FOR PACHAMAMA’S RIGHTS AND FOR THE LIVING WELL. FROM THE
NEED TO RE-SIGNIFY THE RELATION OF HUMANITY WITH PLANET
EARTH AND A NEW ECOCENTRIC, COMUNITARIAN AND SOLIDARY
SOCIAL-ENVIRONMENTAL MODEL
Germana de Oliveira Moraes1
SUMMARY.
INTRODUCTION.
I.
THE
ECOCENTRIC
CONSTITUTIONALISM IN THE ANDES: FOR PACHAMAMA’S RIGHTS
AND FOR THE LIVING WELL II. LIVING WELL – A NEW MODEL OF
ECOCENTRIC,
COMMUNITARIAN
AND
SOLIDARY
ENVIRONMENTAL CIVILIZATION 2.1. LIVING WELL
SOCIAL-
IN EQUADOR’S
(SUMAK KAWSAY) AND BOLIVIA’S (SUMA QAMAÑA) CONTITUTIONS
2.2.
THE
DYNAMICAL
THEORIC
REFORMULATION
CONCEPTUAL NOTION OF LIVING WELL
OF
THE
2.3. THE ECOCENTRIC
CONTENT OF LIVING WELL AND THE NECESSARY CONJUGATION
AMONG ITS SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL DIMENSIONS. 2.3.1. THE
SPIRITUAL DIMENSION OF LIVING WELL
2.3.2. THE MATERIAL
DIMENSION OF LIVING WELL 2.3.2.1. POSTULATES OF LIVING WELL
FOR A SOCIAL, COMMUNITARIAN AND SOLIDARY MODEL IV. THE
EXPANSION OF THE MODEL AND THE PUBLIC POLICIES OF LIVING
1
Dean Professor of the Graduate Program in Law from the Federal University of Ceará. Master in Law
from the Federal University of Ceará (1989) and a PhD in Law and Political Science from the University
of Lisbon (1998). Post-doctoral training at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná. The 5 th - Region
Federal judge. Integrated the first National Council of Justice management. Experienced in
Administrative and Constitutional Law, develops teaching and legal investigations. Membar of the
research group of PROCAD-NF UFC project, UFSC and UNIVALI, with CAPES’ support, about
UNASUL and South American integration, and coordinates the Universal project, "The human right to
access to water and sanitation in countries members of UNASUL", in partnership with the Federal
University of Santa Catarina, UFSC, Itajaí Valley (Univali), Caxias do Sul and Unisinos, sponsored by
the National Research Council/MEC.
1
WELL FOR UNASUL – SOUTH AMERICAN NATIONS UNION - AND FOR
HUMANITY.
INTRODUCTION
Once more Humanity finds itself in the recurrent crossroad between Eros and
Thanatos. How do we deal judicially with the waters or other minerals, the forests, the
animals, in a national, regional and international ambit, in a way that assures life and
future for all living beings? When it was a matter between life and death, under the
threat of extinction because of the emergence of the great world wars in the 20th
century, Humanity had the wisdom of gathering and trying to fraternize under the
common ideology of human rights defense, with the emission of international
declarations and rules to protect the human being and the citizen’s rights. Now, again
under extinction threat, because of the environmental collapse annunciated and proved
by scientists and the multiple civilization crisis where it is immerse, once more, people
are pressed to re-unite and, a new civilization model, guided by the Living Well, starts
to be delineated in the Andes.
According to this new model of Living Well, based on the understanding that
nature is an organic and inter-related whole, whose Humanity belongs to, hope arises…
This hope is hold in the attempt of re-signifying the relation between Humanity and
Planet Earth and the human beings among themselves, in a way that can generate a new
ecocentric, communitarian and solidary social-environmental model, by recognizing
Pachamama’s Rights, which can be extended in South America beyond the Andes and,
2
maybe, to the whole planet, through its insertion in the system of rules of International
Rights…
In Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution, and Bolivia’s 2009, in addition to significant
changes in the advance of democracy - with the adoption of direct democratic ways to
legitimate its governors, and exactly as a consequence of the increase of this popular
participation - substantially deep changes are perceived, through the institutionalization
of the proposal of the Living Well, in the vanguard of the ecocentric turn, overcoming
the anthropocentric model where the current judicial systems were built on. Among the
innovations introduced by Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution, the most remarkable is the
recognition of Pachamama’s Rights (Rights of Nature) in the widen scenery of Sumak
Kawsay constitutionalized as a right of Living Well (Buen Vivir). In Bolivia “Vivir
Bien” or Suma Qamaña, was officialized as an ethic-moral principle of the plural
society in the Political Constitution of the State of Bolivia of 2009.
The recognition of Pachamama’s Rights and the greater context in which this is set,
the proposal of the civilizational model of Living Well, shows the significant rescue of
the cultural values of the originary peoples of Abya Yala, and, because of that, contains
the potential of culturally anchoring the integration of the Union of South American
Nations (Unasul), immaterial and ancestry connected by these values, and to serve as a
vectorial axis, as a founder ethos and as theoretical base to the judicial construction of
Unasul.
I.
THE ECOCENTRIC CONSTITUTIONALISM IN LATIN AMERICAN
ANDES: FOR PACHAMAMA’S RIGHTS AND FOR THE MODEL OF LIVING
WELL
A constitutionalism of ecocentric features emerges from the social, political and
judicial sceneries in the region of the Andes in Latin America, which poses
the
recognition of Nature’s rights (Pachamama) and the culture of the Living Well as flags,
having as main centers of changing irradiation, Ecuador and Bolivia, which recent
constitutional reforms, respectively, in 2008 and 2009, through the inclusion of
indigenous peoples and other historically voiceless groups as social actors in the
present, has incorporated ancient values, rescued from pre-Colombian common roots,
which amongst all, show up respect for nature and for the environment, that is to say, a
priority respect for life.
3
This ecocentric feature of constitutionalism in the Andes stands out as one of
the traits of the incipient New Democratic Constitutionalism, which in the current
political and social scenery of Latin America appears as the result of struggles and
popular demand for a new organizational model of society, State and Law2.
The new constitutionalism in Latin America, is a democratic breakthrough
theory of the Constitution, which contents should express, within the limits of its
possibilities, the sovereign will of its people, the recognition of their identity and their
cultural awareness, of the values they seek to preserve, and their best way of social and
political organization. This practice should be achieved through mechanisms of direct
popular participation, the guarantee of fundamental rights, judicial review procedure
promoted by citizens and by creating rules that limit the political, economic, social and
cultural powers (VICIANO and DALMAU, 2010, p. 19).
Listening to the originary indigenous peoples voices, choked before, allowed
their souls to be manifested in the Constitution, and through the democratic way, their
deepest feelings and their way of living gain legal status when the Living Well in
Ecuador
(Sumak Kawsay) and Bolivia (Suma qamaña), were constitutionalized,
including the recognition of Pachamama’s Rights (Nature), a mark in which the world
sees for the first time, at the legal level, the ecocentric turn. (VICIANO e DALMÁU
2010, p. 19)
It is implicit in the Living Well’s concept, and this is one of the most important
consequences that arise from it, the assignment of subjective rights of nature
(Pachamama). However, inside the legal field, it only took place for the first time, with
the explicit recognition of those rights in Articles 71-74 of the Constitution of Ecuador,
2008. As Gudynas explained (2011, pp. 85-90), it is the recognition of nature’s and
Pachamama’s rights and theirs rights restoration, that set Ecuador’s proposal inside the
super-strong sustainability, understood as one in which nature’s own or intrinsic values
are defended, as are the values of ecosystems and living species, independently of
human’s convenience or appreciation.
2
Check the article MORAES, Germana e FREITAS, Raquel. Latin American constitutionalism and
the ecocentric turn in 2008 Equador’s Constitution : the rights of Pachamama and the Living Well
(Sumak Kawsay) (O constitucionalismo latino americano e o giro ecocêntrico na Constituição do
Equador de 2008: os direitos de Pachamama e o Bem Viver), MELO, Milena e WOLKMER, Antônio
Carlos, Tendências contemporâneas do constitucionalismo latino americano. (Contemporary trends
of Latin American constitutionalism) Juruá, Curitiba, 2013.
4
About the Living Well, explains the Brazilian philosopher Leonardo Boff (2009,
online), is the central category of Andean cosmology, set as a true alternative for
humanity, instead of competitive capitalism, progress and limitless growth, in
opposition to the balance with nature. The Living Well, he says, is to "live in harmony
with yourself, with others, with Pachamama, with the energies of nature, air, soil,
water, mountains, animals and plants and, in harmony with the spirit and the Divinity,
sustained by an economy of “enough and decent” for everyone, including other beings."
In front of the dilemma between the rights of Pachamama (nature) and the
human rights, and, facing the core challenge of our times, reconciling and articulating
environmental macro-policies, requirements of ecological mandate (Gudynas, 2009),
introduced in Ecuador’s Constitution, aiming greater preservation of ecosystems,
regional and social inequalities mitigated with social macro-policies and, especially in
the least developed countries in the Southern Hemisphere, the model of Living Well,
now in process of construction, partly inspired by the Andean cosmovision, from the
belief that it is not possible to equate these issues without re thinking the relationship
between the human being with cosmic and telluric forces, symbolized respectively by
Father Sun (Pachakama) and Mother Earth (Pachamama), mostly based on the value of
harmony, folded in Bolivia’s Constitution (art. 8-II), on variables such as, unity,
inclusion, solidarity, reciprocity, respect, complementarity and balance.
For over half a century, scientists and Nordic philosophers have been warning
about the dangers of continuing the predominant parasitic relationship model between
human beings and nature, based on domination, and not on harmony. But it is in Latin
America, a changing continent, where the courage to make it a true paradigmatic
revolution emerges, with the ecocentric turn.
According to Leonardo Boff (2011, online), it is urgent that we incorporate a
paradigmatic revolution that gives the necessary theorist basis to solve the current
problems in the Earth system, in accelerated degradation process. He says that this new
paradigm can save us, by stopping Earth destruction, moreover without it, life would be
impossible, stressing that on it depends the 21st century’s future. “There’s hope in the
air”, he says, referring to the transition from the Cenozoic to the Ecozoic Age, when
ecology is recognize as the central reality whence any other human activities will be
organized, specially the economic ones. As the author clarifies, the Ecozoic Era’s
central objective is to alter the state of consciousness, responsible for the environmental
devastation. This new consciousness will promote the alignment of human activities
5
with the other operative forces all over the Planet and the Universe, so that a creative
balance can be reached and, so, humanity can guarantee a common future, in which
there is a balance of relations between nature and society in synergy and mutual
presence sense.
This implies – adds Leonardo Boff - another way of imagining, of producing,
of consuming and giving meaning to our passage in this world, meaning that comes
from spirituality, that is, the sense of the sacred before the mystery of universe and our
own existence, despite economy.
Science, the Gaia Hypothesis, Philosophy, and mainly deep Ecology, have been
contributing to awake human beings’ consciousness about the environment collapse, the
threaten of humanity’s extinction and the civilization crisis in which we live in, and
through this incipient and growing ecologic consciousness, a change of paradigms is
being established in the field of knowledge, including judicial. Under the perspective of
Law, the axis is removed from the human being, orbit in which gravitated and still does
the idea of rights, to Mother Earth (nature) as main and priority subject of rights, so that
proposals of restructuration come around this paradigm that changes the whole building
of the judicial knowledge3.
James Lovelock (2010), British scientist, based on the holistic vision of Gaia
Hypothesis, already scientifically proved, showing the Earth is a super living and selfregulated organism and the relations of inter-dependence amongst the living beings,
alerts that “now the understanding of the Earth as a living planet is a question of life or
death for millions of people and the extinction for a whole range of species”
(LOVELOCK, 2010, p 188).
The notion of deep ecology, according to Tarin Mont’Alverne and Helano
Rangel, recognizes the interdependence of all phenomena and that individuals and
society are all dependent on a cyclical, unique movement of Nature, laying on
biocentric values, in such a way that sets planet Earth itself as center, admitting the
3
About The Declaration of Mother Earth Rights, check out MORAES, Germana. “A Mãe Terra
como sujeito de dignidade e de direitos (Uma proposta de revolução paradigmática do Direito)”. (Mother
Earth as a subject of dignity and rights. A paradigmatic revolution of Law proposal). IN: Estudos em
Homenagem ao Professor Doutor Jorge Miranda. Coimbra: Coimbra, 2012. (Studies as a tribute to
Professor Dr. Jorge Miranda)
6
value of not-human animals’ and flora’s lives. They also explain, clearly, the context
where the deep Ecology came up, in the 20th century, when, gradually, the systemic
paradigm overcame the mechanists paradigm, which emphasizes the whole, shocking
against the Cartesian paradigm, that prioritizes the study and the analysis of all parts.
After the origins of the systemic thought were punctuated in Biology’s development,
with Gestalt psychology’s contributions (organic shape) and the advent of Ecology,
with effects on Quantic Physics, both biologists emphasize the concepts of community
and web, specially the ecological community “an assembling of agglutinated organisms
in a functional whole by means of its own mutual relations.” (MONT’ALVERNE e
RANGEL, 2011, p. 322).
As Eugenio Zaffaroni diagnoses (2010, p.121), it is in the constitutionality of the
Andes that the leap from environmentalism to deep ecology happens, fearless and
boldness, independently of criticism, minimizations and ironies that could happen. He
explains, lucidly that, on one side, the advance of a predatory civilization, showing
signs of civilized neurosis, as outcomes of its incapacity of incorporating death,
translated in an unlimited accumulation of goods and, on the other side, a model of
harmonic living with all living beings on Earth, the new Latin American
constitutionalism chooses the second path, proclaiming conjecturally the rejection of
market fundamentalism of the last decades of the last century. He observes that Gaia,
Pachamama as it’s called in South America, didn’t get here by the hands of scientific
elaborations, but as the outbreak of the ancestor culture of living with nature,
incorporating to the constitutional Law another input from the American to the
Universal constitutionalism, such as in Querétero 1917, when the remarkable social
constitutionalism was introduced. After highlighting the attempts of minimization and
ridicule about the incorporation of the universal constitutionalism from the Andean
culture, Zaffaronni reminds that the most important change in the judicial paradigm of
the past century was established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948,
an instrument of scarce positive value in that moment, presenting only an apparently
simple formula: all human being is a person. (2010, p. 121)
After this comparison, it seems to be possible to foresee similar historic
importance of the Universal Declaration of Mother Earth’s Rights, proclaimed in the
Andes, in 2010. In Cochabamba, Bolivia, in April 2010, it was elaborated, in the Worldwide Peoples’ Conference about Climatic Changes and Mother Earth’s Laws, the
Universal Declaration of Mother Earth’s Rights. In that Conference, the indigenous
7
peoples, nations and organizations world-wide gathered, and after long debates,
declared, after recognizing themselves as Pachamama’s children, that “Mother Earth is
a living being, one only community, indivisible and self-regulated, of inter-related
beings that sustain, contain and reproduce all living beings that compose it, that each
being is defined by its relations as an integrant part of Mother Earth.” And there it was
acclaimed the General Assembly of United Nations to adopt it as standard to all peoples
and nations of the world.4
With the mentioned leap from environmentalism to deep ecology, a new facet
appears– an ecocentric facet – of Latin American’s constitutionalism theory, mainly in
the Andes, where the previous mentioned paradigmatic revolution of Law is taking
place, the ecocentric turn, as the Living Well’s culture is institutionalized, elevated to
fundamental rights and constitutional principle, respectively, in the recent reforms of
Ecuador’s Constitution in 2008 (Sumak Kawsay), and Bolivia’s, in 2009 (Suma
Qamaña), and elected as the axis of programs and plans of those countries’
governments.
Living Well or Sumak Kawsay is constitutionalized in Ecuador in the form of
“Rights of Living Well”, related in the “Title of Rights” (Second title). In other pace,
Living Well or Suma Qamaña was officialized as an ethical-moral principle of the
plural society in the Political Constitution of Bolivia’s State of 2009 and in the National
Plan of Development (Dignified, Sovereign, Productive and Democratic Bolivia for
Living Well).
It is perceived in the model of Living Well, in both Ecuador and Bolivia, a
strong biocentric tendency, where culture of life prevails. Beyond this strong biocentric
facet, the ways to crystallise into reality becomes evident under the form of diverse
principles in the normative texts, the inseparable relation of interdependence and
complementarity of living beings, which leads to qualify it, more precisely, as an
ecocentric constitutionalism.
4
A propos of “Mother Earth’s Declaration of Rights” check MORAES, A Mãe Terra como sujeito de
dignidade e de direitos (uma proposta de revolução paradigmática do Direito. IN: Estudos em
Homenagem ao Professor Doutor Jorge Miranda. Coimbra: Coimbra, 2012.
8
It is, however, through the ecocentric constitutionalism prism of Latin American Andes,
inaugurated in Ecuador and Bolivia, that the Living Well issue is going to be treated, as
a new ecocentric, communitarian and solidary model of social-environmental
civilization.
I. LIVING WELL – A NEW ECOCENTRIC, COMMUNITARIAN AND
SOLIDARY MODEL OF SOCIAL-ENVIRONMENTAL CIVILIZATION.
2.1. LIVING WELL IN ECUADOR’S (SUMAK KAWSAY) AND BOLIVIA’S
(SUMA QUMAÑA) CONSTITUTIONS
Overcoming anthropocentrism, a new ecocentric vision is consolidated in the
judicial-constitutional field, in Ecuador (2008) and also in Bolivia (2009) in which,
besides admitting the prevalence of the culture of life, recognizes the indivisible relation
of interdependence and complementarity among the living beings, expressed in the
fundamental value of harmony. It is remarkable in Ecuador ’s constitution the
recognition of Pachamama’s rights (nature’s rights) and, in Bolivian’s Fundamental
Letter (art. 8th - II), that constitutionalizes the principle of Harmony, which can be
extended in values such as, inclusion, solidarity, reciprocity, respect, complementarity
and balance.
2.1.1. LIVING WELL OR SUMAK KAWSAY IN ECUADOR
In Ecuador, the concept of Living Well or Sumak Kawsay is about a central idea
in the country’s politic life. It was inserted in 2008’s Constitution, referring to the
indigenous peoples’ concept of “Living Well”. Soon after, it was contemplated by the
National Plan for Living Well 2009-2013, incorporating a proposal of republican biosocialism, as René Ramérez Gallegos (secretary of the National Planning and
Development Ministry in this country) names it. About the Living Well or Sumak
Kawsay, the base of the current Ecuador’s Constitution, he says that it is based not only
in “having”, but also in “being”, “doing” and “feeling”, understanding it as “the
satisfaction of needs, the consecution of quality of a dignified life and death, to love and
to be loved, the healthy blooming of everything, in peace and harmony with nature, to
the prolonging of the human cultures and biodiversity.” “Living Well, he continues,
9
assumes to have free time for contemplation and emancipation, and freedom,
opportunities, where capacities and real potentialities of individuals and collectivities
can widen and bloom in a way that allows them to accomplish simultaneously what
society, territories, the diverse collective identities and each one, seen as human
collective/being, universal and particular, at the same time, that values as desirable
object, material and subjectively, not causing any kind of domination of one above
another (GALLEGOS, 2010, p. 22).
Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution’s preface, announces the decision of “building a
new way of citizen living, in diversity and harmony with nature, to reach Living Well or
Sumak Kawsay and, catalogues in the Title of Rights’ second chapter, as “Living Well
rights”, the rights of: water and alimentation (arts. 12 and 13), a healthy environment
(arts. 14 to 15), communication and information (arts. 16 to 20), culture and science
(arts. 21 to 25), education (arts. 26 to 29), habitat and housing (arts. 30 and 31), health
(art. 32) work and social stability (arts. 33 and 34).
Sumak Kawsay is constitutionalized in Ecuador in the form of “Rights for
Living Well”, related, in the Title of Rights (Second title), on the same level and besides
people’s and groups of priority attention rights (third chapter), communities’ rights,
peoples’ and nationalities’ rights (fourth chapter), participation rights (fifth chapter),
freedom rights (sixth chapter), nature rights (seventh chapter), protection rights (eighth
chapter) and Ecuador ’s responsibilities and duties (ninth chapter).
2.1.2. LIVING WELL OR SUMA QAMAÑA IN BOLIVIA
Living Well or Suma Qamaña was officialized as an ethical-moral principle
of the plural society in 2009’s Politic Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia
and in the National Plan of Developing “Dignified, Sovereign, Productive and
Democratic Bolivia for Living Well” in the context of refounding the “distinctly
indigenous, anti-colonialist and plurinational” State (WOLKMER, WOLKMER and
AUGUSTIN, online, p. 66).
Therefore, the reference, in the preface of 2009 Bolivia’s Constitution, to
the wars of water and the historic challenge of building the Social Unitary State of
Plurinational Communitarian Right collectively, a State based in respect and equality
above all, with principle of sovereignty, dignity, complementarity, solidarity, harmony
10
and equity in the distribution and redistribution of the social product, where the search
for Living Well predominates, in collective living with access to water.
In Bolivia, there is a will to implement the Living Well, that has been
resumed as living in harmony with nature, something that rescues the ancestor’s
principles of the cultures of this region, the ones that consider the human being stands at
the background in relation to the environment. In Pachakuti’s International Meeting, on
21th December 2012, event promoted by Bolivia’s Government, the President Evo
Morales Ayma announced in his speech the Pachakuti Time, as the New Work’s Time
Power, Communities’ Power, Solidarity with Peoples and “Communion with all Living
Beings, so that together we build Mother Earth and Living Well”. He explained that the
Living Well vision, in Bolivia, is not based on the market, but on the rights, on the
complete people’s realization, peoples’ and populations’ happiness, through the
complete fulfillment of peoples’, people’s, States’ and Mother Earth’s Rights, in a
complimentary way, including and interdepending, and suggested that the politics of
competitiveness promoted by capitalism are substituted and politics of complementarity
are created, which turn the civilized horizon into the Living Well.
According to David Choquehuanca Céspedes, current Bolivia’s minister of
Exterior Relations and specialist in Andean cosmovision, Living Well situates life and
nature as the central axis, as they belong to life’s culture, so that the most important
thing is not money nor gold, nor the human being, because he comes in the last position.
“The most important things are the rivers, the air, the mountains, the stars, the ants, the
butterflies (…) The human being comes last, for us the most important thing is life”
(CESPEDES, online). Living Well, he teaches, “is to live in community, brotherhood
and especially in complementarity, where there are not exploited or exploiters, to live in
harmony among people and nature” (CESPEDES, 2010, p. 452).
The 2009 Political Constitution of Plurinational State of Bolivia proclaims, in
its poetic preface, Bolivia’s re-foundation and the construction of “a new State, based in
respect and equality among all with principles of sovereignty, dignity, complementarity,
solidarity, harmony and equity in distribution and redistribution of the social product,
where the seeking for Living Well predominates, with respect to the economic, social,
judicial, political and cultural plurality of the Earth’s inhabitants, on collective living
with access to water, work, education, health and housing for all.”
11
The Suma Qamaña or Living Well is indicated in the 8th article of the 2009
Political Constitution Plurinational State of Bolivia as one of the ethical-moral
principles of the plural society (art. 8th - I), besides ama qhilla, ama lulla, ama suwa
(don’t be weak, don’t be a liar, don’t be a thief), ñandereko (harmonious life), tevo kavi
(Living Well), ivi maraei (land with no evil) and qhapaj ñan (noble life). Ahead in the
same constitutional article, values where the State is sustained for Living Well are
related, such as the values of unity, equality, inclusion, dignity, liberty, solidarity,
reciprocity, respect, complementarity, harmony, transparence, balance, equality of
opportunities, social and gender equity for participation, common welfare,
responsibility, social justice, distribution and redistribution of products and social goods
(art. 8th - II).
2.2. THE DYNAMICS OF THE THEORICAL REFORMULATION OF THE
CONCEPTUAL NOTION OF LIVING WELL
Living Well, Vivir Bien (in Spanish), Sumak Kawsay (Quechua) or Suma
Qamaña (Aymara) is a model of civilization, recently proposed, in the constitutional
texts and in programs and plans of Ecuador’s and Bolivia’s governments, under the
inspiration of the Andean cosmovision and originary Amerindian peoples in general. It
is questioned if the model of Living Well would enclose on itself, the potentiality of
overcoming the dilemmas and solving the challenges generated by the capitalist model,
producer of the environment collapse, the threat of humanity’s extinction and the deep
and multifaceted global civilization and culture crisis in which humanity is immersed, at
the same time a spiritual and ethical crisis, such as its climatic, economic, financial and
institutional aspects.
Different from the still prevailing cultural pattern on exploitation and nature’s
domination, according to the culture of Living Well, resurged from the Amerindian
originary peoples’ millenary civilization, living in harmony with nature is the main
purpose to be reached, according to the theoretical conception of David Choquehuanca
Céspedes, through the realization of the following postulates: 1. Prioritize life; 2. Obtain
consensual agreements; 3. Respect the differences; 4. Live in complementarity; 5. Live
in balance with nature; 6. Defend identity; 7. Accept the differences; 8. Prioritize the
cosmic rights; 9. Know how to eat; 10. Know how to drink; 11. Know how to dance; 12.
Know how to work; 13. Rescue Abya Yala; 14. Reincorporate agriculture; 15. Know
12
how to communicate; 16. Social Control; 17. Work in reciprocity; 18. Do not steal and
do not lie; 19. Protect the seeds; 20. Respect women; 21. Live well and NOT better; 22.
Regain resources; 23. Exercise sovereignty; 24. Take care of water; 25. Listen to the
elder. (CÉSPEDES, online, 2010 )
The strength, authority and moral superiority of Living Well derive,
paradoxically, from the tragedy on the originary Latin American peoples’ history, who
despite the ethnocide of most of them, the cultural sack suffered and extinction of their
memories perpetrated along five centuries of colonization, managed to survived and,
with them, the culture of life. And at least between those indigenous communities who
resisted in their territorialities an harmonic relation with nature is maintained.
The adoption of the model of Living Well implies in a deep change of
consciousness, of the way human beings see, sense, perceive and understand life and
how they live, which demands the demolition of old structures, so that, in its place, a
new civilization is modeled again, ruled on the central value of living instead of
deifying economy, as it is done nowadays under the aegis of capitalist and neoliberal
models. As it uses to happen in revolutionary processes, one of the greatest difficulties
of this paradigmatic revolution is in the emotional and mental walls that block the
acceptance of the new and keep the overcoming of the unconscious inertia of comfort
and continuity.
Regardless these difficulties, the recent theoretical re-formulations of the
Living Well in Latin America, and the respective praxis, as in Ecuador and Bolivia,
show, as Eduardo Gudynas and Alberto Acosta observed, a field of ideas on progress
that can create or co-create new conceptualizations adapted to the current
circumstances. It intends to go beyond the conventional development and it’s based on a
society where human beings cohabit together and with nature. In their opinion, it is fed
with the most diverse ambits, from the intellectual reflection to the citizen practices,
from the indigenous traditions to the alternative academy. “Living Well” – they say –
“is not a simple comeback to ideas from a remote past, but the construction of another
future”. (GUDYNAS e ACOSTA, 2011, p. 74)
According to them, besides being a reaction, an answer to ideas’ limitations
and contradictions and contemporary application of development, it also constitutes a
vision of the future, agglutinating many visions that look forward leaving behind the
conventional development and have been rehearsing new perspectives emanated from
another kind of society and environment valuations, resulting from the incorporation of
13
indigenous knowledge and traditions, that were subjugated for a long time, as the
questioning of cultural transplants and the opening of doors to new ideas about the
relations among society and nature or about poverty and well-being. (ACOSTA e
GUDYNAS, 2011, pp. 71-74 74).
Nevertheless, the dynamic and constant reformulation of the conceptual notion
of Living Well, it exhibits some basic conformational and characteristic features, that
can be combined, accordingly to how it receives influences from the past, and the ones
it intends to exercise at this moment or in the future, aiming cultural, social, political
and economic
life transformation to the conception of an alternative, ecocentric,
communitarian and solidary model of social-environmental civilization.
Following this circular and temporal perspective of involving the past, present
and future, it is observed that the concept of Living Well is concomitantly form by
traces related to their historic sources, to the essential content that intended to
accomplish in the present and to the prospective feature, through which future is design.
About its historic sources, it is observed that the proposal of Living Well
rescues and modernizes the way that the Amerindian peoples lived before the Iberian
colonization; it is inspired fundamentally in the Andean ancestor’s cosmovision, owing
the outcomes of its re-edition to the militancy of the social, indigenous and
environmental movements, in the end of the past century and the beginning of this one,
in Latin America, above all in Bolivia and Ecuador.
According to Rubén Martínez Dalmau, Living Well, translation of the Quechua
term Sumak Kawsay, comes from the Andean indigenous cultures of South America and
now are inserted in 2008 Ecuador’s Constitution, an example of Latin American
constitutionalism, as “a cosmovision of harmony of the human communities with
nature, in which the human being is part of a community of people that is an constituent
element of the same Pachamama or Mother Earth” (MARTÍNEZ DALMAU, 2009, P.
24).
Under this temporal, cyclical perspective it represents a rupture with the
hegemonic European cultural pattern. Constitutionalizing the Living Well arose in Latin
American’s democratic constitutionalism’s scenery, also characterized, as Roberto
Viciano Pastor and Rubén Dalmau Martínez point out, by the democratic rupture with
the old and the former, insisting in the difference between the State to be destroyed and
the State to be built, including in the constitutional texts the incorporation of differing
components, that, in many cases, serves entirely as symbolic element of distinction of
14
the process in front of the repulsion to the immediately former past and the hope that the
future will ground the new constitutional order. (VICIANO and MARTÍNEZ
DALMAU, 2011, p. 14)
In relation to the specific content of Living Well’s concept, it agglutinates in an
inseparable way the conjugation among its spiritual and material dimensions. It implies,
the acknowledging of the human being’s spiritual dimension, which was rejected by the
prevailing materialism and scientificism in the current homogenic Western culture,
readmitting its influence and projection on the cultural, social, political and economic
humanity’s life.
About its prospective profile, the concept of Living Well is characterized by
the emancipatory perspective of a decolonization project in the context of a current
proposal of civilized model centered in the culture of Life and Harmony among the
living beings, with a vision of an integrationist future. The presence in the Andean
constitutional texts of worshipping feelings to Mother Earth and the Harmony ideal, as
significant and lasting features of Latin American’s identity, those features that come
from the originary peoples of Abya Yala’s cosmovision, spiritually and ancestrally
connected by them, supplies the immaterial substrate needed for the cultural formation
of a community of South American’s nations.5
According to Eugenio Zaffaroni, (2010, p. 121), more than five hundred yeas
of colonialism, neocolonialism, genocide and domination couldn’t erase the worship of
Earth neither the ideal of harmonious living of Sumak Kawsay from the Andean
peoples’ culture, that today, after removing the layer that oppressed them – a message to
the world comes up back to the surface, specially to the human beings, that are coming
near to collapse and extinction.
2.3. THE ECOCENTRIC CONTENT OF LIVING WELL AND THE NEEDED
CONJUGATION AMONG ITS SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL DIMENSION
5
Check out MORAES, Germana. UNASUL: Notas sobre a integração energética e cultural da América
do Sul. IN. Revista Latino-Americana de Estudos Constitucionais, N. 11. Ano 9, Demócrito Rocha
Editions , Fortaleza-Ceará, – November 2010. (Notes on cultural and energy integration of South
America). IN. Latin American Journal of Constitutional Studies, N. 11. Ano 9, Demócrito Rocha
Editions, Fortaleza-Ceará, – November 2010.
15
The culture of Life, synthesized in the worship of Mother Earth and the ideal of
Harmony among the living beings, confers density to the current content of Living
Well, that contains postulates of spiritual nature and others more adequately classified
as having material character. It is not possible, however, to lose sight of the fact that its
essence comes precisely in the needed and inseparable conjugation among these two
dimensions, dissecting, as in the analytic paradigm molds, only to facilitate its
understanding, in spiritual (immaterial) and material (environmental, economic, social,
political etc.) dimensions, re-conducting this last one, to the environmental and social
aspects.
According to Fernando Huanacuni’s explanation, aymara historian, within the
philosophical substrate of Living Well, from the ancestral Andean cosmovision, there
are two forces, the cosmic force that comes from the sky (Pachakama) and the telluric
force, from the Earth (Pachamama), which convergence in the process of life generating
all forms of existence, connecting the different forms of existence through
complementarity (ayni) (HUANACUNI, 2010, p. 99).
The understanding of the term Pacha itself concludes this inter-relation. The word
Pacha, as Fernando Huanacuni teaches (2010, p. 99), has this conception, being the
union of both forces. PA that comes from PAYA (two) and CHA that comes from
CHAMA (strength). So the term contains these two cosmic-telluric forces that interact
to express what humanity calls Life, as a totality of the visible (Pachamama) and the
invisible (Pachakama).
From this Andean ancestral cosmovision, the vision and perception of the cosmos,
that is, this understanding of the world, two central fundaments of the Living Well are
extracted: first, the priority of life and, after, the value of Harmony, complementarity
and balance (ayni) among living beings, what confers a clear ecocentric color to its
content.
The presence of the projection of spirituality in the conception of society, politics
and economy of Living Well, is expressive recognized when Eduardo Gudynas speaks
about “cosmic ethics” (GUDYNAS, 2009, p. 31).
Even among those who label the Living Well from the materialistic perspective, as
René Ramirez Gallegos does, when he baptizes the socialism of Sumak Kawsay as
“republican biosocialism”, behind this theoretical formulation, solid beliefs inherited
from the spirituality of the originary peoples of Abya Yala hide
16
2.3.1. THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION OF LIVING WELL
The following postulates of the Living Well model reveal strong and predominantly
its spiritual, invisible and intangible dimension: to prioritize life; to live in
complementarity; in harmony with nature and prioritizing cosmic rights.
These spiritual postulates of Living Well give, based on the ancestral cosmovision
of the originary peoples of Abya Yala, the grounding ethos, from Life’s culture and the
ideal of Harmony, balance or complementarity, being this last inherent to the
understanding of Life itself.
The priority of life and the notion of ayni (complementarity, balance and harmony)
are the core ideas of the culture of Living Well, which are necessarily projected in
existence, on material manifestations of life, on the environmental-economic domain,
where relations among human beings and nature occur, that is, with the other living
beings, and in the social and political domain, that contains the relations among human
beings between them and the State.
One of the main consequences of the rescue of Living Well’s culture is the rupture
with the anthropocentric vision that has been grounding the feeling, thinking and acting
of humanity. It has come the time to abandon the anthropocentric conception where
knowledge, including Law, lays, and to fulfill, defend and disseminate an ecocentric
understanding, that serves as theoretical foundation to the defense of Earth, Mother
Earth, as priority subject of dignity and rights. We defend that humanity’s and the
planet’s future – maybe even the Biosphere’s – depend on the substitution of the
anthropocentric paradigm for an ecocentric paradigm for the creation of knowledge and
human being’s behavior.
Another core idea, central point of the Living Well, is about the notion of ayni,
translated as harmony, balance, complementarity, solidarity and corollary of life’s
feelings of essential union and belonging to Mother Earth, in which the reciprocal
interdependence among all living beings is inherent.
The centrality of life and the notion of ayni (complementarity, balance and
harmony) are the intangible, invisible and spiritual core ideas, of the Living Well’s
culture, which are inexorably projected on existence, on the diverse material
manifestations, in its diverse fields, such as, the environmental, economic, social and
political field, dictating on the ethical principles that include the relation of living
17
beings among themselves, in the environmental and economic field, and the relations of
this living beings among themselves, within the social and political domain.
2.3.2. THE MATERIAL DIMENSION OF LIVING WELL
Nevertheless the range of fields (environmental, economic, social, political etc.)
of matter’s expression in existence, this study chooses to guide the material dimension
of the Living Well to the environmental and social domains, where, respectively,
Pachamama’s rights (nature) and human rights are considered with more prevalence,
taking into account that Humanity’s future depends on the compatibility among those
rights.
The environmental collapse, the civilized global crisis and consequent menace of
human extinction generated the necessity to re-signify the relation of Humanity with
Planet Earth, as the relation of human beings among themselves. An environmental
model is built based on the postulates, values or ethical references concerning to the
relation of human beings with nature, with Pachamama, with Mother Earth, which
reflects on the social model. Designing a social model depends also, and mainly, on the
values that condition the cohabiting among the living beings, although it also receives
influence of those postulates mentioned before.
On the point where the dilemma among Pachamama’s rights and human rights
converge, there is and axial challenge of conciliate environmental macro-politics with
social macro-politics, to minimize social and regional inequalities, in a way to assure
the future for Humanity as species.
Settled on life’s systemic vision (nature) and cooperative living (in
complementarity) among human beings, the proposal of Living Well, emerging from
the Andes, encloses, in thesis, the potentiality of overcoming this dilemma, of solving
this challenge, when supplying postulates for the conformation of a new socialenvironmental, ecocentric, communitarian and solidary civilization model.
2.3.2.1. POSTULATES OF LIVING WELL FOR AN ECOCENTRIC
ENVIRONMENTAL MODEL
18
According to EDUARDO GUDYNAS (2011, p. 231), Living Well implies a
new way of conceiving the relation with nature in a way to assure simultaneously the
well-being of people and the surviving of species, plants, animals and ecosystems.
There are many postulates of Living Well that contain the guiding values of this
relation between human beings and nature, which can constitute the basis for an
ecocentric environmental model.
Through the Andean cosmovision, there is an intrinsic unity among Humanity
and Pachamama, and Humanity is an organic inter-related whole.
Corollary of this vision of the world, the spiritual postulates of Living Well
mentioned before (prioritize life; live in complementarity; live in balance with nature)
express this ecocentric conception where the environmental model lays, whose most
impacting innovation consists in the acknowledging of Pachamama’s rights, discussed
before.
One of the most important reflections of the postulates of environmental
paradigm about the social model is detected in the economy, which comes to second
place in relation to nature, environment and life. In consequence, the classic conception
of development is broken, as based on the ideal of infinite progress, and is substitute by
the ideal of Harmony among the living beings. So, economy gives space to Life’s
culture, and infinite progress to the ideal of Harmony among the living beings.
Living Well seeks, as GUDYNAS says (2011, 232), to break the classical vision
of development associated with the perpetual economic growing, linear progress and
anthropocentrism.
Facing the change of meaning of bonds between human beings and nature, with
the internalization of feelings of pertaining and unit, it is no longer admitted that
Economy considers nature as giver of goods and production, neither Law to treat not
human kingdoms as judicial goods susceptible to appropriation by particulars, but as
subjects with rights.
The proposal of Living Well constitutes, not only a different vision of
development, but an alternative to development (GUDYNAS and ACOSTA).
This understanding of the world generates reflections on the public politics as
commercialization of nature is not admitted, neither its appropriation by particulars,
explainig why some people, such as Boaventura de Souza Santos (2010, p.4) and René
Ramirez Gallegos, speak about Living Well’s Socialism. (2010, p. 22)
19
To these predominantly spiritual postulates, the following, in which the material
dimension of Living Well prevails, are added: to reincorporate agriculture; to protect the
seeds; to recuperate natural resources and take care of the water.
As a consequence, innovative constitutional norms and public reformer politics
oriented to the Living Well were introduced in Ecuador and Bolivia, as, for example,
the ones that propose the sovereign alimentation and those that regulate a new right to
the waters.
About waters politics, according to the new ecocentric view, the right for water
is elevated to a human right level, inseparable from the right for life and the other
human rights; emancipating it from the economic conception of water as a resource or
good of capital needed for production and hostage of the market’s logic, considering it a
common society’s patrimony; it is forbidden, in consequence, the commercialization
and privatization of services related to the waters, and, in a bolder step, in the
Constitutional Law in Ecuador, the judicial treatment of water is changed, from an
object that becomes a subject, from the understanding that water, as other living beings,
is a component of nature (Pachamama) and a source of life. (MORAES, 2012, online)6
As human beings are part of nature, there is an easily perceptible co-relation
between the environmental and social aspect of Living Well model, in a way that the
reference to one of them, is not done by exclusion, but by the criterion of predominance
of one or other aspect.
a. LIVING WELL’S POSTULATES FOR A SOCIAL, COMMUNITARIAN
AND SOLIDARY MODEL
What is relevant to the relations among human beings, within the Living Well
model, is that separativeness gives space to unity and communitarism, as
competitiveness to cooperation, that is, solidarity.
The attributes of communitarism and solidarity come inexorably from an
ecocentric cosmovision that can preponderate, depending on the recuperation and
awareness of feelings of essential life’s unity and belonging to Mother Earth and, its
consequent universalization on Planet Earth
6
A propos, check MORAES, Germana. O constitucionalismo ecocêntrico dos Andes: os direitos de
Pachamama, o Bem Viver e o direito à água. IN MORAES, LEITE e UNNENBERG (org.), Muito
além das fronteiras: o tratamento jurídico das águas na Unasul, Editora da Univali, Itajaí, 2012.
20
This ecocentric vision of the world, synthetized in the spiritual postulates, and,
specially in the understanding of ayni or complementarity, according to which
Humanity is an organic inter-related whole, a way of communitarian and solidary living
among human beings necessarily arises, and is fundamentally expressed in the
following postulates of Living Well, where a new social model can be placed: Live well
and NOT better; Do not steal and do not lie; Respect women; Listen to the elders; Know
how to eat; Know how to drink; Know how to dance; Know how to communicate;
Know how to work; Work in reciprocity; Obtain consensual agreements; Respect the
differences; Accept the differences; Exercise sovereignty; Social control; Defend
identity; Recover Abya Yala.
The choice for the idea of Living Well instead of Living Better implies the substitution
of the paradigm of competitiveness by cooperation, coming from this last one solidarity,
constitutionalized in Bolivia as one of the values that supports the State for Living Well
(art. 8th - II). In Ecuador, beyond solidarity as a commitment expressively sealed in its
Constitution’s preface, in the 3rd - 6 th article, appears as primordial duty of the State to
promote the equitable and solidary development of all territory.
As, Leonardo Boff teaches, in the indigenous traditions of Abya Yala, instead of
“living better” it is “living well”. “Living better”, he says, “supposes an ethical of the
unlimited progress and incite us to a competition with the others to create more and
more conditions to live better”. However, so that some could “live better”, millions and
millions have and had to “live bad”. It is the capitalist contradiction. “Contrarily” – he
continues, “Living Well aims an ethic of sufficiency for the whole community and not
only for the individual. Living Well supposes a holistic and integrating vision of the
human being inserted in the great terrestrial community that includes besides the human
being, the air, the water, the soil, the mountains, the trees and the animals; that is to be
in deep communion with Pacha Mama (the Earth), with the universe energies and with
God.” (BOFF, online, 2009)
The ethical manner of some of the postulates of Living Well is expressively
admitted in Bolivia’s constitutional text that considers Living Well, the duty of not
lying and not stealing, one of the ethical-moral principles of the plural society (art. 8th).
It is identified, furthermore, referring to social cohabiting, an ethical stress of moderated
hedonism, that is, with wisdom and sobriety, in the announced postulates as Knowing
how to eat, Knowing how to drink, Knowing how to dance, Knowing how to work,
21
which reveals also the aspiration for the human being’s harmony with nature: with its
own nature, with Mother Earth’s cycles and with other living beings, amongst them,
human beings.
It’s observed, anyway, the ethical component of the enunciation of Living Well
that postulates the respect for women, so Magdalena Léon qualifies the proposal of
Living Well as an expression of ecofeminism, lined in the ethic of care (LÉON, 2010, p.
24). Amerindian originary peoples, believed the women represent Pachamama, Mother
Earth generator and nourisher of life, who lives in relation of complementarity with the
cosmic forces (Pachakama). The postulates of Living Well project to the future an ecospiritual civilization that unites the Father, Tayta Inti, the masculine, with the Mother,
Pachamama, the Goddess, the feminine… That reconnects the Spirit (the Father) with
the ecological matters (Mother Earth)… This perception anchors the values of respect
and revaluing of women.
From this communitarian and solidary way of life (in complementarity), it is
traced the political profile of a new social-environmental model, in which
communitarian democracy is distinguished, with the obtaining of consensual
agreements, in a context of pluralism and interculturality, in which differences are
respected and accepted, without disadvantage of the exercise of the State sovereignty,
the social control and the future integrationist vision. One of the principal objectives of
Living Well, as said before and will be seen next, it is to retrieve the unity of all
peoples, what suits with its premise that unity is an organic inter-related whole.
III. EXPANSION OF THE MODEL AND PUBLIC POLITICS FOR LIVING
WELL TO UNASUL – UNION OF SOUTH AMERICAN NATIONS, AND TO
HUMANITY
So that Unasul gains full life and is affirmed as a community of South American
nations, it is necessary to detect which common feeling fraternizes the citizens that live
in the territory known as South America and what makes the South American nations
closer in the search for achieving the common dream of recovering Abya Yala.
The Living Well founding feelings’ presence, that is, respect and the worship for
Mother Earth, also the harmony and complementarity principle among the living beings,
not only in the Andes, but in a general way, in the cosmovision of the originary peoples
22
of Abya Yala, and in a restrict way, in the territoriality of South America, lead us to
believe in the possibility of expansion of the ecocentric, communitarian and solidary
social-environmental model, of Living Well and its respective public politics, beyond
the Andes, to the whole South American community of nations, Unasul, now being
gestated, and maybe, beyond the austral hemisphere, to all planet Earth.
The integration of Latin America has represented one of the most dynamic
social-political movements that countries of this region have been using to become
stronger, to win challenges and overcome obstacles. The dream of Latin American
integration is not something new. It has been present in the region’s history as in diverse
integrationist proposals, as the ones from Mercosul and CAN (Andean Community of
Nations), as motive force of their economic developing.
Recently, in May 23 rd 2008, the continent’s south region came to know UNASUL –
Union of South American Nations, created to appease the integration of South
America’s countries – Argentine, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana,
Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela, not only in the economic field, but
also, in the political, cultural and social fields. Within the economic plan, Unasul’s main
objective is the creation of a free commerce zone that can shelter Mercosul and the
Andean Community of Nations, besides Guyana and Suriname, like the European
Union’s model. Through this space of integration, UNASUL expects to develop
concrete and effective mechanisms to overcome cultural, social, economical and politics
asymmetries.
UNASUL’s proposal is based on the conjecture that the consolidation of this
new political organ and the outcome of the process of unity and integration of these
South American countries depends, in great part, on the transcendence of the economic
integration process, so that a South American identity can be detected and constructed
by these countries. The difficulties of people collectively recognize themselves in a
market, diagnosed in the recent experiences of MERCOSUL and CAN last decades,
suggest the insufficiency integration of markets, demanding, besides this, cultural
integration, so a transnational organism as UNASUL is created, where unity is based on
identities and cultures, sharing one common memory, as transnational rights as well.
In the recent processes of constitutional change in South America, a space was
opened to reveal South American identity – an absolutely necessary amalgam for the
regional integration, in a general way, and for Unasul construction, in a particular way.
23
The partial rupture with judicial patterns imported from the Western side of the
North Hemisphere, mainly in Europe and United States of America, which have been
“inertialy” reproduced in Latin American’ constitutional texts, allied to the advances of
democracy, through the strengthening of constituent power with wide participation in
constituent assemblies of social movements, in a special way, those who are indigenous
peoples representatives, women and workers, propitiated the scenery that started to rise
a genuinely South American identity, or, if you prefer, its multifaceted identity, that is
to say, its plural identity.
From the will of popular participation, suffocated by previous liberticidal
regimes, innovative and improved ways of democracy exercise arises, conjugated to the
autochthons experiences, redundant proposals such as, for example, the one of
communitarian democracy. It is also from the experience of meridional American
people that a tolerant trace from South American arises, and its maximum expressions
are plurinationality and interculturality, constitutionalized as attributes of State, in
Ecuador (2008) and Bolivia (2009).
In synthesis, listening to the originary peoples’ voice allowed their soul to be
expressed in the Constitution, and through the democratic way, their deepest feelings
and their way of living got life with the constitutionalized Living Well in Ecuador
(Sumak Kawsay) and in Bolivia (Suma qamaña), including the acknowledge of
Pachamama’s rights (nature) and the recognition of the principle of Harmony and
complementarity.
In Tarin Mont’Alverne’s and Helano Rangel’s opinions, the recognition of
planet Earth as a subject of dignity and rights constitutes an Andean legacy for
UNASUL’s constitution and for humanity, and, “from South America, an effective
pattern of protection and environmental preservation can be irradiated to the rest of the
world,
provoking
a
complete
change
in
the
anthropocentric
paradigm.”
(MONT’ALVERNE e RANGEL, 2011, 319-336)
From this new paradigm, ethically and judicially based on the postulates of
Living Well, whence
the recognition of Pachamama’s rights (Mother Earth) are
implied, a proposal can be conceived, to replace the individualist, competitive,
anthropocentric capitalist, model, now ending, into a new communitarian, cooperative
and brotherly ecocentric model, with potential to irradiating, on long terms, to whole
humanity and to encourage a new terrestrial consciousness, promoting, maybe, the
24
planetary union, preconized by Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern 7, as a rational
minimal demand for a narrowed and interdependent world, in which the overcoming of
the State-Nation is experienced. And the overcoming of the State-Nation – they
continue – does not means its end, but its integration towards wider associations, that
can only be lived and effective if each one and all recognize this quality to the Earth,
fatherland and motherland itself of all humans, and if Europeans feel a motherfatherland quality towards Europe. In other words, it could be said that if Europeans
revere Gaia again, and Latin Americans, their America, worshiping Pachamama,
Mother Earth. (MORIN e KERN, 1995, p. 116)
This Nation overcomer of the State-Nation, can be design from the
implementation of the ecocentric, communitarian and solidary model of Living Well, in
a way to reach Life in plenitude, where the beings of all kingdoms live in harmony with
themselves, among them, with nature, anyway, in harmony with all living beings,
communing with feelings of belonging to Mother Earth and essential unity with Life, in
a way that everyone is self-recognized as children of the same Mother Earth,
Pachamama and, so, as brothers and sisters, with the predominance of the brotherly and
solidary share of the same planetary citizenship, in one and only family, in a planetary
common-unity (community).
In Brazil, there is a concrete proposal in that sense, which starts to flesh out
known as Nación Pachamama: a social insurgent movement that “gathers peoples and
traditions, with the intent to consciously go back to group life, simple, slow and
compassionate, which proposes a rescue of values that remits to the originary ancient
traditions from Latin America and also to the millenary traditions of the East, to resignify the bonds of the human beings among themselves and the nature, with the other
living beings, through the recovering of the feelings of unit with Life and pertinence
with Mother Earth”. Nación Pachamama, “aiming the awakening of men and women to
life’s culture”, seeks to “gather voices and hearts that feel the need to build a balanced
world with the relations among Pachamama’s beings (Earth), outside the exploratory
and competitive cycle of markets; has the goal to value peoples’ identities, their
reciprocal cooperation and integration according with the principle of ‘living in
harmony’” (Wikipedia, online, 2013).
7
MORIN, Edgar e KERN, Anne Brigitte Kern. 5a ed. Tradução de Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Terra
Pátria, Editora Suline, 1995, p. 116.
25
Consciousness in our hearts is developed, our minds and our hands are part of
the responsibility of formulating theories and politics, in the quality of Life’s guardians
and defendants, in favor of life and all its beings, in favor of the Living Well model and
Pachamama’s rights, that congregates in itself, in a indivisible unity, Humanity and all
the others living beings…
As observed, there is a flame of hope that rises in the volcanic region of the high
Andean cordillera, and has been nourished in Brazil: the hope that Eros can win
Thanatos, and, thus, humanity can have a future, Life and Harmony among the living
beings and Living Well, in synthesis, Life in plenitude, yes, they will triumph…
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACOSTA Alberto y GUDYNAS, Eduardo. El buen viver mas allá del
desarrollo. In Quehacer, Lima, Desco, 2011. (The Living Well beyond
development)
ACOSTA A. y MARTINEZ E., El Buen Vivir – Una vía para el desarrollo,
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<http://www.terrazul.m2014.net/spip.php?breve239>. Acesso em julho de 2011.
(Living Well or Living Better?)
26
______. Uma esperança: a Era do Ecozóico. Disponível em:
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hope)
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CESPEDES,
David
Choquehuanca.
Bolívia:
25
postulados
para
entender o ‘Viver Bem’ Entrevista publicada no jornal boliviano La Razón
de
31/01/2010.
Trad.
CEPAT.
Disponível
em:
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_________________Hacia la reconstrucción del vivir bien. ALAI, América
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America:old and new paradigms)
COSTA, Darc. Integrar é desenvolver a América do Sul. In: SEMINÁRIO
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DE SOUZA SANTOS B., Refundación del Estado en América Latina –
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(Reform of the State in Latin America - perspectives from an epistemology from
the South)
DE SOUZA SANTOS B., Hablamos del Socialismo del Buen Vivir, ALAI,
América en Movimiento, 452, febr. 2010, 4-7.(Talking about Living Well
socialism)
GALLEGOS, René Ramírez. Socialismo Del sumak kawsay. El biosocialismo
republicano. SENPLADES. Secretaria Nacional de planificación y desarrollo.
Quito. (Sumak kawsay’s socialism. Republican bio-socialism)
GUDYNAS Eduardo., El mandato ecológico – derechos de la Naturaleza y
políticas ambientales en la nueva Constitución, Quito, Abya Yala, 2009.
(The ecological mandate - rights of nature and environmental policies in the
new Constitution)
__________La senda biocéntrica: valores intrínsecos,
derechos de la naturaleza y justicia ecológica, Tabula Rasa. Bogotá Colombia, No.13: 45-71, julio-diciembre 2010 (The Biocentric path: intrinsic
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27
__________La dimension ecológica del buen vivir: entre el fantasma de la
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___________Buen vivir: Germinando alternativas al desarrollo, America
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__________Derechos de la naturaleza, muitos protagonistas, unico
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__________Desarrollo, derechos de la naturaleza y
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__________Tensiones, contradicciones y oportunidades de la dimension
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HUANACUNI, Fernando. Buen Vivir / Vivir Bien. Filosofía, políticas,
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Well. Philosophy, policies, strategies and Andean regional experiences)
____________________ Paradigma occidental y paradigma indígena
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LANDER, Edgardo. Estamos vivendo una profunda crisis civilizatoria. ALAI,
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28
LÉON, Magdalena. Reactivación económica para el Buen Vivir: un
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LORENZETTI, Ricardo Luís. Teoria Geral do Direito Ambiental. Tradução
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_______________A Vingança de Gaia. Editora Intrínseca. São Paulo, 2006.
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___________________El
Nuevo Constitucionalismo Latinoamericano y el
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_______________ A Mãe Terra como sujeito de dignidade e de direitos
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29
________________ UNASUL: Notas sobre a integração energética e
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____________________________.
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30
_____________
La naturaleza como persona: Pachamama y Gaia. IN
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_________;DECLARAÇÃO DO CONSELHO DE CHEFES DE ESTADO E DE
GOVERNO
DA
UNIÃO
DE
NAÇÕES
SUL-AMERICANAS.
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_________;PROTOCOLO ADICIONAL AO TRATADO CONSTITUTIVO DA
UNASUL
SOBRE
COMPROMISSO
COM
A
DEMOCRACIA.
<http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/temas/america-do-sul-e-integracaoregional/unasul/protocolo-adicional-ao-tratado-constitutivo-da-unasul-sobrecompromisso-com-a-democracia>Acesso em: 05 JUL 2011.
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