Buen Vivir - A short introduction

Latin America in the year 2011: working in the shadow of the giant Brazil, leftist governments in Ecuador and Bolivia have drawn up new constitutions. Buen Vivir – the right to a good life and the rights of nature – has been enshrined in those documents. Buen Vivir is based on indigenous traditions and values of the Andean region and sees itself as a new development concept that departs from Western paradigms of affluence. In the following essay, Thomas Fatheuer describes the political genesis of a complex concept: Buen Vivir – and a “concept under construction”.