“Conhecimento não se vende”: A colonialidade e o embate de perspectivas sobre os conhecimentos tradicionais

The coloniality of power, of knowledge and of being has been perpetuated in the modern imaginary through the advance of the massive mercantilism of everything. That process, which started in the fifteenth century with the discovery of America, has spread since then throughout territories and knowledge from the peoples who were colonized. In this regard, I analyze an event that occurred in 2014, at the Conference of the Southern Region for Traditional Peoples and Communities, in Curitiba/Parana, in which a cosmopolitical conflict took place, regarding a project to transform traditional knowledge into patents. This initiative involved, on one side, the State, Market and Science, all aiming at transforming them into sources of profit, and on the other side, the traditional peoples and communities for whom this knowledge is collective and circulates freely among them, composing their modes of existence.