Buen Vivir (“Good life” in English) is an indigenous philosophy and socio-political stance that was originated in South America. Although it acquired a political and developmental aspect since the decade of 1990, it has been based on indigenous ancestral wisdom that comes from pre-colonial times, supported by the values of pluralism and cohabitation. For this reason, it has had different names and interpretations depending on the place where it comes from. Some indigenous tribes of Ecuador refer to the Buen vivir “Sumak Kawsay”, while Aymara tribes in Bolivia call it “Sumaq Qumaña”.
Since Buen Vivir represents a collective of worldviews and philosophies of life based on ancestral wisdom, indigenous practices, and globalization critics, one cannot speak of it as a single deterministic concept. On the contrary, Buen Vivir embraces a diversity of visions that have one notion in common: The attainment of a good life based on the pillars of the human being, the community, and Mother Nature. We speak about Buenos Vivires to reflect that there is not only one way to achieve the cohabitation of the three pillars. We believe that Buen Vivir must remain as an inclusive and diverse term.
The diversity of Buen Vivir, which is derived from ancestral wisdom, is also reflected in the promotion of linguistic inclusivity. Sarah Radcliffe (2012) explained this in the form of Buen Vivir’s goals of “… amplifying collective rights, strengthening intercultural education, and recognizing Spanish, Kichwa and Shuar as official languages” (Radcliffe, 2012, p.244).
The principle of cohabitation (Gudynas, 2011) means that socio-economic development or progress can only be achieved if communities and human beings live in harmony with Mother Earth. Thus, the neoclassical view of attaining economic growth as a measurement of progress is directly questioned by Buen Vivir, in favor the A-growth perspectives (Van den Bergh, 2011), which argue for a stop to unsustainable economic growth. Moreover, the philosophy draws a direct statement against the unregulated market economy, which is seen as a cause of the fragmentation between the relationships between human beings and nature (Radcliffe, 2012), with physical and ecological implications.
The ideal of Buen Vivir was applied as a public policy guide by the governments of Ecuador and Bolivia, who included its values on their institutional policies and development plans. Although some advances were reached in the recognition of indigenous rights, there have been several critics from Buen Vivir theorists about the way in which Buen Vivir was implemented amidst an extractivist unsustainable policy to extract natural resources. Gudynas (2011) and Acosta (Acosta, 2013; Acosta et al., 2012), who are two representative theorists of Buen Vivir, showed that the harmony between the Nature and the economy was not fully respected in the context of the national policies of those countries.
In the case of Bolivia, as large-scale mining and the amazon forest degradation was fostered, several capitalist practices and structures of power remained unchanged, such as exploitative agrarian elites and concentration of means of production in few hands. Eija Ranta (2018), a professor at the University of Helsinki and expert of Buen Vivir, revealed additional contradictions within state and bureaucratic practices of Bolivia, that distanced the theory from the practice of Buen Vivir.
In Ecuador, Buen Vivir was included as a guiding principle for the Development Plan of president Rafael Correa between 2013 and 2017, having previously influenced the constitution of the country in 2008, where an excerpt says the following: ‘‘We,… Hereby decide to build a new form of public coexistence, in diversity and in harmony with nature, to achieve the good way of living, the sumak kawsay’’ (Republic of Ecuador, 2008, p. 8). In the words of Radcliffe (2012) new principles were added such as “… amplifying collective rights, strengthening intercultural education, and recognizing Spanish, Kichwa and Shuar as official languages” (Radcliffe, 2012, p.244).
The practical example of Ecuador and Bolivia underpins the reason why Waldmüller (2014), Radcliffe (2012) and Ranta (2018) identified several structural contradictions in the application of Buen Vivir. In other words, this means that there is still a lot of work to be done in order to effectively put into practice the ideals of Buen Vivir. In practice, market based inequalities and postcolonial hierarchies have not been fully addressed, evidencing a continuation in the cultural, political, social and epistemological oppression of the indigenous ways of life and ancestral practices (Radcliffe, 2012, p.246).
In spite of that, Buen Vivir still constitutes an important source of hope for several communities in South America and in the world, that are constantly shaping their practices and worldviews to improve the way in which we live. Buen Vivir has also fueled the desire of emancipation and self-determination of several indigenous peoples and communities that would like to pass on their knowledge to other parts of the world, in order to unify our struggle to protect Mother Earth.
The theoretical framework of Buen Vivir can provide several alternatives to traditional economic models originated in the global north, such that they may be able to include the harmonical relationship between human beings, the community and nature. In terms of environmental and community matters, some indicators have already been attempted to propose a subjective measure that accounts for the ratio of the people involved in environmental practices in the whole community and their level involvement (Pallaroso et al., 2016).
In conclusion, the Buenos Vivires still represent an alternative, de-colonial, and pluralist perspective that display the value of ancestral and local knowledge. Such lessons may help to unify the struggle for self-determination of more than 350 million indigenous peoples around the world, who have created similar concepts. In Africa the concept of Ubuntu, represents the values of the community: “I am because we are”. In Finland, the Sami have established such level of connections with nature that the essences of the elements of nature and human beings are intertwined: “lands
are so beautiful that they laugh. And when people are sad all land, all stones and trees cry with them” (Helander-Renvall, 2010, p.48)
Bibliography:
Acosta, A. (2013). El Buen Vivir. Sumak Kawsay, una oportunidad para imaginar otros mundos. Icaria Editorial.
Gudynas, E. (2011). Buen Vivir: Today’s tomorrow. Development, 54(4), 441–447. https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2011.86
Helander-Renvall, Elina (2010). Animism, Personhood and Nature of Reality: Sami Perspectives. Polar Record 46 (236): 44–56.
Pallaroso, A., Alexander, F., Casanova, P., & Pucará, C. (2016). La Medición Del Buen Vivir Rural. Estudio De Caso En El Cantón Pucará, Provincia De Azuay, Ecuador. Revista Venezolana de Análisis de Coyuntura, XXII(1), 111–134.
Radcliffe, S. A. (2012). Development for a postneoliberal era? Sumak kawsay, living well and the limits to decolonisation in Ecuador. Geoforum, 43(2), 240–249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.09.003
Ranta, E. (2018). Vivir bien as an alternative to neoliberal globalization. Taylor & Francis.
Republic of Ecuador. (2008). Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador. https://www.oas.org/juridico/pdfs/mesicic4_ecu_const.pdf
van den Bergh, J. C. J. M. (2011). Environment versus growth – A criticism of “degrowth” and a plea for “a-growth.” Ecological Economics, 70(5), 881–890. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.09.035
Waldmüller, J. (2014). Buen Vivir, Sumak Kawsay, ‘Good Living’: An Introduction and Overview. Alternautas, 1(1). https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5362250de4b0e6ed7cf86ed1/t/563128f3e4b0cdd5c7a32ca2/1446062323725/02-v1i1JWaldmuller1.pdf
Cafe Sarralde 