Local Responses to Global Change: Community Alternatives for ‘Good Living’ in Latin America - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 386

their own developments ( mandar obedeciendo or govern by obeying), the
struggles of the Wixarrica (Huichol) against the depredatory expansion
of Canadian mining (in their sacred site, Wirikuta), or the myriad other
manifestations of peoples throughout the Americas to defend their customs,
their territories, their societies, indeed their very existence (e.g., the Abya
Yala among the Kuna of Panamá).
In this regard, the introduction of the concept of 'living well' as a
guiding principle in the new constitution of Ecuador refl ects this search
for alternative rationalities to inform national policy. In the mountainous
regions of Latin America there is a long history of this realization for the
need of a different approach to constructing a path towards well-being: the
early contributions (1920s) of the Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui (1971)
were inspired in this search “that does deny the material and intellectual
contributions of modernity, but challenges them on an ethical plane.”
Bringing the discussion up to the present, it is clear that for us today
this approach to development recasts the problem, rejecting the need to
'overcome' backwardness and the notions of growth and accumulation.
The challenge is to organize a society's human, material and natural
resources to assure greater measures of equality and a meaningful process
to guarantee the sustainability of its natural patrimony. By abandoning an
anthropocentric vision of social processes, the new ethic of development
subordinates economic objectives to ecological balance, human dignity and
social well-being. The resulting productive systems involve a mixed and
solidarity economy in which social and intergenerational justice are assured
by diversifi ed social and cultural institutions that attend to the basic needs
of food sovereignty and control of natural resources. 7
Responses to the Development Conundrum
Much Latin American thinking and practice to improve the plight of
highland peoples demonstrates that the 'development conundrum' is not
one that can be resolved by simply raising savings rates or promoting
local productive ventures; increased international investment has proven
so devastating that a new phrase sums up the critical theoretical work
examining and explaining the process of plundering the environment,
exacerbating inequalities and even disenfranchisement: accumulation by
dispossession (Harvey 2003). Although many honest practitioners focus
on enhancing human capabilities (Sen 2002), and generating new ones
to overcome the obstacles to individual achievement, recent experience
demonstrates that the monopolistic exercise of power in the political area
and the operation of markets cannot be tamed through the well-intentioned
creation of institutions, even when they are committed to promoting