Vivir Bien: a study in alterity

ABSTRACT

Vivir Bien exemplifies the context of colonial alterity characterizing contemporary Bolivian attempts to create an indigenous state. While emanating from the city, Vivir Bien claims express a rural, indigenous alternative to development. It speaks from the perspective of an idealized other, an urban fantasy of a timeless rural peasantry resistant to the temptations of capitalism, the ‘indigenous superhero’ sought out internationally as a remedy to the crisis of capitalism. In this moment of mimesis, the countryside also seeks its other in the city, and internal migration is very high, a dynamic transformation of the countryside which Vivir Bien fails to address. This article discusses a flagship tourism project created by one of the original ideologues of Vivir Bien to realize its vision, and the role of deep-seated hierarchical alterities, as well as the inaccuracies of its vision of the rural other, in impeding its implementation and success.

KEYWORDS:

• Alterity
• Bolivia
• development
• indigeneity
• tourism
• Vivir Bien

Notes

1. All Spanish quotes are translated by the author, unless otherwise noted.

2. A Quechua/Aymara word meaning a community and the territory that sustains it.

3. See, for example, Medina’s contribution to the blog site La Reciprocidad, ‘Suma Qamaña, Vivir Bien y de Vita Beata. Una cartografía boliviana’, 20 January 2011, available at http://lareciprocidad.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/suma-qamana-vivir-bien-y-de-vita-beata.html.