ABSTRACT
The search for development has been and remains incessant. It has oscillated from more economic concepts that define development in terms of the growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to more complex concepts at the human scale or of sustainable development. Buen Vivir, as the sum of experiential acts of resistance to colonialism and its consequences, nurtures a way of life in diverse indigenous communities, above all in those that have not been totally absorbed by capitalist modernity or that have managed to remain at its margins. In order to draw some lessons from the Buen Vivir economy people must understand the limits of the conventional economy, taking as a key reference the core elements of the indigenous worldview. The founding principle of the Nation and its model of State and society in Latin America, sustained by the power of colonialism, was exclusionary and at the same time limiting for the development of cultural, social and productive capabilities.
