In Bolivia, the indigenous people form the majority of the population, but for a long time they have been in a subordinate position (Albó 2009, 19). Indigenous social movements have been active in protest movements, but absent from political representation (Van Cott 2005, 49). By far the biggest indigenous groups are the Quechua and the Aymara, which together constitute over 90 % of the total indigenous population. Both groups are geographically concentrated in the highlands. The other indigenous groups are small and mainly located in the eastern lowlands of the country. The largest groups there are the Guaraní, Chiquitano and Moxeño. (Van Cott 2005, 52.)
The highland and lowland indigenous groups have distinct ways of economic and social organization. Their participation in political activities has been separate, and there is no united indigenous movement, which would represent all of the groups. The Aymara have been the most active and organized politically, and within their movements they have sometimes expressed Aymara ethnonationalism. (Van Cott 2005, 52.)
3.2 Evo Morales and the MAS government
In the 1980s and the 1990s Bolivia undertook reforms in accordance with the neoliberal policies of the International Monetary Fund, including the privatization of state industry and opening the country for foreign investment (Hylton and Sinclair 2007, 3). In the 2000s strong social movements arose to oppose to these policies. The most prominent cases of popular revolt were the protests in Cochabamba against privatization of the city’s water supply in 2000, and the protests in El Alto and La Paz in 2003 against the selling of Bolivia’s natural gas and oil resources to a multinational company. The latter led to president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada’s resignation. (ibid, 4-6.)
Evo Morales, the first Bolivian president of indigenous origin, was elected in 2005. He was the leader of the coca-grower federation, and has arisen to power through the popular mobilizations, which have continued since the 1990s. His connection with the coca-growers represents the struggle against Western values and neoliberalism – especially the United Stated had been supporting Bolivian governments’ efforts to eradicate the traditional coca farming. The coca- growers’ movement has inspired many other social movements. Evo Morales as being of Aymaran descent also represents the rising to power of indigenous people after centuries of criollo rule. (Rousseau 2010, 151.)
Morales and his party, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) has had support from both indigenous and non-indigenous groups (Rousseau 2010, 151). His policies have included a redistributive scheme, with several new social programs (ibid, 153; for a critical view of Morales’s policies see Webber 2011).
3.3 Morales‘s politics and gender
During the Morales government, there have been some advances in the presence of women in political decision-making. There have also been policies which are meant to advance gender equity and equality, such as the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights in the new constitution of 2009. (Rousseau 2010, 156.)
Morales’s discourse on gender partly reinforces the traditional gender norms in Latin America, where women are seen primarily as mothers. However, he has also recognized the important role of women in the social movements. (Rousseau 2010, 154.)
For Morales, the discourse of decolonizing Bolivian society has been a central theme (Ranta 2017). This means a return to traditional Aymara and other indigenous worldviews and social systems. He has claimed, that colonialism has had negative impacts on gender relations, and decolonization is the way to make them more legitimate. (Rousseau 2010, 154.) Indigenous movements have been defending ethnic rights before gender equality, which has lead for a great part to the pushing back of feminist concerns in public debate (Widmark 2007, 90).
In Aymara culture, an important concept for understanding gender roles is chachawarmi, which includes an idea of complementarity between the two genders. According to the principle of chachawarmi, a person only becomes fully adult upon marriage. Within the family, the heterosexual couple is to lead as a unity. This order is supposed to be replicated also on community level. (Rousseau 2010, 154-155.)
The idea of chachawarmi is important in the rhetoric of both the national government and of local organizations, with the implication that within indigenous culture, there is a full equality between genders. In practice however, women may not get their voices heard very easily within the indigenous community and movement. (Burman 2011; Pape 2008.)
3.4 Feminist movements in Bolivia
Before the election of Evo Morales, the feminist movement was divided between a strong NGO sector, which was largely funded from abroad, and an anarchist feminist movement, with the Mujeres Creando group as its most prominent organization (Monasterios 2007; Rousseau 2009, 150). The majority of Bolivian women, mainly of indigenous descent, did not consider either of these movements as representing them. The indigenous women have been active in different indigenous movements, which I will discuss in section 5.
The dynamics within the feminist movements and between the feminist and the indigenous movement has changed after Morales’s election. Evo Morales has been tending to work directly with grassroots indigenous women’s groups and largely ignoring the NGO technocracy. (Monasterios 2007.) This has made the indigenous women’s groups stronger, and forced feminist groups to take the ethnic component into account (Rousseau 2011, 6).
3.4.1 The NGO sector
The NGO sector in Bolivia has emerged mainly since the 1980s, when gender issues became important in the international development discourse. These NGOs became important agents in the political scene of Bolivia, when discussing gender matters and equality. They began to consider themselves as a link between grassroots women’s movements and the state. In their discourse, gender appeared as an issue which is mainly addressed through state management. (Monaterios 2007, 34.)
The NGO sector builds its demands on UN resolutions. According to Monasterios (2007, 34), the NGOs have failed to create a dialogue with Bolivian women, which would enable them to take into account the specific local and cultural context in which these women live.
3.4.2 Mujeres Creando
The Mujeres Creando (Women creating) is an anarcha-feminist movement based in the city of La Paz. Its activities include graffitis, radio shows, newspaper articles, theatre, poetry and workshops. For example the graffiti are an interesting strategy, taking the public space, a traditionally male domain, to use for feminist demands and expressions.
Mujeres Creando have been critical of the feminist NGOs working in Bolivia. Their critique has targeted the way that NGOs’ funding strengthens the middle class women and thereby enforces class differences between Bolivian women. They also question the NGOs ways of bringing concepts and ways of thinking from the North (donating countries) to the Bolivian context. (Schiwy 2007, 281.)
The Mujeres Creando movement expresses solidarity with indigenous women’s struggles (Schiwy 2007, 281), but is critical of the Morales administration and seeks to expose its sexist character. It claims that the quotas for women in parliament and other such policies are only tools for the patriarchal administration to seemingly integrate women into decision-making. Actually the women remain invisible and silenced, and the real decisions and social contracts are made among men. The quotas turn women into biologically defined beings, so that any woman, independent of her ideological views, can be considered to represent all women in this patriarchal way of governing. (Galindo 2006.) The Mujeres Creando also accuse Evo Morales of racist, xenophobic and homophobic discourse, and his supporters of not questioning its validity (Mujeres Creando 2010).
The strategy of the Mujeres Creando movement includes tackling macro-level structural problems, as well as exposing power hierarchies in everyday life (Monasterios 2007, 35). The themes of the movement can be considered very radical in the context of Bolivian society, as they bring forward topics of sexual rights, abolition of marriage etc (Mujeres Creando).
Also the Mujeres Creando movement has been seeking to form alliances with other mobilized women in response to the changing dynamics of Bolivian women’s organizations. The Feminist Assembly, formed in 2004 in collaboration with indigenous women’s organizations, is part of this attempt. (Monasterios 2007, 36.)
3.5 Indigenous women’s movements
There are important women’s movements in Bolivia, which do not consider themselves feminist. Many indigenous women’s movements have played an important role in different social struggles, and women have also been active in mixed-gender indigenous movements. Indigenous women’s organizations can be considered part of the indigenous movement.
The most visible of the indigenous women’s organizations is Bartolina Sisa (La Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indígenas Originarias de Bolivia “Bartolina Sisa”, CNMCIOB “BS”). The organization sees it roots in the long struggle of the indigenous people against colonizers. It supports the MAS government and its efforts to create a plurinational state, and emphasizes the role and visibility of women in this process. The Bartolina Sisa movement wants to promote women’s active role in state decision-making, as a means to improve the capabilities of the state itself. (Bartolina Sisa.)
Indigenous women’s movements have wanted to distance themselves from the idea of feminism, which may seem foreign to them from the point of view of their indigenous culture and its ideas about gender relations. The idea of chachawarmi and gender complementarity is crucial for the indigenous movements’ view on gender. This has important consequences for the indigenous women’s ways of bringing their own gender-specific demands forward. It is crucial to consider this element when reflecting upon the compatibility of feminism and different ideas on gender equality with indigenous culture.
The Aymara women in these movements do acknowledge their subordinate position in relation to men, but make a connection with gender inequality and colonization. Therefore they consider decolonization as the key to achieving equality. (Burman 2011, 90.) This is why they may consider that their interest is best served within the goals and demands of the indigenous movement. However, their conception of gender complementarity has not prevented them from making demands for more equity, even equality, when it comes to specific issues such as access to education, political participation, dignified labour and equal salaries (Rousseau 2009, 154).
Considering the differences between the feminist movement and the indigenous women’s movement in Bolivia, it does not seem easy to find a common ground. The conceptions of gender are very different from each other. However, there have been some efforts of collaboration, and through a dialogue they might discover that the differences are not so big as they seem. After all, both are making some similar demands for equality, but are just addressing them in a different way. As Mohanty (2003) argues, many women in Third World countries have been challenging feminism on basis of it being Western, middle-class and imperialist in nature. However, this does not mean that they have not been practicing feminism, even though they reject the label. (Mohanty 2003, 49-50.)
According to Anne McClintock (1995), race, gender and class are not distinct categories, but they are constructed in connection and through relations with each other. Therefore, addressing the power relations based on one of these categories will not be enough to dismantle these power relations. The decolonization that the indigenous movement aims for cannot then be achieved without addressing the gender dimensions of colonization. A mere return to indigenous culture, as it was before colonization, is a romantic idea and not possible in practice. Also within the indigenous groups, there are gender hierarchies, which will not just disappear by themselves. They should not be made invisible by focusing on the indigenous cause alone. A strong feminist movement would be necessary in order to bring the specific feminist concerns forward on national level (Widmark 2007, 90).
Both the feminist movement and the indigenous women’s movement would need to take the differences within their groups and among the different groups of women into account, and build solidarity across these differences. It seems to me that the feminist movement is already quite inclusive, and particularly stresses the differences between women, based on class, sexuality etc. They also express solidarity with the indigenous women, but cannot and should not consider themselves as speaking for all women in Bolivia. More dialogue between the different groups is needed. If the feminist movement can formulate the idea of feminism in a way that would not make the indigenous women’s movements reject the whole concept, then solidarity and a new kind of feminism could emerge that would include all women in Bolivia and take into account their very different social positionings. This would be important for advancing the equality between genders, but also between social classes, ethnicity, and any other social categories.