Two days ago, at UPEA (Public University of El Alto), Simón Yampara, today’s Prefecture of La Paz andean-worldview pundit, the one who coined the neo-aymara phrase suma qamaña which is now everyday stuff that can be found even in the Constitution of Bolivia, accounted an amusing episode involving a big deal of native wordplay. It turns out that Mr. Yampara deplored the fact that his suma qamaña found little acceptance even amongst indianist partisans from the outset. One of the sceptical guys that time was no less than a VIP Aymara politician called Víctor Hugo Cárdenas (born Choquehuanca), an early katarista that would became the vice president of Sánchez de Lozada’s Bolivia. Cárdenas/Choquehuanca, mocking Yampara’s idea, recommended him to replace q with j in order to boost its spread. Although nobody paid attention to the vice presidential piece of advice, it would have attracted indeed a big deal of attention since the Aymara punch line suma jamaña (en: nice butt) seems more suitable to have raised any verbal response from the indianist think-tank. Having that the account from Yampara has a bitter tone of resentment we know for sure that Cárdenas/Choquehuanca will never be forgiven.
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Yampara’s suma qamaña can be found in the Constitution of Bolivia, Part One, Title One “Foundations of the State”:
Article 8. I. The State adopts and promotes, as moral and ethical principles of our many-sided society: ama qhilla, ama llulla, ama suwa, […], suma qamaña […], ñandereko […], teko kavi […], ivi maraei […] and qhapaj ñan […].
Qamaña, in Aymara, means to live, life, so suma qamaña speaks about the good life, not in the dolce far niente Mediterranean sense but in the moral sense of life that is right or good. The Constitution gives this translation: to live good that, oddly (or not so much, since the Spanish vivir bien can be mapped to the English to live wealthily), is orienting its meaning towards the word development. That disgusts Yampara, who rejects vehemently what he calls “the development tale”.
