“Vivir Bien” – The Bolivian concept of “Abundant Life”

By Lynn Longenecker.

Lynn, his wife Laurie, and children, Maria, Nathan and Jesse, recently completed a three-year assignment in Bolivia. In this post, Lynn reflects on an indigenous concept that provides a critique of contemporary society as well as insight into a just and sustainable way of living similar to that found in the teachings of Jesus.

“Vivir bien,” or “to live well,” is a concept from the indigenous cultures of Bolivia that really resonates with me. According to Jose Luis Lopez, a Bolivian theologian, the basic idea is that we live well when everyone lives well.

Lopez situates “vivir bien” within the very concrete context of Bolivian history. He reflects on the “discovery” of America in 1492, noting that in Spanish “discover” is the same word as “uncover.” Rather than an “uncovering,” Lopez says that what began in 1492 would be more accurately described as a “covering over” of the identity of the indigenous people that negated their ability to contribute as equals.

For example, beginning in the Sixteenth Century, the Spanish extracted silver from the

“Cerro Rico” mountain at Potosí. For the next 200 years, this mine provided the bulk of the wealth that maintained the Spanish empire, with an estimated 8 million people dying over the life of these mines. There is a saying that a bridge could be built from Bolivia to Spain with the silver extracted from this mine, and that another bridge could be built beside it with the bones of those who have died there.

This pattern has repeated itself ever since, with foreign countries’ extracting raw materials and resources from Bolivia, with a very slim benefit and most of the consequences left for Bolivians.

The covering over also happened through religious, educational and political structures.

“The colonization that began in the 16^th century has not ended,” according to Lopez. “This is because colonialism has not been only an economic, military or political phenomenon, but has also had an epistemic or cognitive dimension. The colonizer has created a discourse about the colonized that has served not only to legitimize the political and economic domination, but also to represent the “natural” identity of the colonized as “subordinate.”

“The invisible aspect of symbolic power is in the ‘spiritual domination,’ in other words, domination of the spirit, of life, of vitality.”

“From this perspective, ‘decolonization’ means a restitution of the spirit, of vitality. But this restitution doesn’t happen in a horizontal dialogue between equals because we’re starting with an asymmetry – the colonial difference. This restitution comes through “struggle as conversion.”

A process of Decolonization

In Bolivia I often heard reference to the “process of change” taking place over the past decade. Jose Luis sees this process as part of “taking off the veil” of colonization.

In the past 20 years, there has been a rise of social movements led by indigenous groups calling for change, eventually leading to the 2005 election of Evo Morales as Bolivia’s first indigenous president. His election represented the uniting of diverse indigenous groups, as well as other sectors of the “mestizo” population that were also ready for change.

The “uncovering” of the vitality of the indigenous people both caused, and was reinforced by, this historical event. A story is told of President Morales visiting a rural, indigenous community for a ceremony presenting a government stipend that is given to children when they successfully pass the academic school year. He approached an 8 year-old boy and asked him “Did you get your stipend?” Joyfully the boy answered “yes.” Then Evo asked, “And what are you going to do with your stipend?” Again, the boy answered excitedly, “I want to prepare myself well so I can be like you!”

Lopez says this illustrates “the restitution of a spirit, of a “collective vitality” that allows a community to once again project itself on the cosmos and dream its own future.”

In recent years the new government began to implement the structural change people had called for, including a new constitution, a new law against racism and all types of discrimination, and an educational reform law.

Of course change is complex and there are many perspectives on what that change should be. Systems resist change. Conflict is part of change. Never-the-less, conflict is not necessarily a bad thing, as Jose Luis said: “Restitution comes through struggle.”

Political opponents of the government have fanned fear and anger among various sectors of society, particularly mestizos who do not consider themselves “indigenous,” and people from the eastern part of the country, building on an historic east-west rivalry.

As time passes, the diverse indigenous groups that had unanimously supported the government are starting to fracture. A prime example is a recent march by lowland indigenous groups protesting the construction of a highway through indigenous land and a nature reserve. When the government violently broke up the march, people across the country reacted angrily, criticizing the government for turning its back on the people who brought it to power and their message of “vivir bien.”

While this is a political crisis for the government, it also seems to illustrate the vitality of the indigenous people and the strength of their voice.

“Vivir Bien” and “Abundant Life”

Jose Luis equates the call of Bolivia’s indigenous peoples to “vivir bien” with Jesus’s invitation to “abundant life.”

According to Jesus, the new covenant gets its vitality not from the law, but from love. In the indigenous worldview, the center of the cosmos is not us. The center is “life” – and this leads to different kinds of relationships.

Living well is built on “reciprocity” – to live well we must give and receive, care and be cared for, need and be needed. This is true in relationships among people, and also between people and creation.

This is a big contrast to “living better” – the assumption that more is better, and that it must come at the expense of others. Living well critiques “development,” “progress,” and “the good life” as a lie. It names the “Crisis of western civilization,” a civilization rooted in consumerism, a civilization that confuses the quality of life with the quantity of things.

This resonates strongly with my understanding of Jesus’s abundant life, and with the principles of “Living more with less.”

Finally, Jose Luis calls attention to the source of this message: The biblical pattern is that new life comes from “insignificant” places, from the margins. No one expected new life to come from Bethlehem and Galilee. It is time to listen once again to that voice coming from a supposedly insignificant place.

Our world is troubled and in crisis. But vitality lives on. Listen carefully to the call from the edges – from Jesus, from indigenous peoples of Bolivia, from the earth itself – inviting us to join in restoring our spirits, to overcome the lie of living better, and discover the abundance of living well.

Quotations from article by José Luis López: “Vivir Mejor no es Vivir Bien,” June 30, 2010.  http://alainet.org/active/39207

Images:

Potosí – Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Potosi1.jpg

An indigenous group from Bolivia’s lowlands marches in protest toward La Paz, June 2010.
Source: http://www.redindigena.info/sitio.shtml?apc=K1-1–&x=1371003

An image depicting “Vivir Bien”
Source: http://warakazo.blogspot.com/2010/08/una-opcion-civilizatoria-con-rostro.html