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This essay will examine the way that a Bolivian Andean people, the Kallawayas, incorporate mountains—seen as beings with agency in their own right—into their structure of kinship and politics. The Kallawayas interpret mountains as inhabited by ancestral spirits, who are incorporated into the local political structure as authorities. This understanding of the mountains denies the Western separation of politics and nature. I follow de la Cadena (2014) in positing mountain spirits, known as machulas, and humans, known as runa, as mutually constituting one another within the socio-territorial space of the ayllu. In this space nature and politics are not divided but intertwined. However, the political organisation of the Kallawaya communities has undergone profound changes in recent decades that have affected the ritual relationship between the Kallawayas and the mountain spirits. The manner in which Kallawayas incorporate their ancestors as authorities therefore provides evidence for the propensity of ritual to reflect social structure.

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The concept of vivir bien (living well) has become ubiquitous in Bolivian state discourse and policy since the election of Evo Morales as Bolivia’s president in 2005. While Bolivia’s constitutional refounding as plurinational is supposed to facilitate indigenous peoples’ living according to their conception of living well, the state still appears to be attempting to implement its own conception through rural social programs promoted as enabling rural indigenous peoples to live well. The implementation of one such social program, a housing donation program in the municipality of Charazani (Department of La Paz), demonstrates differing notions of vivir bien between neighboring communities and suggests that a program designed to facilitate vivir bien may actually provide obstacles to the realization of an indigenous conception of living well. El concepto de vivir bien se ha vuelto omnipresente en el discurso y la política del estado boliviano desde la elección de Evo Morales como presidente en 2005. Si bien se supone que la refundación constitucional de Bolivia como estado plurinacional debe facilitar la vida de los pueblos indígenas de acuerdo a su concepción de vivir bien, el Estado aún parece estar tratando de implementar su propia concepción a través de programas sociales rurales promovidos como proyectos que permiten que los pueblos indígenas rurales vivan bien. La implementación de uno de estos programas sociales, un programa de donación de vivienda en el municipio de Charazani (Departamento de La Paz), muestra diferentes nociones de lo que implica vivir bien entre las comunidades vecinas y sugiere que un programa diseñado para facilitarlo puede, de hecho, generar obstáculos a la realización de una concepción indígena de vivir bien.

Drawing on fieldwork in Andean Bolivia, this article examines rural urbanisation as a process of disconnection between people and place impacted by flows of rural to urban migration. Ritual relations with place are perceived as particularly significant for Kallawaya healers in the municipality of Charazani. They take a disruption of acts that maintain bonds between people and place as a result of urbanisation – examined particularly in relation to house‐building rituals – as having knock‐on effects for indigenous communal identity. These same healers are conscious of this urbanisation as the present manifestation of a historical process.