Suma qamaña (buen vivir) and neoextratctivism in Bolivia

The TIPNIS affair

In 2011, Bolivia faced one of its most serious social conflicts since Evo Morales became president of the country in 2006. The indigenous people resident in the National Park and Indigenous Territory Isiboro Sécure (TIPNIS) organized a march to protest against the construction of the stretch of a highway that would cross their territory. Such mobilization became a conflict on a national and international scale, revealing contradictions in the internal politics of Evo Morales and reflecting in the Bolivian foreign policy. The contradictions between the indigenous and environmentalist president’s rhetoric and his neoextractive national politics became evident. Thus, the case study of the conflict in TIPNIS illustrates the clash between two opposite conceptions of socioeconomic organization of the country: one based on the maintenance of extractive capitalism and the other highlighting the decolonial practices proposed of buen vivir, which values the harmonious coexistence between human beings and nature.