The Houses That Evo Built: Autonomy, Vivir bien, and Viviendas in Bolivia

• Date: 01 May 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211004897
• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Author: Jonathan Alderman
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211004897

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 238, Vol. 48 No. 3, May 2021, 100–118

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211004897

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

100

The Houses That Evo Built

Autonomy, Vivir bien, and Viviendas in Bolivia

by

Jonathan Alderman

The concept of vivir bien (living well) has become ubiquitous in Bolivian state dis-

course and policy since the election of Evo Morales as Bolivia’s president in 2005. While

Bolivia’s constitutional refounding as plurinational is supposed to facilitate indigenous

peoples’ living according to their conception of living well, the state still appears to be

attempting to implement its own conception through rural social programs promoted as

enabling rural indigenous peoples to live well. The implementation of one such social

program, a housing donation program in the municipality of Charazani (Department of

La Paz), demonstrates differing notions of vivir bien between neighboring communities

and suggests that a program designed to facilitate vivir bien may actually provide obsta-

cles to the realization of an indigenous conception of living well.

El concepto de vivir bien se ha vuelto omnipresente en el discurso y la política del

estado boliviano desde la elección de Evo Morales como presidente en 2005. Si bien se

supone que la refundación constitucional de Bolivia como estado plurinacional debe facil-

itar la vida de los pueblos indígenas de acuerdo a su concepción de vivir bien, el Estado

aún parece estar tratando de implementar su propia concepción a través de programas

sociales rurales promovidos como proyectos que permiten que los pueblos indígenas rura-

les vivan bien. La implementación de uno de estos programas sociales, un programa de

donación de vivienda en el municipio de Charazani (Departamento de La Paz), muestra

diferentes nociones de lo que implica vivir bien entre las comunidades vecinas y sugiere

que un programa diseñado para facilitarlo puede, de hecho, generar obstáculos a la

realización de una concepción indígena de vivir bien.

Keywords: Vivir bien, State-citizen relationships, Bolivia, Kallawaya, Housing,

Indigenous autonomy

In 2009, Bolivia was refounded as a plurinational state through a constitution

recognizing the precolonial existence and present-day rights to self-government

Jonathan Alderman is currently an associate fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies,

School of Advanced Study, University of London. He is grateful to Geoff Goodwin, Peter Baker,

Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard, Amy Kennemore, Sebastian Hachmeyer, Benjamin Bridgman, and

Katerina Chatzikidi for their comments at various stages of the elaboration of the manuscript, to

various participants in the Greed and Envy Workshop of the London School of Economics orga-

nized by Geoff Hughes and Megnaa Mehtta, the Reconnecting Development with Vivir bien in

Latin America seminar at the University of Brighton organized by Kepa Artaraz and Melania

Calestani, and the editors and reviewers Kepa Artaraz, Melania Calestani, Derrick Hindery, Mei

Trueba, and Kevin Young. Most of all he is grateful to his interlocutors in the municipality of

Charazani for their hospitality, friendship, and willingness to engage with his research.

1004897LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211004897Latin American PerspectivesAlderman / AUTONOMY, VIVIR BIEN, AND VIVIENDAS IN BOLIVIA

research-article2021

Alderman / AUTONOMY, VIVIR BIEN, AND VIVIENDAS IN BOLIVIA 101

of indigenous peoples. The plurinational state was created on the basis of the

acceptance of what the Aymara sociologist Pablo Mamani (2009: 37–40) has

called a “multiverse reality”—many ways of understanding the world—in con-

trast to the Bolivian state’s previous incarnation as a “cosmological dictator-

ship.” The cornerstones of the plurinational state were autonomía indígena

originario campesina (indigenous originary peasant autonomy) and vivir bien (liv-

ing well). Legislation allowing indigenous peoples to create autonomies recog-

nizes their right to live well their way—governing themselves according to their

own norms of justice and electing their own customary authorities, indepen-

dently of the Bolivian state. This article examines the conception of vivir bien of

an indigenous nation through the lens of a state housing project that state rheto-

ric claims will enable its beneficiaries to live well. By examining how recipients

of state-donated houses relate to them, we shall consider the tension between

centralism and autonomy inherent in the provision by an institution of the state

for indigenous people to live well.

Since Evo Morales was elected president in 2005, the phrase “vivir bien” has

become ubiquitous in state discourse and policy. It was included in Bolivia’s

2006 National Development Plan as key to the state’s economic development

strategy and given in the preamble and Article 8 of Bolivia’s 2009 constitution

as one of the moral precepts of the state. The concept itself represents the con-

tradictions inherent in the plurinational state, founded in Article 1, as “a uni-

tary social state of plurinational, communitarian law, free, independent,

sovereign, democratic, intercultural, decentralized, and with autonomies.”

That the Bolivian state is at once unitary and sovereign, decentralized and with

autonomies, creates a tension with regard to where sovereignty lies and whose

vision of living well is being implemented in practical terms—that of central

state policy makers or that of the indigenous nations and peoples whose pre-

colonial existence, control of territory, and free determination is recognized in

Article 2. Vivir bien is given importance in the legislation creating autonomous

communities in Article 5.5 of the Framework Autonomies and Decentralization

Law, which states that autonomous governments should base their actions on

the philosophy of vivir bien “belonging to our cultures.”

The state housing program under discussion will be examined in the munic-

ipality of Charazani, in the north of the Department of La Paz, one of 11 munic-

ipalities to vote in referenda in December 2009 to become indigenous

autonomies. Charazani is home to the Kallawaya indigenous nation, recog-

nized implicitly in Bolivia’s constitution through its language Macha-Jujay

(one of the 36 official indigenous languages of the state since 2009). For my

Ph.D. thesis, I studied Charazani’s autonomy project through ethnographic

fieldwork in the municipality from February 2012 to March 2013, including

participant observation with Charazani’s autonomy assembly as it wrote the

statute for autonomy from February to June 2012. The statute was approved in

principle in June 2012 but has never been approved in detail.

Charazani is one of two municipalities (the other being Curva) that together

form the province of Bautista Saavedra. As of the 2012 census, it had 13,023

inhabitants. Of these 12,927 were registered as owning their own homes, with

62 living in collectively owned property, 24 in transit, and 10 homeless; 3,851

homes were privately owned and 25 collectively owned. The vast majority