COLLECTIVE RIGHT TO LIFE AND NEW SOCIAL JUSTICE : THE CASE OF THE BOLIVIAN INDIGENOUS MOVEMENT

To explore current interest in new collective and community rights that emerged through collective struggles, stripping the limits of liberalism perspective to solve systemic imbalances as current violence and inequality, we suggest Bolivia’s case of political pluralism and community rights. For us, this case is important to reflect about the emergence of new collective rights focusing human aspects and inspired by the perspectives of good life and common goods based on social justice and egalitarianism. Bolivian’s case helps us to reflect about the limits of capitalistic private rights to rule the current complexity of global societies.


LIFE
In this sense, we must underline that the currently utopia of modernization of many societies in the world, particularly in Latin America, is marked by the failure of capitalism and private power ideology to inspire new social and cultural institutions marked by complexity and pluralism 2 .As M. Walzer stresses, "liberalism in its standard contemporary version is an inadequate theory and a disabled political practice" (WALZER, 2004, p. xi).It is inadequate because autonomous individuals can only ensure a part of the story of democratic politics and liberalism is unable to deal with struggles produced by involuntary association.The failure of liberalism to rule complex societies and individual survival that necessarily belongs to diverse and complex networks and cultural communities express the shortcomings of liberal institutions and the dogma of individualism.
Deeping the understanding of limits of capitalism private rights, it is important to stress that the difference between private and community rights are not simply dualistic (individual versus community), revealing, instead, diverse possibilities to rule human institutions out of capitalist doctrine.On the one hand, the ideology of liberalism was founded on the illusion of market personal interest and voluntary association to rule life.
On the other hand, the recognition of collective and community rights requires some affective, moral and aesthetic preconditions produced by the necessary "symbolic construction of community" in present days (COHEN, 1985).
Thus, as we move in this direction we realize the urgency to consider some successful experiences that succeeded in overcoming liberal doctrines and individualism to create new rules to associational life.This collective view, as we testify in present Bolivian experience, demonstrate the value of state and public policies aimed at recognizing 2 For a long time, the basis of capitalist power legitimation was the private power ideology revealed by the rights of the elite to privatize collective and natural resources.However, the current social and political recognition of the exhaustibility of resources and the increase of inequality is generating important reactions that question the privilege of private rights and the undermining of collective and community ones.
individuals and groups from their cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic particularities that cannot be reduced to one another.This kind of recognition based on collective rights brings to mind A. Honneth's recent book on the right to democracy, where the author suggests that an effective social justice must be founded on an ethics of democracy, that is, a social liberty mediated by mutual recognition inspiring intersubjectivity equality.Because, for him, individual autonomy only exists into social relationships (SOBOTTKA, 2013, p. 165-166).This way, Honneth's new understanding of recognition is confirmed by Bolivian's social movements.
These new community rights contribute to show that liberalism's opposition between interest and passion, particularly in the political field, is wrong because "passionate intensity has its legitimate place in the social world, not only when we are getting money but also when we are choosing allies and engaging opponents" (WALZER, 2004, p. 126).These community rights are also important to demonstrate that trivialization of rituals by individual rationality and by consumerism do not help to strengthen social links.Instead, rituals are very strategic to deepen individual and group consciousness about alliances and to define collective goals (COHEN, 1985, p. 15).Bolivian's case could be interesting to reflect about new normative concerns in what M. Burawoy calls subaltern global sociology (BURAWOY, 2008).Bolivia's case suggests a new hierarchy about social justice that underlines the priority given to collective and natural rights inspiring public policy management.To present this case we must point out some subjects: First of all, the importance of Bolivia's case to transforms colonial peasant life to an original ethnic and social movement.Secondly, the reconstruction of territory meaning produced by a new grasp of political autonomy and legal pluralism.
Thirdly, the contribution of Indigenous movement to enlarge the ecological understanding of right systems, releasing a postcolonial original criticism based on Pacha Mama (Mother-Earth) symbolism.Fourth, the renewal of politic and society from the symbolic approach.
Fifthly, some elements to think modernity beyond market limits.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BOLIVIA'S CASE TO TRANSFORM COLONIAL PEASANT LIFE TO AN ORIGINAL ETHNIC AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT
The 1952 revolution in Bolivia produced the agrarian reform, nationalized mineral resources and extended the right to vote to peasants, contributing to progressively transforming the coloniality.Since then, the indigenous movement advanced and, as A.
Guimarães notes (2011, p. 39) ethnic identity, built by anticolonial reaction, has overcome union class identity.In this context, attempts to integrate indigenous as citizens in a homogeneous national state failed.Instead, we observed a political change founded on affirmation of ethnic identity resulting in a major state reform taking place over the following decades.
From 1970s, these changes became more evident, particularly by the emergence of the Katarist movement3 , reflecting new political mobilizations by nationalist movement that had emerged in the revolution from 1952.The Katarist movement contributed also to the emergence of a new generation of indigenous intellectuals who do not relate only to the workers movement but also to youth movements (HASHIZUME, 2010, p. 89).
Between 1980 and 1990, the social players enlarged the class identification to form new social movements organized from an ethnic and community identity.Manifestations such as "Dignity, territory and life" (a 600km march toward La Paz capital, in 1990) questioned seriously the Nation-State idea.The State was then obliged to consider, progressively, both the indigenous people rights and national multiculturalism program.Some people testify that the actions adopted by the State to solve these pressures had some unexpected consequences, helping political self-representation of indigenous communities.So, interethnic organizations managed to integrate State administration and the new local authorities imposed interethnic relationships as an objective condition of Bolivian political system (GUIMARÃES, 2011, p. 337).This change in the power system gave rise to important collective rights (derechos colectivos).These new claims differ from traditional citizenship rights because collective and community property have more value than private property.The refounding of National State into a Plurinational State resulted also from the rupture of traditional oligarchic power and considering indigenous "altersystemic" reaction in favour of autonomy and differentiation.It is a novelty when we consider that struggles against colonial national systems failed in diverse countries before Bolivia because social movements did not clearly realised the role of collective rights in a new democratic order.This conclusion is offered by the reading of R. Stavenhagen's "Conflictos étnicos y estado nacional" (STAVENHAGEN, 2000).
Along the last decades, particularly after Evo Morales' election, in 2002, Bolivian interethnic movements advanced significant political and institutional reforms turning de facto autonomy into legal autonomy, that was enshrined in the 2009 Bolivian Constitution.
Nowadays, for example, when someone asks supporters of ethnic movements to clarify the meaning of Well Living (Bien Vivir), they answer that "the constitution must be respected" (hay que aplicar la constitución) (STEFANONI, 2012, p. 16).This means that epistemological dispute over collective meaning of "development" must be shifted from the linguistic field to the political one.
Thus, Bolivia's experiences are the expression of a new postcolonial consciousness emerging on the borders of the world system, leading social movements to deal with modernization programs founded on the privatization of collective and natural resources and on the destruction of memories and traditional knowledge, a practice that B.S. Santos correctly defined as an epistemicide (SANTOS; MENESES, 2009).
Postcolonial Bolivian consciousness progressively took the form of a social and intellectual movement directed at new collective rights that legitimate State and Nation reforms.These changed the nature of modern republican institutions marked by coloniality that influenced the separation between private and public rights to prioritize the former.This duality between private and public was replaced by a legal system that favours collective rights and participation in political decisions, particularly the right to life that inspires other rights, such as: ethnic recognition, republican citizenship, selfmanagement.This helped strengthen participation at some levels of decision-making in political power.Private rights were not prohibited but reshaped to suit the new legal system inspired by collective rights 4 .

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE MEANING OF TERRITORY PRODUCED BY A NEW GRASP OF POLITICAL AUTONOMY AND LEGAL PLURALISM
In Aymara's philosophy two notions are worth of attention: territory and autonomy.
Both of them played important roles to new indigenous utopia and to rethink the system of rights.Then, after the colonizer insisted to refuse Amerindian identity for centuries, reducing them only to poor peasants, we testify a rebirth of old local memories that were updated through new tactics of struggles.The current requests for autonomy emerge as an anticolonial reaction that underlines indigenous movements in its new political manifestation.Autonomy means that the demands of local communities for selfgovernment and to express their rights to elect representatives that have legal powers and capabilities to legislate (RIVERA, 2010, p. 59).
On the other hand, the notion of territory has also a special meaning for local communities, particularly with respect to the role of colonial State that traditionally denied the indigenous right to manage their own lands.So, the deconstruction of the Western notion of territory that inspired the formation of National State, helped indigenous communities to look for their archaic collective meanings to face new political challenges.
This redefinition of territory lays on an understanding of space and time relationship anchored not on centralized colonial power, but, rather on social and local power which favours the strengthening of Aymara's autonomy.In parallel, there are also other definitions of territory contributing to reinforce the invention of politics.We can stress the symbolic definition of territory based on the old meaning of the links between society and nature (that enlarge the meaning of society) and the animist one, from Andean tradition, that focuses the Earth as a living being.Here, the Earth is known as "Pacha Mama", "madre 4 The renewed interest in the relationship between Human Beings and Nature curiously influence the idea of salary.
While the Bien Vivir ideal helps to influence the reinsertion of economics into the community system, salary reacquires its old symbolic role as an important device to allow exchanges centered on value in use.Therefore, work and salary must be adapted to a heterotopic dynamics capable of ensuring individual and family access to vital resources such as water and land as well as to organic and mineral resources that are necessary to human life.In this logic, market interests remains important but it is not the number one priority.
tierra" or mother-Earth which is considered the only legitimate entity to create the collective belief of well-living (Bien vivir).
There is yet a definition of territory that is related to the idea of control and power, according to which the indigenous organization consider local assemblies to be the most important decision-making instance when it comes to the common good (RIVERA, 2010, p. 53-57).This last definition contribute for complexify the political decisions as central governments are obliged to lead negotiations at different levels of power, making it necessarily more difficult for central and local powers to reach agreements on public policies.
Deconstruction and reconstruction of territory meanings produced by a new grasp of political autonomy in Bolivia, led interethnic Bolivian movements to recognize the role of legal pluralism in ensuring the diversity of rationalities and knowledge.Some concepts such as interculturality, diversity, recognition and inclusion became central to ensure pluralism (RIVERO, 2011, p. 372).Further, although power decisions became more complex and uncertain, it is true that Bolivian political system had made progress last decades as confirm the moving from a monolithic State to an original pluralistic State, impacting on the management of territory.Consequently, the Constitution of 2009 recognizes Original Peasant Indigenous Autonomy (AIOC) as one of the four kinds of autonomy besides departmental, regional and municipal autonomies, helping to advance the debate in indigenous organization field (ibid., p. 51).
It seems, then, that the changes in Bolivian political imaginary do not represent an isolated event, expressing, instead, a significant epistemological revision of postcolonial system built by the Westernization of the world.This way, it is possible to state that the reasons for this indigenous imaginary shift are anchored on theoretical and practical, moral, ecological, economic and political claims.
The Western anti-utilitarian approach to solidarity contributes, furthermore, to enlarging the debate about development models and categories used to define material and symbolic wealth.This approach emerges precisely at a moment when territorial monopoly of the colonial State to manage the violence is challenged.For example, the creation of plurinational State challenging homogeneous national identity, favours the decentralization and the local power authority.This change of the relationship between territory and power pose some difficulties to the central government, but it proves the role of political and social pressures in favour of a necessary power decentralization that ensures expanded participation.These pressures in favour of a new local and cosmopolitan power are spreading to other Latin American countries as we see currently in Brazil5 .The Pacha Mama symbolical approach lead us to rethink Nature not only as a physical element but as a symbolism filled of a pluralistic meaning whose ritualization is central to ensure the survival of community.Here, we could also define Nature as the practical and necessary condition to ensure the alliances between families and individuals.This Amerindian approach is far from the Cartesian representation of society founded on the ontological separation between Human and Nature.Colonization experience taught indigenous community about destructive effects of private property of natural resources and it must be considered as an important aspect to anticapitalist criticism.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF INDIGENOUS MOVEMENT TO ENLARGE THE ECOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF RIGHT SYSTEMS, RELEASING
The anthropological and symbolic importance of Pacha Mama lays on the impact of ecological and social representation of Nature to new forms of political and social change, breaking the modern understanding of Nature traditionally marked by a mechanical representation of life.The ecological understanding of Nature pointed out by Bolivian movement updates another factor: the importance of the notion of Gift, an old system of human exchange, observed by Marcel Mauss in old societies.Gift theory contributes to clarify Nature as a living being that is an active part together with human beings in the symbolical construction of community.Both Human Beings and Nature must play an equalitarian role to preserve by reciprocity the life and the environment 6 .
The Pacha Mama utopia is different from this one called "living well" that marks Western style of consumption and private appropriation of wealth.Rather, Pacha Mama points out a view legitimating collective well-being not as an abstract belief, but as a political purpose founded on a anti-utilitarian community experience that deny the reduction of society to market interests.About this, Bolivian sociologists I. Farah and M. Gil say: The Well Living must be thought in a market society context that integrate an ethical principle structuring another modernity and pointing out the plurality of reality and deepening the renewal of economic, cultural and political thinking, that is, advancing a broader understanding of life" (FARAH; GIL, 2012, p. 105).
Further, Pacha Mama movement lays not only on a traditional myth.It seems preferable an altersystemic reaction and a historical innovation from the border of the world system.This myth seems very appropriate as we engage in a reflection on the relationship between material and symbolical wealth that is central to the emergence of Well Living heterotopy.Moreover, it could be also interesting to deepen the comparison between the Aymara heterotopy and the Western one that stresses anti-utilitarian solidarity to postcapitalist possibilities known as "convivialisme" in French thinking (CAILLÉ et al., 2011).
The Pacha Mama symbolism does not represent a novelty because the idea of Mother Earth is shared by many ancient cultures.However, Bolivian symbolism is 6 However, we must remark that this relational approach in the Aymara and Kechua cosmologies is not an anthropological novelty.Ethnography shows that this ecological understanding of life exists in all archaic societies and exists currently among the indigenous population in Amazonia, including the Tupi, Panos and Aruaques 6 .For the Amazonian natives the relationship between Human and Nature continues to lay on a reciprocity logic inspired on gift that reveals a very important ecological and cultural understanding, as the anthropologist Viveiros de Castro remarked (2002, p. 327).
particularly expressive in underlining the importance that this cultural element had in Bolivia to support a radical criticism against the colonial model based on economic growth.
Pacha Mama is also of political relevance because its community foundations question private appropriation of vital resources such as water, land and others.In fact, Bolivians consider that nature resources were there before human presence, before indigenous and colonizers, before corporations, and, therefore, these resources continue to be the basis of material and spiritual collective survival.Here, the novelty is the Bolivian ethnic consciousness about the urgency to rethink territory managing the reciprocity between Human Beings and Nature.The old myth is updated by politics and culture.Therefore, we can observe that this linguistic construction is not arbitrary but results from a postmodern and communitarian reaction against capitalist strategies of appropriation and privatization of natural wealth in this area.
Pacha Mama is a metaphor that holds many meanings: it is the living memory of the indigenous tradition; it is the symbolism that gives meaning to collective movement; it is the argument against private appropriation of collective resources; finally, it is the way that politically differentiates ethnic movements from the other social movements when the debate revolves around the National State reform.This image helps to clarify the role of ethnic movements in the dispute that transformed the Bolivian State from a centralized apparatus into a Plurinational State which was validated by the 2009 Constitution.
Pacha Mama is then the symbolism that links tradition and modernity, rural and urban, the colonizers and the old servants, having become a key element indigenous population rely on to rethink society 7 .Thus, Farah and Gil [2012, p. 105] suggest that "the Well Living can be thought from the context of a market society that integrate an ethical principle structuring another modernity that values the plurality deepening the renewal of economic, cultural and political thinking".
7 Pacha Mama contributes to articulate both community and intellectual knowledge in a collective movement that progressively questioned utilitarian philosophy of economic progress founded over the market rationale.Thereby, social movements came to denounce colonial characteristic of mercantile development model founded over private appropriation of life resources and of social production and reproduction.It generates permanent inequalities and social injustices.To organize their altersystemic movements, the indigenous managed to gather from their imaginary the basic elements to value a policy aimed at refunding territory and legal system.

THE RENEWAL OF POLITIC AND SOCIETY FROM THE SYMBOLIC APPROACH
Political approach of indigenous postcolonial thinking updates historical memories, to seriously challenge the neoliberal development model.This approach invites us to understand the limits of a domination model based on a private logic, legitimating private appropriation of material wealth by a minority.Indigenous movement contributes to enlarge the understanding of rights systems, showing the limits of coloniality and egoistic modern view of life.Pacha Mama releases a postcolonial original criticism that shifts the understanding of social struggles from a modern economic approach to a contemporary one that values ethnic community symbolism.
It must be also underlined that the current representation of Pacha Mama casts new lights on Bolivian archaic and spiritual representation of politics, contributing to problematizing the material and symbolical conditions of today's development models.In fact, the Well Living (Bien Vivir) idea systematized by Aymara's intellectuals represents an anti-utilitarian and anticapitalist reaction that prioritizes another meaning of common wealth that is different from individualistic and ethnocentric capitalist view, the Living Well (FARAH; GIL, 2012, p. 100).More precisely, indigenous reaction updates an old and complex community tradition to support an anticapitalist approach that does not deny the market system but claims the self-government right to construct a new common life.Pacha Mama's political meaning, particularly Aymara's one (the more representative ethnic group in this area), focuses on the struggle against the privatization of natural resources that are key to collective survival.Current events have contributed to reinforcing indigenous feeling mobilized to update cultural and mystic traditions thereby legitimating a new consensus to reconstruct the State and Nation.These movements do not claim a return to the past but, instead, seek to refresh the political system to face globalization struggles and to reorganize the relationship between local and global 8 .
It is worth stressing that the emergence of a particular conception of society as "symbolic economy of alterity" [ibid., p. 335] update this archaic relationship between 8 A special moment of this neo-community awareness is demonstrated through struggles around water distribution policies that were well presented in a movie from 2010 named Water Conflict (Also the rain).This movie clearly shows the recent abuse of power in Bolivia and the popular reaction against government policies in favor of privatization to benefit multinational corporations.
human beings and ecosystem shifting the hegemonic role from economics to the organization of society.Because, in this particular model, the ideology of economic growth must subject its linguistic recognition to a general system of beliefs and actions that value the active role of politics to the promotion of economic, cultural and legal plurality.That means that economic growth does not work as an isolated and preferential category into society, but must be related to other system of action, political, cultural and moral, whose importance remains current.The reactivation processes of Bolivian peasant imaginary shows, then, those traditional meanings are forever available to be used activating diverse identifications and models of political actions.This awareness suggests the emergence of a universal right to life and to have access to natural resources, having become the reason for the emergence of new community praxis and of a more active citizenship.For example, this new practice can be observed in everyday life when an individual looks for a government agency to request an identity card.Sometimes, in order to overcome bureaucratic hurdles, individuals come in organized groups (family, friends, and community) because as clarified by a leader of a community of neighbours, the simplest way to ensure equality in public service is through group pressure (WANDERLEY, 2009).
In this context, we can witness the change in the old representation of wealth that was previously linked to the possession of land and natural resources.

SOME ELEMENTS TO THINK ANOTHER MODERNITY BEYOND MARKET LIMITS
We have tried to demonstrate that Bolivia's political experience does not represent a pre-modern or anti-modern reaction to postcolonial system.Instead, this experience is modern because ethnic movements deny neither republican rights nor civil and political rights, nor the State role as a development agent.The Bolivian experience is original because it reveals social movements that were born from a renewal of traditions, opening itself to a pluralism of identities.
The novelty here comes from the collective political decision to subject both modern rights -Liberal and Republican -to originary human rights to life and survival.
That is, the task is to review modern rights from a perspective offered by the symbolism of nature suggested by community traditions that highlight a larger understanding of collective rights as is illustrated by the idea of well living.This reflection is more significant when we grasp that behind the plurality of rights there is an ecosocial understanding and also a public right innovation founded on the strengthening of the bonds between humans and nature.Giving priority to the right to life innovates when we consider the following: a) that collective rights to life and to appropriate natural resources to human survival are universal and must be shared by everyone.b) that capitalist rights to accumulation and economic growth are private rights which are not universal and, therefore, less important when we consider the scope of the rights to life.Capitalist rights must be applied to regulate corporations and market activities but not general society.Furthermore, private rights organized during modernity to enable appropriation of common goods are now required to be subjected to comprehensive universal rights emerging from a community view about public and private relationship.The deconstruction of market ideology by new collective rights favours the understanding that economic growth and accumulation impose a linear imaginary of time and space which is not natural, contributing solely to reinforce coloniality.This colonial imaginary contributed to release an illusion of national growth as a necessarily step linking developed and underdeveloped countries, and that was so clearly criticized by R. Grosfoguel (2013).This way, politics and democracy could be freed from economics constraints and thus open new horizons for debates over collective responsibilities and thereby reshape nationality and state apparatus.Only then, the legal form of colonial State and institutional regulation can be politically questioned.
Market economy was not rejected but reinserted into a broader legal system that subject private rationale to community and collective rationale.Someone does not reject material wealth but it must be considered as part of the collective values organized by community laws.Bolivia's case is very interesting to reflect about the economic element within the whole of non-economic institutions when we consider that Bolivia is a poor country, depending considerably on gas production to guarantee the majority of its public and social policies.However, for Bolivians, the economic importance of gas does not justify the priority given to private appropriation rights over collective resources and the privilege enjoyed by corporations.For Bolivians, the most important is to ensure the collective rights to life and to preserve material and symbolic conditions of social life.The gas industry is seen as a priority to strengthen collective rights but it does not mean that national and international corporations can exist out of State control and, most importantly, of the social control.
These experiences, which are poetically, expressed through the images of Pacha Mama and Bien Vivir favour, moreover, a fruitful criticism of capitalist hegemonic development models at a global level, contributing to shift the idea of unlimited economic growth.Bolivia's experience helps understanding that the Westernization of the world has become a chaotic project, mainly when large economic corporations tried to impose a system of market appropriation as an universal rights system that could be applied to all institutions and spheres of everyday life.Also, the Bolivian case favours the understanding that the solution to the crisis necessarily requires political mediation based on a new legal system capable of reorganizing individual rights in view of collective rights, particularly of community rights.This way, the State had to be redesigned so that it played a more complex role balancing ethnic and cultural differences and social pressures, integrating the notion of social struggles as an important ritual in favouring transparent alliances between the multiple social groups and the new public policies, leading popular claims that are undermined by concentration of power and wealth.
Finally, we acknowledge that the concrete answers suggested by Bolivians' reactions converge to Western critical and political reactions showed in the recent protests against finance policies and in favour of democracy in Europe, United States, Latin America, Africa and elsewhere.What is novel about these reactions are their transnational aspects simultaneously linking from different places, unique intersubjectivities renewing traditional political and social strategies, and drawing a post-geographic panorama. ■■■ A POSTCOLONIAL ORIGINAL CRITICISM BASED ON PACHA MAMA (MOTHER-EARTH) SYMBOLISM Pacha Mama (Pacha: Earth; Mama: mother or Mother-Earth) invite us to think postcoloniality from two approaches: one is symbolic; the other is political.The symbolic one emerged from an image of Human and Nature relationship that benefits the ritual interactivity between both elements.But, here, archaic and mythical representation of nature was replaced by a new postmodern representation that stresses the role of politics in setting a plural epistemology.Moreover, contemporary indigenous representation of life manifests an important ecological reflexion that must be seriously considered by social science to organize the moral and cultural criticism of capitalism.