in my own quest for emancipation.
This activist friend first arrived with other comrades in La Paz, Bolivia, in 2014, with the aim of spreading the cause of the Kurdish people: an age-old struggle for self-determination, in which the open wounds of colonialism, genocidal state violence and the fragmentation imposed by global geopolitical powers converge. However, it was not until years later that I met him personally, when the new Bolivian edition of the book Origins of Civilisation (the first volume of Öcalan’s Manifesto for a Democratic Civilisation)was presented. It was he who gave me this foundational work as a gift and invited me to present it in various academic and social spaces in the country.
That gesture marked a turning point in my understanding of history; because Öcalan not only proposes a profound re-reading of the civilisational foundations of the West, but his work traces, from the wounded heart of the Middle East, a radical critique of patriarchy, capitalism and the modern nation-state. So much so that many of his reflections helped me to outline and complete a genealogy of patriarchy, which I currently use in my presentations on the subject, suggesting that patriarchy dates back to the urban Neolithic, with the emergence of the Sumerian civilisation, the construction of the Ziggurat and the invention of the first male gods, whose purpose was to deconstruct the legitimacy and recognition of the myth of the Mother Goddess. As we can see, in Öcalan’s thought, philosophy ceases to be an abstract exercise and becomes a liberating praxis, nourished by the concrete struggles of the people.
The Kurdish activists who came to Bolivia have been, in this sense, a living bridge between this insurgent thought and the concrete territories of Latin America. In April 2022, the international campaign Justice for the Kurds was launched, demanding that the Council of the European Union exclude the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from the list of terrorist organisations. They argued, rightly and firmly, that such stigmatisation not only criminalises Kurdish resistance, but also closes off the possibility of a peaceful and lasting political solution to the conflict in Turkey and the region as a whole.
The response to their activism was swift. In May 2024, when they were invited to give lectures at educational institutions in Puebla and Guadalajara, Mexico, some of them were detained at Mexico City International Airport and deported to Brazil, allegedly because of a US government alert. Far from silencing them, this act of international censorship revealed the validity and the danger that free and rebellious speech represents for the dominant order.
In January 2025, during a visit to Asturias, Spain, my friend insisted once again on the need to dissolve the borders imposed in the Middle East, appealing to the living memory of the cultures, ethnicities and religions that, for centuries, coexisted in that region. Against the logic of fragmentation and exclusion, he defended a plural, profoundly democratic and decentralised vision of power.
An essential part of this proposal is Democratic Confederalism, a political paradigm formulated by Öcalan, from İmralı prison, and adopted as a strategic horizon by the Kurdish movement. The proposal is presented as an alternative civilisational project, based on ecology, direct democracy and women’s liberation. In his words resound the hope for a world in which communal life prevails over the logic of war, the market and patriarchy.
It is no coincidence that this comrade has recognised deep links between the struggle of the Kurdish people and the resistances of the peoples and nations of Abya Yala. In both cases, what is at stake is not only a right, but a worldview, a different way of life, a different way of inhabiting the world; a radical gesture that challenges the very foundations of modernity. And it was precisely he who extended the invitation to me to write this prologue for the Colombian edition ofVolume III of the Sociology of Freedom, one of Abdullah Öcalan’s most dense, critical and visionary works.
I accepted the task with gratitude and with the sense of responsibility that it implies, to approach a work that breathes freedom in each of its pages, despite being conceived in the bowels of confinement, since as I have already said, Öcalan writes from the high-security prison of İmralı, where he has been confined in extreme conditions, since 1999 – isolated from the world, but not from history. From there, he has developed a way of thinking that escapes the logic of confinement and projects itself towards emancipatory horizons that cross borders, cultures and times; thoughts where critical theory and liberating praxis converge to redefine the very foundations of politics. In a world in the midst of a crisis of hegemonic systems – capitalism, patriarchy and statism – Öcalan’s thought emerges as an act of ontological resistance, a radical interrogation of the structures that shape our ways of life and coexistence.
At the heart of his proposal is a bold reconfiguration of modernity, not as a historical inevitability, but as a space of dispute in which hegemonic power can be challenged through practices of democratic autonomy, communal pluralism and gender equity. This approach, deeply influenced by philosophical traditions ranging from Marxist critique to ecological and feminist thought, not only invites us to imagine alternative futures, but also to dismantle the ideological devices that perpetuate exploitation and domination.
Öcalan does not write from the distance of the abstract philosopher; his work is, above all, an act of resistance incarnated. Written from the extreme conditions of prison, his thought becomes a kind of ethics of hope, an unquestionable testimony that even when the power to act is pushed to its darkest margins, critical thinking can flourish as a tool to build a more just world.
This prologue seeks to approach Öcalan’s work not only as a theoretical corpus, but as an invitation to transformative dialogue with our own realities, a challenge to our certainties and a philosophical provocation to reconfigure our relationship with the common, the political and the human.
II. The rebel of Kurdistan: when an imprisoned body frees the peoples of the world
From his cell in İmralı, Öcalan wove thought with inner depth. His voice today intersects with other voices: those of our forests, our grandmothers, our queer uprisings.
Abdullah Öcalan is the historic leader of the Kurdish people. Founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), he has been persecuted, demonised and sentenced to life imprisonment for imagining a world without a nation-state, without patriarchy and without capitalism.
But Öcalan, like our wise shamans and our wise grandmothers, knows that bars do not stop dreams. In prison, he has written a monumental work combining history, sociology, political philosophy and spirituality, proposing a profound civilisational transformation.
What he calls the paradigm of Democratic Modernity, intimately dialogues with our ancestral forms of self-government, with the defence of Mother Earth and Mother Rainforest, the Goddess Mother Nature, with nomadic and communitarian feminisms and with our affective-sexual dissidence.
Abdullah Öcalan was born on 4 April 1949, in the village of Amara, in the province of Riha, North Kurdistan. He grew up in a Kurdish peasant family, in a context marked by the poverty and marginalisation faced by Kurds in Turkey, where their cultural and linguistic identity was repressed. From a young age, he experienced the injustices towards the Kurds, which shaped his character and political commitment.
In the 1970s, he moved to Ankara to study political science at Ankara University. It was there that he became actively involved in leftist movements and became interested in Marxism-Leninism, ideologies that would profoundly influence his early thinking. In 1978, together with other activists, he founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with the aim of establishing an independent, socialist Kurdistan.
Under Öcalan’s leadership, the PKK initially adopted strategies of armed struggle against the Turkish state, beginning in 1984. This armed conflict, which centred on Kurdish self-determination, was brutal and left many dead. However, the PKK’s approach evolved over time, especially after Öcalan’s arrest, towards a strategy less focused on state independence and more on democratic self-governance.
In1999, Öcalan was captured by Turkish security forces in a CIA and Mossad-backed operation (under Operation Gladio). He was arrested in Nairobi, Kenya, after leaving Syria, which until then had offered him refuge. His capture was a controversial event – celebrated by the Turkish government, but generating massive protests among the Kurdish diaspora. He was sentenced to death, but after pressure from the Kurdish people, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment (Turkey went on to abolish the death penalty in 2002 as part of its EU integration process). Since then, Öcalan has been held on the prison-island of İmralı in the Sea of Marmara under conditions of extreme isolation. Despite his imprisonment, he has continued to write and develop his political thought, which has profoundly influenced the PKK and other Kurdish movements.
In prison, Öcalan began to criticise the nation-state model as a solution for the Kurds and moved away from orthodox Marxism-Leninism. Inspired by authors such as Murray Bookchin (social ecologist and theorist of libertarian municipalism), he developed his vision of Democratic Confederalism, a system that promotes; direct democracyas a local governance based on community assemblies; social ecology, as protection of the environment, the necessary basis of any political model; the liberation of women, as a rejection of patriarchy as a pillar of the structures of oppression; and ethnic and cultural pluralism, with society respecting and celebrating diversity in its many forms.
This model has been implemented to a large extent in Rojava, Kurdistan (within the borders of Syria), where since 2011 self-governing structures have been established that seek to realise Öcalan’s principles, today under the popular structures of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria (DAANES).
Although Öcalan remains a controversial figure (considered a revolutionary leader by some and a terrorist by others), his impact on Kurdish and global politics is indisputable. His writings have inspired leftist, environmental and feminist movements around the world. Rojava’s model of democratic autonomy isa closely watched experiment for those seeking alternatives to capitalism and the nation-state.
Since his arrest in 1999, he has written numerous works from prison, addressing issues such as women’s liberation, ecology, direct democracy and alternatives to capitalism. Some of his most prominent works analyse the oppression of women as a pillar of the patriarchal system and propose that their liberation is key to any social transformation. Other works propose Democratic Confederalism as an alternative model to the nation-state, advocating local autonomy, pluralism and the direct participation of communities. Other works address the Kurdish conflict and argue that the solution lies not in creating a Kurdish state, but in building a democratic nation without rigid state borders.
III. Imagining freedom from the outskirts: a call to those who do not fit into the system
In times of civilisational asphyxiation, the work Sociology of Freedom resonates as a profound song that interweaves struggles: the Kurdish, the Amazonian, the dissident, the people who do not give up.
What is freedom for those of us who have always been deprived of it?
For the peoples and nations of Abya Yala, for sex/gender/sexual dissidence, for racialised women, for those of us who inhabit territories coveted by extractivism and colonial violence, the word freedom has often been a mirage or an unfulfilled promise.
Öcalan does not offer defined formulas. He offers a radical reading of power, of the state, of patriarchy and of the capitalist logics that structure our existences. His proposal for Democratic Confederalism is a red thread, which can be intertwined with our communal forms, with our nomadic territorial fabrics, with our loving rebellions.
The book Manifesto for a Democratic Civilisation: Sociology of Freedom,the third volume of Abdullah Öcalan’s Prison Writings series, emerges first and foremost in a historical and political context marked by the confrontation between the emancipatory aspirations of the peoples and the hegemonic forces of global capitalism, genocidal authoritarian statism and patriarchy. This work stands as a critical and creative response to the multiple crises of modernity, and as a testimony to the transformative power of thought in circumstances of oppression.
The motivation behind Sociology of Freedom lies in a deep desire to confront the dominant epistemologies that, under the guise of scientific neutrality, have normalised the structures of domination, oppression and exclusion in capitalist modernity. Abdullah Öcalan, in this text, not only challenges the ideological foundations of hegemonic knowledge, but also proposes an insurgent sociology, oriented towards the emancipation of peoples and the reconstruction of the commons.
In a world shaped by the coloniality of power and the instrumental logic of capital, Öcalan claims sociology as a field of resistance and creation. His proposal is based on a clear diagnosis – knowledge is not neutral; it is embedded into power relations and, as such, it can be an instrument of domination or a tool for liberation. Sociology of Freedom positions itself on the side of the latter, offering a theoretical and methodological framework that places historically subjugated and agency-deprived communities at the centre.
Capitalist modernity is not a universal project of progress, but a historical construction that has institutionalised structural forms of exploitation and domination. In this narrative, traditional sociology has played a fundamental role in legitimising the established order, shaping epistemologies that render collective resistance invisible and perpetuate inequality. It is in this terrain that Öcalan proposes a counter-hegemonic sociology, designed not just to interpret the world from the margins of power, but to transform it from its oppressive core.
This work, deeply influenced by critical traditions such as historical materialism, feminism and social ecology, not only challenges the classical categories of sociology, but reconfigures them from a perspective that prioritises autonomy, justice and solidarity. This reorientation, towards a bottom-up sociology, seeks to articulate a knowledge that is capable of deconstructing the structures of patriarchy, colonialism and statism, while imagining radically democratic forms of social organisation.
Öcalan’s ultimate motivation is not only theoretical, but profoundly ethical and political: his sociology does not seek to describe the world, but to transform it. In this sense, Sociology of Freedom is an invitation to decolonise our minds, to rethink our relationship with power and to actively engage in the construction of a freer, more plural and humane world.
Additionally, the historical moment in which Sociology of Freedom is developed is also marked by the emergence of social movements that question the extractivist logic of capital and the monopoly of state power. Öcalan recognises the confluence of these struggles – indigenous, feminist, environmentalist, anti-colonial – and articulates a sociological vision that integrates them as horizons for a new emancipatory praxis. In this sense, the book not only dialogues with critical traditions of thought, such as Marxism, feminism and social ecology, but also redefines them within a framework of democratic autonomy and confederalism.
Thirdly, the contextualisation of this work cannot be separated from Öcalan’s personal and collective experience as leader of the Kurdish Freedom Movement, whose project of democratic autonomy transcends national borders to propose an alternative paradigm of human coexistence. InSociology of Freedom, the struggles of the Kurdish people are inscribed in a universal narrative of resistance against oppression, connecting the local with the global and the historical with the ethical. The text, deeply rooted in the contradictions of its time, also offers a timeless proposal that challenges the conventional categories of sociological thought and poses an urgent call to reconfigure our ways of knowing, being and acting in the world. Sociology of Freedom is not just another academic theory; it is an ontological and political reconstruction of the human being in relation to the community, to the earth, and to history.
If we were to briefly summarise the book, we would have to say that, within its pages, Öcalan proposes a new way of doing sociology, beyond the traditional academic disciplines. His is not a “neutral” sociology, but a militant, critical, insurgent one. He calls it a Sociology of Freedom because its purpose is to understand the roots of oppression (capitalist, patriarchal, state) in order to dismantle them and create truly free societies. For Öcalan, the human being is intrinsically linked to freedom. Not as an abstraction, but as a practical possibility that creates community, justice, equity and harmony with the earth and nature.
In this work Öcalan also deepens his critique of capitalist civilisation as a dominant system, because he considers capitalism not only as an economic model, but a form of civilisation based on control, the fragmentation of life and the subordination of nature. And the modern nation-state is precisely the centralised political form of this capitalist civilisation, and totally incompatible with freedom. Looking deeper still, he analyses patriarchy not as a secondary consequence, but as the first system of domination, predating the state and capital. This is why women’s liberation is at the core of Öcalan’s thinking.
Another theme of the book is Democratic Confederalism as a political alternative to the capitalist system. Öcalan proposes Democratic Confederalism as a form of social organisation based on: local autonomy and direct democracy; on gender equality and women’s freedom; on social and ecological economy; and on the recognition and respect of cultural, religious and ethnic diversity.
This model is inspired both by Kurdish traditions and by other experiences of global struggle. It has very strong parallels with the Bolivian process, especially with; the Plurinational State as a rupture with the monocultural nation-state; with the indigenous autonomies of peasant origin; with the struggles for Mother Earth and Living Well (“Vivir Bien”) and with decolonial and communal feminisms, which criticise Eurocentrism, the coloniality of power and the coloniality of gender.
Finally, Öcalan speaks of freedom as praxis. He does not speak of freedom as ‘individual freedoms’ in the liberal sense. He speaks ofcollective freedom: the capacity of peoples to govern themselves, to self-manage, to take care of their territories, to recover their historical memory and to build their future. This freedom is not a point of arrival, but a constant process of organisation, critique, learning and resistance. Therefore, theSociology of Freedomis also a pedagogy of emancipation.
In conclusion, we can say that Sociology of Freedom is more than a book – it is a political and ethical compass, because it invites us to rethink history, to disobey the imposed ways of living and to build, from below, a new civilisation based on communality, ecology, equity and a deep respect for diversity.
IV. Roots that spread: Paths towards a Confederalism for Abya Yala
This book is a call to action. It is a map that can also be read from the Beni,from our assemblies, our nomadic feminisms, our struggles for land and from the body and its desires.
Sociology of Freedom is the third part of Öcalan’s manifesto for freedom. It is a passionate and urgent text. He argues that without a revolution in our understanding of the world – in our relationships, in our thinking, in our organisational structures – there will be no true emancipation.
To read this book from the Beni Amazon, from the queer-disident bodies that resist with tenderness and courage, is to discover an unexpected affinity. As if the river Beni and the river Tigris could speak in our ears with the same rebellious murmur. As if the Kurdish peoples and the peoples and nations of Abya Yala have always been searching for each other amidst the noise of the world.
This book is a map, but not one that dictates routes or imposes paths. It is a map that invites us to imagine others, to trace our own paths towards autonomy, self-government and affective freedom. Let everyone read it with their feet firmly planted on the ground, and with desire and pleasure as a compass.
The book is organised into a prologue, an introduction and eight chapters:
In the prologue, Öcalan raises the urgency of a new sociology that addresses the essential questions of freedom in the context of capitalist modernity.
The introduction sets out the central purpose of the book: to analyse the deep roots of contemporary social problems and propose solutions from the paradigm of democratic civilisation.
Chapter 1: Some Problems of Methodology criticises the limitations of traditional methodologies in the social sciences and proposes an alternative approach, combining historical critique and political praxis.
Chapter 2: The Question of Freedom, explores the concept of freedom, contrasting the individualistic conceptions of liberalism with a more collective and socially rooted vision.
Chapter 3: The Power of Social Reason analyses how collective rationality has been shaped and often captured by structures of power, highlighting the need to recover an autonomous social reason.
Chapter 4: The Emergence of the Social Problem addresses the historical origin of social problems, showing how power structures have produced systematic inequalities and conflicts.
Chapter 5: Envisaging the System of Democratic Civilisation presents democratic civilisation as an alternative to the hierarchical and centralised model of civilisation, based on cultural diversity and the autonomy of peoples.
Chapter 6: Democratic Modernity versus Capitalist Modernity contrasts two paradigms of modernity; one capitalist, based on the centralisation of power and the market; the other democratic, based on decentralisation, ecology and gender equity.
Chapter 7: The Reconstruction Problems of Democratic Modernity analyses the obstacles on the road to Democratic Modernity, including the resistance of established power and inherited cultural constraints.
And finally, in Chapter 8: The Tasks in Rebuilding Democratic Modernity,Öcalan lists the intellectual, ethical and political tasks necessary to build a society inspired by the principles of collective freedom.
As we can appreciate, to read Öcalan is to enter into a dialogue with the most important critical currents of contemporary thought, but from a geopolitically displaced position, from the voice of a denied people. His writing does not shy away from complexity: it traverses the history of civilisations, unpacks the roots of power, analyses patriarchy as the first and most persistent form of domination, and envisions the possibilities of a new ethic of civilisation based on autonomy, plurality and communality.
As a Bolivian and Latin American woman, as an Amazonian, as a thinker situated in a territory where bodies and communities have also been historically subjected to dispossession, I found in this text a profound resonance. Because Öcalan does not propose an uprooted utopia, but a transformation from below, from the practices of everyday life, from the recovery of the social and spiritual fabric that capitalism and the nation-state have torn apart.
Democratic Confederalism, the articulating axis of his political proposal, is not an abstraction. It is a concrete form of social reorganisation, which is already being practised in Rojava, in the north of Syria, and which is based on the self-organisation of communities, on the recognition of cultural and religious diversity, and on the centrality of women as political subjects of transformation. This experience speaks to us of a revolution that does not wait for the future, but is built here and now, with all of its contradictions, but also with all of its power.
The Kurdish comrades saw in my gaze, perhaps, an affinity with this horizon. That is why they offered me this responsibility, which I take on, also as a way of building bridges between our geographies of struggle. In this Sociology of Freedom, I recognise not only the testimony of a people in resistance, but also an insurgent philosophy that challenges our ways of knowing, of living, of relating. An invitation to imagine and to build worlds in which life can be lived with dignity, without hierarchies, and without chains.
This prologue does not pretend to exhaust the richness of the work. My intention is merely to open a threshold, to invite an attentive, committed, passionate reading. Because more than ever we need to rediscover the voices that have been silenced by global power, to listen with the heart and with reason, to think-feel (“sentipensar”) those truths that do not fit in official discourses, nor in the logic of the market, nor in history manuals.
Öcalan, from his cell, reminds us that freedom is not a point of arrival, but a living process, a weaving that is remade collectively, an ethical construction that challenges us in every decision, in every word, in every step. His thought, in dialogue with the rebellious spirit of the people, becomes a vital tool for thinking about emancipation beyond classical forms of politics. That is why reading his work is not only an intellectual act, but a profoundly political act.
So political that the proposals in this third volume resonate closely with the processes that we have lived through – and continue to dispute today – in Bolivia. In particular, with the struggles for decolonisation, depatriarchalisation and the defence of Mother Earth, of Mother Rainforest, which are not abstract slogans, but concrete paths of historical transformation that are opening up from the peoples and territories.
The Sociology of Freedom proposes a radical break with the structures of domination that have shaped the modern world: the centralised nation-state, patriarchy as the original matrix of all oppression, and capitalism as the totalising logic of the market. This profound critique, which Öcalan articulates from the Kurdish experience, finds parallels with the critique that indigenous peoples, women and organised communities in Bolivia have sustained in the face of the colonial effects of power.
Since the enactment of the Plurinational State in 2009, Bolivia has sought to break with the monocultural and patriarchal state model inherited from the colonial order and republican liberalism. At its core, this proposal emerged from the age-old struggles of indigenous peoples, especially the Amazonian and Andean nations, who demanded recognition of their self-determination, their territories, their ways of life and their forms of government. It was in these geographies – from the jungles and rivers to the mountains – that the hope of a new civilising pact was born, guided by the suma qamaña (living well) as an alternative to capitalist and extractivist development.
However, this project was betrayed by the government in power, which, from a centralised and strongly Andean-centric power, emptied the Plurinational State of its transformative content. The TIPNIS march in 2011 became an emblematic milestone of this betrayal: Amazonian and eastern indigenous peoples resisted the state’s attempt to impose a mega road project that would cross their territory, ignoring their right to prior consultation and self-government. What was revealed then was the persistence of an internal colonialism that subordinates indigenous peoples to the decisions of the nation-state and reproduces developmentalist, extractivist and patriarchal logics.
Instead of moving towards a real re-foundation, the Plurinational State was reconfigured as a Pluricolonial State, where diversity is celebrated in discourse but denied in practice. The structures of domination remained intact: state centralism, structural racism, institutional patriarchy, and extractivism as the dominant economic policy. Despite this, the dream of the Plurinational State has not died. It remains an insurgent utopia, woven into the memories and resistances of the Amazonian, Andean and Afro-descendant peoples, who continue to bet on a horizon where life with dignity, autonomy and plurality are not the exception, but the rule. And it is in this vein, yet from another geography, that Öcalan imagines something similar: a plural, non-hierarchical, ecological and communitarian social order, where politics once again becomes a collective practice of care and decision-making.
Likewise, the approach of Democratic Confederalism, with its emphasis on community self-organisation, territorial autonomy, and women’s political leadership, is in close dialogue with the nomadic and communitarian feminist proposals emerging from our lands. Depatriarchalisation – understood not as a simple inclusion of women, but as a horizon of possibility, a radical transformation of the patriarchal power relations that structure our societies – is a common task for the future that crosses Kurdistan, the Andes and the Amazon.
And it is precisely in the relationship with the land that Öcalan’s thought takes on a special potency for our struggles. In the face of predatory extractivism, the commodification of nature and the global ecological crisis, his proposal for an ecological society that restores harmony with the environment is not a nostalgia for the past, but an urgency for the present. In Bolivia, the defence of Mother Earth and Mother Rainforest, Mother Nature in general, has been a banner of the native peoples, who have confronted both external colonialism and internal development projects that sacrifice the life of the territories and their people in the name of progress.
Reading the Sociology of Freedom from Bolivia, and I hope from Colombia and the continent, is an invitation to weave dialogues from the Global South, to interweave experiences that, from different realities, seek the same thing: to free themselves from the yokes of domination in order to collectively reinvent life. It is also an exercise in mutual recognition between peoples who resist and dream, who struggle and create, who do not resign themselves to living under the dictates of structural violence, imposed oblivion and the logic of capital.
Because between Öcalan’s words and my own memory there is a thread of untamed tenderness that connects us. He, from his confinement, writes with the patience of one who has learned that freedom is not to be begged for: it is to be dreamt, cultivated and defended. I, from this corner of the mestizo and rebellious Amazon, write with the certainty that our wounds are also seeds. What unites us is not only our shared pain, but the stubborn will to love life even in the midst of dispossession.
This book reminds us that any true revolution begins with a shift in collective consciousness, with a renewed ethic of care, reciprocity and dignity. That is why writing this foreword has not been a simple intellectual assignment, but a way of walking, alongside those who have chosen not to give up, even when all seems lost. This prologue is not a closing threshold, but an open door to the encounter.
May this book be a seed. May it germinate in the territories where the struggle for life is still going on. May it circulate, be read, discussed, questioned and reinvented in our territories. May it become a tool for those who resist. May it serve as a bridge between our struggles. Because only from below, from the margins, from the historically violated bodies and territories, can a sociology be born that truly embraces freedom – a freedom woven with tenderness, with dignity, with the invincible hope of the racialised peoples of the world.
Rosario Aquím Chávez
Riberaltenean Amazon, 2025
More details about the book at ocalanbooks.com.
