MARLBORO — Bolivia is the poorest country of the Americas based on their total revenue produced, which has doubled in the last decade but still is less than $5,000 per person per year.
But Bolivians are not impoverished.
Behind the country's feeble earnings are creative and collaborative ways of living well which include community participation, collaboration, barter, self-sufficiency, and an average retail mark-up of just 30 percent, as opposed to the standard 100 percent used in the U.S.
So while earnings are low, so are expenses, and what thrives are communities, not markets. The Bolivians call this suma qamaña, or living well, and they have written this principle into their constitution, making this way of being a national law supported by government ministries, universities, and elected officials, all with very little funding.
A recent research trip to the mountainous Bolivian coffee jungles brought me to the small town of Caranavi in the Andes Mountains, which shared remarkable similarities to Brattleboro in the summer.
Seeing suma qamaña in practice there opened my imagination to how this could be realized in Brattleboro as well.
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Like Brattleboro, Caranavi is nestled in the hills, sits beside a river, is surrounded by farms and forests, and stretches out over several square miles. Like Brattleboro, it is peppered with many different types of business, schools, restaurants, and tourism.
Like Brattleboro, community members come from many different places. In this case, it's mostly highlanders looking for new opportunities and something a bit warmer than their climate change-ravaged altiplano farms, while in Brattleboro it seems to be flatlanders seeking out hills and nature.
Caranavi is a busy little hub with the big city (La Paz) four hours away, just likeBrattleboro's proximity to New York. Like Brattleboro, Caranavi is sensitive to the nature surrounding it and supports the development of small farms and sustainable, organic agriculture.
As Brattleboro is known for its artisanal cheeses and farmers' markets, Caranavi is known for its fair-trade, organic coffee grown on small, family farms.
Already Bolivia's coffee capital, Caranavi is working to become the organic capital of Bolivia, too, heartily embracing sustainable farming techniques, crop diversification, and environmental protection.
Residents petition their national government for organic-farming training programs and request that their mayor support efforts in developing organic certifications and promoting the region as an organic agro-tourism and healing destination.
Like Brattleboro, Caranavi is an environmental innovator. For example, its residents have an active recycling program in a country where it is still considered proper to throw trash out the window or leave it roadside. Brattleboro, meanwhile, has curbside composting in a country where it is still considered proper to throw kitchen scraps into a landfill.
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Caranavi got this way through its embrace of community economy (economia comunitaria), a system that grew from Bolivia's suma qamaña model of living well instead of better.
Community economy is a “win-win” way of organizing and working together so all are represented and have their needs recognized and met.
For example, when several dirt roads needed to be repaired and expanded, the community asked the mayor for the work to be done. Bolivia is a monetarily poor country, so there was no budget for the job.
This did not faze the community, which collaborated with the mayor to find a creative solution. In this case, community members donated labor and materials for road construction and shared a community usage fee of about $10 to purchase additional supplies and to rent heavy machinery.
Community economy is not just about projects, it is about a way of being where people are deeply connected through a democratic process with mandatory participation. Reflective of the Andean Cross and indigenous systems of balance, suma qamaña is not just about doing but also about being able, knowing, and loving.
Each community has biweekly meetings hosted by a community member, who then meets monthly with an annually elected community representative and quarterly with the mayor and municipal governing board.
This way, needs, resources, ideas, and relationships are shared and creative collaboration easily arises.
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Caranavi was not always so collaborative. Ten years ago, the communities were isolated and competitive. By engaging in suma qamaña and community economy, the region learned that all gain when the work and risk is shared by many.
Participants such as 22-year-old single mother and district representative Esther Alonqa report that now members were not left behind like before and neighbors who rarely saw one another now enjoy regular contact.
In addition, as she experienced, youth were empowered by their participation and being given an important place in the community.
“Our youth are given access to leadership roles and a place in which to be respected,” she explained.
Being organized, active, and vibrant creates more opportunity. New ideas come forth, as there is now a regular space in which they can be heard.
“Members do not always agree on things, but their ideas and opinions need to be known,” Alonqa said.
By having a regular space to communicate together over the long term, these differences become less polarized and other ideas emerge as issues are slowly worked out through public discussion.
Nobel Laureate Economist Amartya Sen writes that for justice to take place, an open discussion must create a place for debate and, in time, understanding. This public reasoning gives voice to those who are not commonly heard and creates a sphere of equality where ideas can freely flow.
Suma Gamaña provides the place for this discussion.
Wouldn't it be interesting to imagine Brattleboro as bringing forth greater justice through the engagement in these participatory models?