Pluriversal Autonomies Beyond Development: Towards an Intercultural,Decolonial and Ecological Buen Vivir as an Alternative to the 2030 Agenda in Abya Yala/Latin America

Abstract

This article employs Critical Development Studies to analyze the international political economy of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and address how the main elements that sustain and characterize it turn it into “another brick in the wall” of the hegemonic development paradigm (neoliberal, neo-developmentalist, neocolonial, privatized, inequitable, and environmentally predatory). It further analyzes how this 2030 Agenda contributed to the process of ‘enclosure of development’ in Abya Yala/Latin America (AY/LA). We then employ decolonial thought and pluriversal perspectives to contest this hegemonic vision and imagine an intercultural, decolonial and ecological buen vivir or “good living” (BV-IDE) as an autonomist alternative to the 2030A model for AY/LA, and address three contemporary experiences in Colombia, Ecuador, and Central America.

En este trabajo, partiendo de una perspectiva de Estudios Críticos del Desarrollo y tras un análisis de economía política internacional crítica de la Agenda 2030 de Desarrollo Sostenible, mostramos cómo los ejes principales que la sostienen y atraviesan la convierten en ‘otro ladrillo en el muro’ del paradigma de desarrollo hegemónico (neoliberal, neodesarrollista, neocolonial, privatizado, inequitativo, y ecológicamente depredador), y cómo dicha Agenda 2030 ha contribuido al proceso de ‘cercamiento del desarrollo’, también en Abya Yala/América Latina (AY/AL).

Como respuesta a esta visión hegemónica proponemos, desde los aportes del pensamiento decolonial y las perspectivas pluriversales, imaginar un buen vivir intercultural, decolonial y ecologista (BV-IDE) como alternativa autonomista al modelo de la 2030A para AY/AL, y presentamos tres experiencias contemporáneas, en Colombia, Ecuador y Centroamérica, conectadas con nuestra propuesta.

Keywords

Indigenous autonomy Pluriverse Buen vivir Global tapestry of alternatives PPOCS (Ecuador)CONCIP (Colombia)CICA (Central America)

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030A) constitutes the hegemonic framework of contemporary international development. It is based on three basic pillars: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; UN, 2015a), configured around a series of universal, multidimensional, and multi-stakeholder goals that aspire to set up a model of “sustainable and inclusive development”; the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (PA; UNFCCC, 2016), which aims to confront the environmental and civilizational crisis facing our planet by establishing a (theoretical) alliance between development and sustainability; and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA; UN, 2015b), which provides financial support for the previous two, and defines a complex model of financing for development (FfD) that aims to combine development finance and climate finance.

For the more indulgent visions of the 2030A model (Langford, 2016), this implies a paradigm shift that breaks away from the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and, by including more complex and deeper objectives, as well as powerful and diverse financing mechanisms, aspires to “leaving no one behind.” However, approaches from the fields of Critical Development Studies and Critical International Political Economy emphasize that the 2030A has structural connections with the neoliberal development model (Weber, 2017), with the Washington, post-Washington and Wall St. Consensuses (promoted by the WB and IMF), with the process of marketization and privatization of development, with the financialization of development (Bayliss and van Waeyenberge, 2017; Garcia-Arias, 2015), and with the UN “development decades” (Tellería, 2021). In other words, the “new” 2030A model would be merely one more step in the building of a financialized and depoliticized (Tellería and Garcia-Arias, 2022) Neoliberal Development Agenda (NDA) that would recover the “invention of development” (Escobar, 1998) under a rhetoric of “sustainability” and “inclusion.” It is a new brick in the wall that enables the “enclosure of development” (Garcia-Arias and Mediavilla, 2023).

Dissidence and resistance to 2030A (by different actors, experiences, imaginaries, and social and intellectual movements) from a pluriversal vision of the world (Esteva and Escobar, 2017; Kothari et al., 2019) are currently gaining space and legitimacy in the search for and construction of autonomist alternatives to hegemonic “development,” its agendas, and goals.

This article looks at how the three basic pillars of 2030A contribute, independently but in an interconnected and mutually reinforcing manner, to consolidate a NDA and, therefore, an orthodox and Western-centric conception of “development,” including in Abya Yala/Latin America (AY/LA). At the same time, we connect elements of pluriversality, decoloniality, and autonomism in an intercultural, decolonial, and ecological version of buen vivir or “good living” (BV-IDE). This is a Latin American alternative to the model offered by the 2030A and connects with a dialogue of knowledges (Leff, 2004) and the epistemologies of the South (Santos, 2014) that suffuse and support other critical, dissident, and emancipatory experiences across AY/LA.

It should be noted that, although the 2030A may appear to have a less direct influence on AY/LA and other countries of the global South than, for example, the policies of the World Bank or the IMF, there are elements that allow us to qualify this perception of the Agenda’s relative innocuousness or limited relevance.

On the one hand, the 2030A has a very significant influence on governments, universities, and institutions in the region that have taken it on as their own, and use it as inspiration for their long-term programs. Some examples include the Plataforma Regional del Conocimiento sobre la Agenda 2030 en América Latina y el Caribe (Regional Knowledge Platform on the 2030 Agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean), or the Foro de los Países de América Latina y el Caribe sobre el Desarrollo Sostenible (Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development), which held its Fifth Meeting in 2022. Additionally, between 2016 and 2022, 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (including some with models that are far from neoliberal economic orthodoxy, such as Cuba or Venezuela) submitted their Voluntary National Reports. These constitute the main national institutional mechanism for the coordination and monitoring of the implementation of the 2030A, which reinforces the link (at least theoretically and institutionally) between AY/LA and the Agenda, as well as the latter’s decisive influence in the region, at least as a model of hegemonic development “from outside and from above.”

On the other hand, the 2030A has a decisive influence on key actors of the “development industry” in the global North (governments, NGOs, official cooperation agencies), which ultimately have a notable impact on AY/LA through their “development cooperation” policies. Nor can we forget the linkage of the 2030A with key actors and institutions dealing with climate change, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Conference of the Parties (COP), or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), all of which significantly affect Latin American countries.

To develop our argument, in the next section we analyze the three fundamental pillars of 2030A and show how their interaction determines an agenda that, despite its discursive stance as a transformative, sustainable, and inclusive model, becomes a purely aspirational program based on a technocratic, depoliticized, privatizing, and self-referential narrative that reaffirms the NDA. Then we address alternatives “beyond development” as a response to this hegemonic vision, placing special emphasis on contributions related to decoloniality and pluriversal perspectives. Next, we analyze the concept of buen vivir, focusing on certain elements to build our proposal for a BV-IDE, and present three experiences (in Ecuador, Colombia, and Central America) that we consider to be examples close to our proposed approach. The article closes with a section of final considerations.

Deepening The Enclosure Of “Development”: The Three Neoliberal Pillars Of The 2030 Agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or the consolidation of a neoliberal development model in the 2030A

For the United Nations, “sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth” is essential for prosperity (UN, 2015a, Art. 27). Thus, the SDGs reinforce economic growth as a sine qua non of “sustainable development” and connect the discourse of the 2030A with the neoliberal rationale of previous decades. This highlights the contradictions (in terms of “sustainability” and the fight against climate change) derived from the impossibility of an “absolute decoupling” between growth, the use of energy and materials, and the ecological deterioration caused by the generation of waste (Fletcher and Rammel, 2017; Parrique et al., 2019).

In addition, the SDGs remain confident that the presumed fixing of market constraints and distortions from within the neoliberal development paradigm will address some of the problems of development. Thus, at the micro level, the 2030A proposes to improve the access of the most vulnerable sectors of the population to global value chains and markets by improving, for example, labor productivity (Goals 2.3 and 9.3). Meanwhile, at the macro level, it deepens its uncritical defense of the current international trade model under the assumption that “international trade is an engine for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction, and contributes to the promotion of sustainable development” (UN 2015a, Art. 68). It also undertakes to continue the promotion of “meaningful trade liberalization” (UN 2015a, Art. 68). Likewise, even after seven failed “decades of development” (Veltmeyer and Bowles, 2022; Telleria, 2021) when it comes to the eradication of poverty and famine, the 2030A defends the proposal to “correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets” and “adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets” (Goals 2.b and 2.c).

Reinforcing the neoliberal model, the SDGs rely on privatization processes, promoting them through Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and asserting that “private business activity, investment and innovation are major drivers of productivity, including economic growth and job creation” (UN 2015a, Art. 67). The available evidence, however, shows that “corporations participate in multi-stakeholder platforms and PPPs only where the framework is in line with their business strategies” (McKeon, 2017: 493). It also highlights the lack of harmony between the interests of the private sector and collective ones—especially those of subordinated populations, which supposedly underpin 2030A (Scheyvens, Banks, and Hughes, 2016).

The Paris Agreement (PA) on Climate Change, or the absence of a political ecology in the 2030A

The PA establishes a relationship between sustainability and “development” understood as “growth” (UNFCCC 2016, Art.2). Here, both elements (SDGs and PA) would be mutually reinforcing and help shape the “sustainability” component of the 2030A. However, the PA’s view of sustainability is profoundly orthodox and implies an additive rationale (the mere aggregation of environmental considerations to the mainstream view of development), but not a categorical one that would entail questioning the anthropocentric development/growth/capitalism paradigm itself.

The apparent merit of the PA has been to establish the commitment of the signatory countries to limit the increase in global temperatures to a level “well below 2°C” above pre-industrial levels (with the underlying objective of 1.5°C). For this purpose, the parties agree to make Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) assigned to greenhouse gas reductions. These are voluntary and have unconditional goals (financed exclusively with national resources), as well as conditional ones (achievable only if additional external financing is received). However, the chances of achieving the proposed limit, even if the INDCs are met, are practically nil (Raftery et al., 2017; Nieto, Carpintero, and Miguel, 2018).

On the other hand, the PA and the SDGs entrust to a technological-financial solutionism the possibility of “absolutely” decoupling growth and the use of energy and materials from environmental deterioration; that is, they are betting, to a greater or lesser extent, on a model of “green growth” that lacks any real precedents in the history of capitalism. Even the “relative” or “weak” decoupling that has taken place for short periods in some economies of the global North is based on a “creative” accounting of emissions, such as the use of resources and ecological footprints that do not include an “energy footprint” (Arto et al., 2016). This is essential in a context in which many countries of the North have relocated their most polluting production to the global South. Thus, in the best-case scenario, we would be facing a relative decoupling in some political geographies (i.e., the global North) at the expense of others (i.e., the global South) but not, in any case, an absolute global decoupling.

Additionally, we know that it is possible to satisfy all human needs with a lower use of energy and materials. The resources that the countries of the North dedicate to overproduction and overconsumption could be reduced and reoriented toward “providing high-quality public services, . . . establishing greater income equality, ensuring universal access to electricity and clean fuels, . . . increasing public health coverage, minimizing extractive industries and abandoning economic growth” (Vogel et al., 2021: 13). On the other hand, the PA reinforces the human vs. nature dichotomy and offers a very narrow perspective of agency by giving preponderance to human values, interests, and well-being (Katz, 1999).

Finally, the PA is permeated by a discourse of “market solutionism” to environmental problems (natural capital, ecosystem services, offsetting and market trading, carbon emissions trading) that shows a clear connection with the narrative of “natural capital” (Arsel and Büscher, 2012). This narrative holds that nature can (and should) be managed “efficiently” to attract a “new” type of investor and philanthropist for whom it is possible to help “save the world” while doing business-as-usual in global financial markets. In short, this is yet another neoliberal daydream (Garcia-Arias and Mediavilla, 2023). As Polanyi ([1944] 2001) anticipated, capitalism (neoliberal and financialized, in its current phase) has transformed land, nature, and life itself into fictitious commodities within a general framework that broadens and deepens the strategies of capital accumulation.

In short, the PA exhibits a disturbing absence of political ecology, which is indispensable to confront the current civilizational environmental crisis.

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda, or the financialization of development in the 2030A

The third pillar supporting the 2030A connects with the FfD system incorporated into the AAAA (UN, 2015b). FfD-related aspects are fundamental to the assessment of the development model underlying any agenda (Garcia-Arias, 2015), and the connection between finance and development has always implied a deepening of the processes of development commodification, financialization, and deep marketization, which are reinforced in 2030A.

Although the AAAA establishes a theoretical range of sources of financing instruments, it is incapable of establishing a genuine system of predictable, sufficient, stable, efficient, and fair resource generation. It also fails to propose any reform of the international economic and financial system that, in its process of financialization, explains a substantial part of the economic and financial crises which have (also) hit the global South. Nor does it establish any measures for international fiscal coordination or contemplate the possibility of establishing world tax and/or financial organizations (Garcia-Arias, 2013). It also fails to establish any real measures to connect the AAAA with the PA and ensure a sufficient and sustained volume of resources to finance the fight against climate change.

On the contrary, the AAAA limits itself to noting the foreseeable fall in Official Development Assistance (ODA) and trusts its entire reform to the new TOSSD (Total Official Support for Sustainable Development), in which dubiously related instruments and flows are presented as “official aid.” It also calls on the countries of the global South to expand their tax systems and increase their contribution to development via domestic resources, even though the available empirical evidence shows that many of these economies, including in AY/LA, make a much more of a fiscal effort than some OECD countries (Bayraktar, Le, and Moreno-Dodson, 2016: 68-71).

Furthermore, the only innovative instruments that are decisively supported are those related to private or public-private initiatives. There are no established measures to stimulate international taxation (e.g., global taxes on carbon or financial transactions) or public-public partnerships. This situation prevails even though the available evidence highlights the consequences of empowering PPPs through the privatization of access to public and common goods, the imposition of Western-centric norms and models, and very technocratic visions regarding the destination of resources and the management of cooperation projects (Bayliss and Van Waeyenberge, 2017; Languille, 2017).

In terms of philanthrocapitalism, AAAA enhances the hegemonic role of global elites, contributing to the consolidation of a financialized model of FfD while reinforcing a neocolonial development finance paradigm (Garcia-Arias and Mediavilla, 2023).

In short, the AAAA does not possess the elements required to become a systemic FfD model (Garcia-Arias, 2013). It also enshrines a neocolonial, neoliberal, and financialized model of FfD, reinforcing the Wall St. Consensus and connections to World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies (WB, 2017; WB/IMF, 2015), which are of particular concern in AY/LA.

Decolonial Pluriversal Alternatives Beyond Development

As we have shown, the 2030A constitutes “another brick in the wall” of the hegemonic development model and contributes to its consolidation by enhancing a NDA. The 2030A furthers the process of “enclosure of development” (Garcia-Arias and Mediavilla, 2023) because it configures an univocal, universalizing, technocratic, and apparently depoliticized but decidedly neoliberal and neocolonial interpretation of development—something we have been witnessing for decades.

Many alternatives to this model have emerged over the past few decades, some directly originating in or at least greatly influenced by the indigenous autonomies of AY/LA. Heterogeneous critical currents of thought on development studies (Veltmeyer and Bowles, 2022) share interrelated critiques of hierarchical and authoritarian structures of exploitation, colonialism, domination, paternalism, and control. These range from dependency theories (Furtado, 1975) to post-development (Escobar, 2005); from Marxist or radical visions (Pradella and Marois, 2014) to approaches influenced by the concept of buen vivir (Villalba-Eguiluz and Etxano, 2017) and sumak kawsay (Cuestas-Caza, 2021; Coral-Guerrero, García-Quero, and Guardiola, 2021); from Zapatismo (Leyva-Solano, 2019; Maldonado-Villalpando, Paneque-Gálvez, Demaria, and Napoletano, 2022) to degrowth (Demaria et al., 2020); from participatory development (Kapoor, 2005) to prefigurative anarchism (Wald, 2015). These have demonstrated that the hegemonic vision of “development” is a theoretical construct created by (and for) the interests of those actors and institutions that have been in power throughout the different phases of capitalism.

In the face of this hegemonic and monocultural version of development, many alternatives have highlighted the need to respect the multiplicity of visions of planetary well-being, and imagine and explore avenues that can lead us to it. There is also emphasis on the importance of integrating human activity with the rhythms and limits of nature, respecting all forms of life as an interconnected whole. These alternatives can be interpreted as paths toward the achievement of the pluriverse (Demaria and Kothari, 2017; Kothari et al., 2019; Garcia-Arias, Tornel, and Flores Gutiérrez, 2024). Such “pluriversal alternatives” (or a “pluriverse of alternatives”) suggest that very diverse cosmovisions can coexist in our world; that is, a space-time that represents the innumerable and culturally diverse human ways of being and existing, forms of living, knowledge(s) and feeling-thinking, as well as of categories of (inter)relations with nature and the rest of the world’s inhabitants (human and non-human, present and future). These alternatives do not imply a mere change in the (political) geographies of development, nor a simple rupture of the old North/South dichotomies, but imagining and moving toward categorical modification; an epistemological and ontological reconfiguration and reconsideration of what “development” is or how it can be interpreted. Naturally, this requires breaking with the “enclosure of the political imagination” (Smith, 2010) created by the neoliberal and neocolonial paradigm of capitalism and its dominant frameworks of knowledge. This entails decolonizing and deconstructing the structures on which the “wall of development” has been built, and delinking ourselves from it.

Indigenous autonomies, as a genuine manifestation of the pluriverse, have successfully demonstrated a decolonial praxis (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018) through a variety of delinking efforts (Amin, 1990) not only from the developmentalist rationale, but also from those of economic, political, cultural, ontological, and epistemological domination and subalternization in the colonial matrix of power. One of the strategies involves epistemic delinking as a necessary step to achieve social (and ecological) justice, given that “global social justice does not exist without global cognitive justice” (Santos, 2017: 11). However, delinking presupposes a subsequent relinking to something else (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018). For Indigenous autonomies, delinking is manifested in the recovery of knowledge(s) and praxes that have been historically omitted from the major global agendas, as well as in the circulation of dissident “glocal” narratives that question the meta-narrative of development and capitalism. Finally, delinking and relinking point to re-existence, understood as the sustained effort (to resist) to reorient our communal living praxis and occupy a social and cultural place of “rebellious dignity” as subjects who are defined in radically different ontological terms (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018).

In this sense, the different types of buen vivir (our BV-FDE proposal in particular) constitute decolonial pluriversal alternatives, “real utopias” (Wright, 2010) that take shape in various autonomous experiences of AY/LA and have succeeded in influencing the process of delinking from hegemonic concepts of development. Our next section addresses this issue.

Intercultural, Decolonial, And Ecological Buen Vivir (Bv-Ide)

From a post-developmentalist-ecological buen vivir to an intercultural, decolonial, and ecological buen vivir

A key element in addressing the issue of buen vivir (BV) has to do with its multiple versions. In a broad and abstract dimension, we find a single version of BV that is transfigured into a plurality of buenos vivires (Acosta, 2015; Loera, 2015), an “umbrella” category (Gudynas, 2011) that brings together the different ways in which epistemic currents, social movements, and the peoples of AY/LA themselves have felt-thought about BV.

Meanwhile, along a narrower and more concrete dimension are the various proposals, projects, discourses, experiences, and initiatives that, immersed in complex processes of territorially anchored historical struggles, share the ideal of an alternative society to the hegemonic capitalist/modern/colonial model. Indigenous languages express many versions of the concept of a good, fulfilled, or harmonious life: Sumak kawsay and alli kawsay in Kichwa; Suma qamaña in Aymara; ñande reko in Guarani; Lekil Kuxlejal in Tsotsil, among others. Likewise, other peoples who inhabit AY/LA have also put forth their own versions, as is the case of the Afro-Ecuadorian people’s vida sabrosa, or “flavorful life” (Antón, 2021).

Moreover, there are several academic approaches to this concept. The post-developmentalist-ecological BV (BV-PE) (Hidalgo-Capitán and Cubillo-Guevara, 2017) is one of the most interesting of the past decade. Given its vast scope and theoretical-practical potential, we take the BV-PE as a starting point for the construction of our proposal. The BV-PE constitutes an alternative to development (Gudynas, 2011), but it is also a concept with the potential to interact with other imaginaries such as degrowth (Escobar, 2015). At the epistemological level, the BV-PE promotes an interdiscursive dialogue that amalgamates some of the knowledge of the Andean-Amazonian peoples (specifically sumak kawsay)¹ with Western and non-Western theories that are critical of hegemonic development and have cultural and environmental roots (Vanhulst and Beling, 2014).

There are, in our opinion, two central elements in BV-EP discourse. On the one hand, it proposes a biocentric shift in the understanding of human/nature relationships, emphasizing a reencounter with the natural world (Acosta, 2015). Secondly, from a post-capitalist position and, inspired by Andean-Amazonian ways of life, it proposes an ideal form of life in harmony—with the self, others, and nature—where, in theory, three principles converge: identity, equity, and sustainability (Cubillo-Guevara, Hidalgo-Capitán, and García-Álvarez, 2016). These principles have served as the basis for the development of an ambitious academic proposal that, founded on a deconstructive assessment of the SDGs, presents a new list of 21 specific goals for buen vivir on a global scale (BV-Global; Hidalgo-Capitán, García-Álvarez, Cubillo-Guevera, and Medina-Carranco, 2019).²

The biocentric and post-capitalist approaches of the BV-PE would seem to place it on the ontological margins (Loera, 2015) of two cultural matrices (Western and Andean-Amazonian). This aspect has been criticized by some researchers as a potential exercise in “epistemic extractivism” (Grosfoguel, 2016). They argue that BV-PE runs the risk of becoming part of a process of intellectual liquefaction that would depoliticize and de-indigenize it with the goal of turning it into a more versatile concept that is more easily internationalized and, thereby, coopted (Cuestas-Caza, 2018). In other words, this well-intentioned communalization of knowledge (Altmann, 2020) could, in fact, lead to process of appropriation-assimilation of Indigenous ideas-force, just as “raw materials are extracted” (Grosfoguel, 2016: 132) by the modern (and postmodern) intellectual machine of the global North and its mechanisms of “agencement” (assemblage) and “deterritorialization” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980).

Therefore, taking BV-PE as a starting point, we consider that it would be strengthened by more critical and counter-hegemonic approaches, as well as by complementary contributions related to other form(s) of (material and spiritual) society and, fundamentally, with the visibilization of the historic struggles of social and autonomist movements. This could reduce the risk of epistemological cooptation. Thus, even though we agree that BV-PE represents a pluriversal alternative to the 2030A (Chassagne, 2018; Hidalgo-Capitán, García-Álvarez, Cubillo-Guevera, and Medina-Carranco, 2019) and its “fantasmatic narrative” (Tellería and Garcia-Arias, 2022), we argue that a prescriptive form of society should also be understood as a project that is political, intercultural and decolonial (Lalander and Lembke, 2021), radical, and convivial (Garcia-Arias and Schoneberg, 2021).

Thus it seems necessary to broaden the conceptualization of BV-PE towards an intercultural, decolonial, and ecological buen vivir (BV-IDE). This pluriversal alternative is: a) intercultural, in the sense of a dynamic construction that is nourished by the dialogues and confrontations of (and among) the knowledge(s) and praxes of peoples; b) decolonial, in terms of an approach that seeks to subvert the mechanisms of the colonial matrix of power (Quijano, 1998) and confronts the rhetoric of (neo)developmentalism and (neo)extractivism as it is interwoven across categories of inequality (class, race, gender); and c) ecological, with regards to an insistence on respect and harmonious coexistence with nature, a sine qua non condition for the sustenance of human and non-human life.

This version of BV-IDE takes elements from BV-PE while, at the same time, it seeks to (re)politicize and (re)visibilize the roots (Indigenous, peasant, anti-patriarchal, Afro-descendant) that gave rise to the concept, as well as the current autonomist practices that have adopted it, in rebellious dignity, as a banner of struggle.

It is possible to identify some experiences and initiatives in AY/LA that align with our proposal for BV-IDE. These should be understood as both a first input to imagine beyond the “sustainable development” proposed by the 2030A, and as the “real utopias” of Indigenous peoples; that is, “not impossible dreams, but objectives to strive for” (Rappaport, 2005: 8). These cases are strongly related to efforts of decolonial praxis (delink-relink-re-exist) through the adoption of meanings and ways of life that present a material and spiritual understanding of (and with) nature, as well as of processes and mechanisms of struggle against the asymmetries of the capitalist system.

Some experiences of BV-IDE as a pluriversal autonomist alternative

Our first experience is embodied in the Comisión Nacional de Comunicación de los Pueblos Indígenas (National Commission on Indigenous Peoples’ Communication, CONCIP) in Colombia. Since 2012, CONCIP has dedicated itself to ensuring the recognition and implementation of public policy on Indigenous communications and is composed of 16 official Indigenous delegates (CONCIP, 2023). From 2019, CONCIP, in collaboration with social organizations (Fundación Natibo, Organización Indígena de La Guajira) and public organizations (the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies of Colombia, Channel Thirteen), has been developing the “buen vivir Multiplatform Project.” This media project, which spans a total of four seasons, brings together different ways of feeling-thinking as well as life histories of thirty Indigenous peoples of Colombia, including their ways of caring for the land, governing, and resolving conflicts, as well as the asymmetries they face within the neo-developmentalist system (CONCIP, 2020a; 2020b; 2020c).

One common element is the understanding of nature as mother and divinity. In this sense, CONCIP emphasizes the need to repair the spiritual link with nature given that “Mother Earth is tired of environmental devastation” (CONCIP, 2020b: 4m51s). They also reaffirm that the relationship with nature has been fractured due to extractivism, and call for an end to “injuring the earth” through mineral extraction since, while science and technology advance, “our planet is slowly dying” (CONCIP, 2020a: 7m31s). What is at stake is not only the physical-sacred space, but the dynamic processes of social, political, and cultural self-determination of each people. In this way, and in the words of a representative of the Wayuu people, buen vivir is imperiled when the “territory is being threatened by multinational companies, when we are sold a supposed progress that happens at the expense of our customs and traditions” (CONCIP, 2020c: 6m37s). These are real voices resisting—in conditions of inequality—the industrial transformation that furthers the expansion of extractive activities across the global South (Dougherty, 2016), whose devastating effects sometimes include the deaths of those who oppose it.

An initial reading of the media initiative on BV led by CONCIP and the Indigenous peoples themselves (its Indigenous directors and filmmakers), as well as the support from the social and public sectors, encourages delinking and “dé-agencement” (disassemblage) (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980). First, epistemologically, from the structures that dominate the discourses on the economy and ecology. Second, pragmatically, from the global extractivist and developmentalist system, with an emphasis on the defense of territory. A deeper reading of CONCIP reveals a process of silent and sustained resistance lasting more than 10 years, arising from below and from within, and strategically employing ancestral knowledge as a tool for the defense of territory (Bastos, 2021), as well as a mechanism to influence public communication policies. The result is an “ethnic rearticulation” (Bastos, 2021) that transforms and redefines the rationale behind what it means to be Indigenous in a neoliberal context, now as re-existing political subjects who can speak with their own voice, reinterpret their history, and reinforce their experiences of autonomy.

A second experience is that of the Parlamento de los Pueblos, Organizaciones y Colectivos Sociales del Ecuador (Parliament of Peoples, Organizations and Social Collectives of Ecuador, PPOCS), a macro-organization that was, a priori, circumstantial and temporary. It was created in October 2019, and later reactivated in August 2021, in the context of the social protests against the neoliberal measures promoted by the administrations in power at the time (Lenin Moreno in 2020 and Guillermo Lasso in 2021). The PPOCS was led by one of AY/LA’s most recognized bodies of indigenous autonomism, the Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, CONAIE), and brought together more than 180 representatives from diverse social organizations.

As part of the agreements following 11 days of social protest, on October 31, 2019 the PPOCS prepared and submitted to the Presidency of the Republic of Ecuador its “Alternative Proposal to the Economic and Social Model.” The proposal highlighted the need for a change of civilizational perspective to guide the construction of a plurinational, socially just, post-extractivist, and equitable economic model to foster general well-being grounded in respect for the commons, collective rights, and the rights of nature (PPOCS, 2019). To achieve this, the proposal called for an understanding of the economic model as a complex system within which the principles of relationality and complementarity of the Indigenous cosmovision would play a fundamental role in the transition from a hegemonic capitalist paradigm prioritizing economic growth “toward a new kind of relationship between society, nature and production, in such a way that the effects of global warming can be mitigated in a real way” (PPOCS, 2019: 7). With the intent to transcend the objectives of “conventionally defined development” (Stahler-Sholk, Vanden, and Becker, 2014: 4), BV, as presented in the PPOCS proposal, becomes an exercise in re-existence that relinks “other” rationalities and knowledges regarding development to the demands anchored in ethnic (plurinationality), class (equity), and environmental struggles of the past and present.

The Ecuadorian case reveals an autonomism that is both chaotic and organized, in tune with other subaltern social groups and capable of implementing emerging strategies (such as the creation of the PPOCS) to legitimize its presence and national leadership through a kind of rhizomatic model of organization (Stahler-Sholk, 2017; Garcia-Arias, Tornel, and Flores Gutiérrez, 2024) that has adapted with each social protest and does not disguise its intent to gain power to bring about change. The 2019 uprising may have contributed to the repositioning of the Indigenous movement’s political party (Pachakutik), which became the second most important political force in the National Assembly during the 2021 elections and whose presidential candidate was just a few tenths of a point away from advancing to the second round.

A third experience is that of the Consejo Indígena de Centro América (Indigenous Council of Central America, CICA), a supranational organization that brings together seven Central American countries (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panamá, and Nicaragua). For more than 30 years, it has worked on the construction of a regional Indigenous agenda (CICA, et al., 2008). CICA adopts a vision of BV understood as an expression of harmonious life in permanent construction that does not just seek economic well-being, but also the common good of Indigenous communities and peoples, strengthening their cultures and identities in direct connection and balance with nature. This form of BV entails a sense of life that guides individual and collective action, recognizing the indissoluble relationship between the universe, nature, and humanity (CICA, 2020a).

CICA’s operation is sustained by four strategic pillars: (1) the political area, which is the backbone of the organization’s direction at the regional level through the Assembly and different Councils (among them, the Council of Elders and Spiritual Guides); (2) the area of cultural identity, which fosters the recognition and respect of each people’s form of political, economic, social, and cultural organization; (3) the area of Indigenous economy, which proposes a system of community interrelations in balance with nature for the production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of resources, goods, and services, which in turn are understood as a means to create communal well-being and move toward BV; and (4) the capacity building area, which focuses on the recovery of ancestral knowledge and technologies, as well as the adoption of new complementary knowledge (CICA, 2020b).

In the case of CICA, the vision guided by the notion of BV is quite robust and in line with the body’s organizational form and actions, where the strategic relinking of ancestral knowledge and practices stands out (e.g., the Council of Elders and Spiritual Guides, experiential training programs in the territory, climate monitoring of Indigenous territories, and ancestral conservation practices). This relinking emphasizes the rearticulation of identity and community rationales, the territory, and the relationship with the environment (Bastos, 2021). As a result, CICA re-exists as a self-managed autonomism with the capacity to negotiate with nation-states. Its regional integration and rhizomatic structure (Garcia-Arias, Tornel, and Flores Gutiérrez, 2024) allowed it to amplify its impact on both the creation and implementation of public policies in defense of Indigenous autonomy and self-determination in Central America.

Final Considerations

In this article we have shown how the 2030A has become a new artifact at the service of the hegemonic vision of “development,” and how it has contributed to its apparent depoliticization, promoting a vision that it is merely technical and economistic, and sustained by neoliberal ideology.

Faced with the mere exercise of self-referential discursive voluntarism that characterizes the 2030A, many diverse alternatives have emerged over the past decades. Particularly relevant are those related to a pluriversal perspective that goes beyond development to a vision based on “other” epistemologies from the global South; one which respects, and is nourished by “other” wisdoms, praxes, feeling-thinking, and knowledges.

From this situatedness, we propose the possibility of imagining and constructing an intercultural, decolonial, and ecological buen vivir (BV-IDE) as a distinctive and common element in the process of delinking-relinking-re-existing, which, when sustained by previous theoretical contributions and “other” forms of knowledge and feeling-thinking, becomes a real intercultural utopia in the experiential praxes of Indigenous peoples and communities of AY/LA. The experiences represented by PPOCS, CONCIP, and CICA embody this possibility. These autonomous experiences, as has been shown, do not quite fit within the categories of traditional analysis (de jure or de facto) and apply dissident, prefigurative, and autonomist strategies with different degrees of intensity (their own communicative processes, social protests, and regional integration) in their struggle to reduce the asymmetries of political power.

Unlike the 2030A, which places all its hopes (though not the means) in the self-referential voluntarism of a set of “invisible hands,” this tapestry of pluriversal autonomies beyond development is based on an initial and sustained effort of delinking through the exercise of the right to Indigenous self-determination in AY/LA, as opposed to the modern/colonial model of “enclosure of development.”

From this it is understood that the process of relinking does not involve adjusting to a list of (new or existing) development goals, but, rather, the reconstruction of political/social/economic/cultural mechanisms and subjectivities that allow us to approach, for example, the fulfillment of the provisions in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007). These include the Indigenous right to freely determine political status and pursue economic, social, and cultural development autonomously (Art. 3), as well as the right to preserve Indigenous political, legal, economic, social, and cultural institutions while retaining the right to participate fully in the political, economic, social, and cultural life of the nation-state (Art. 4). Also included are the right to live in freedom, peace, and security as distinct peoples (Art. 7), and not be subjected to forced assimilation or cultural destruction (Art. 8), as in the Colombian case. In short, the implicit right to delink from “(sustainable) development” and its accompanying NDA, to relink with Indigenous territorial and spiritual knowledge(s) and praxes, and to re-exist as transformed and transformative Indigenous autonomies.

In this manner, we support the idea that the deconstruction of “sustainable development” and the overcoming of its artifacts for sustaining and exercising power (currently, the 2030A and its constituent pillars) require the inclusion of subaltern actors who have historically been excluded from the processes of national and international policymaking. Furthermore, the conditions (oppression, privileges, confrontation) and aspirations (justice, equity, harmony), under which pluriversal alternatives to development must be built, need to be placed at the center of the debate.

Thus, a process of counter-hegemonic construction (Larrea-Maldonado, 2011) would be created “from below and from within,” in a “horizontal” manner (Stahler-Sholk, Vanden, and Becker, 2014). This would address public policies, local and glocal agendas in parallel with (but also beyond) any meta-narrative; that is, this would entail a process of “dé-agencement” (disassemblage) and “pluriversalization” of development, but also of “ré-agencement” (re-assemblage) and “re-territorialization” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980).

Finally, these experiences of BV-IDE in AY/LA, as well as others taking place in other geographies, cultures, and territories of our shared planet (Kothari, 2020), invite us to imagine and defend the aspiration to go beyond the development/capitalism paradigm. They invite us to imagine and construct “other” alternatives that allow us to achieve something new rather than “more of the same” for ourselves and others; that do not limit themselves to proposing more equitable ways of managing “less of the same,” nor even of finding better ways of achieving “the same for all.” The goal is much more ambitious: to imagine and achieve, by different means, something different for everyone.

Footnotes

Notes

Jorge Garcia-Arias is a Full Professor in International Political Economy & Global Development Studies at the University of León (Spain). Javier Cuestas-Caza is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Organizational Studies and Human Development at the Escuela Politécnica Nacional (Ecuador). Mariana Ortega-Bre�a is a freelance translator based in Mexico City. This research has been supported by the Escuela Politécnica Nacional, project code PIS-23-08.

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