Photo: Iván Rodriguez Petkovic

Breaking a common stereotype on the local radio

Yola Mamani was born and raised in a community called Santa María Grande, situated in the Omasuyos Province of the Department of La Paz. When she was only nine years old she moved by herself to La Paz because her father wanted her to discover life outside of the community. Imagine a nine year-old girl moving on her own to the city to learn about life. What life decided for her was that her first job will be as a babysitter, and then she would work as a kitchen assistant, only to end up as a trabajadora del hogar multiple – literally a ‘multi-household worker’ – which was not an end, but a beginning for her.

In fact, her role as a household worker would be the subject of the first radio show she hosted, named Trabajadores del hogar, con orgullo y dignidad (or Multi-household workers with pride and dignity). Life on the job has taught her these women had no rights because they were not recognised as workers, which is enough to imagine their working conditions. In this context, before becoming an anchorwoman on the radio, she became the head of one of the four labour unions of trabajadores del hogar. In 2003, a law was passed in Bolivia that gave legal rights to these workers.

Three years later, in 2006, her show was aired for the first time. Back then, she was still active as a household worker and, along with a few colleagues, she wanted to tell the public about the trabajadores del hogar and what they do for a living. There was virtually no information about them available to the public until her show went live. No one knew who these workers were. They were practically shadows.

Mamani found an home for her show at Radio Deseo, the broadcasting station of a local organisation called, Mujeres Creando. They began to collaborate with 25 women who worked part-time in household service, none of whom had studies related to the media. Thus, they had to learn how to compose a script, how to edit an audio recording, how to conduct an investigation and do a social analysis, how to use a computer, etc. The main idea of the show was for them to speak in the first person, in terms of ‘I’ and ‘we’, and appear real to the people. It was almost as if they said: Yes, it’s true. These trabajadores del hogar can speak, think and analyse.

Then came a time where they weren’t workers anymore and could no longer speak in the first person about their work. They tried to train other radio hosts, but their efforts were fruitless. So the show ended there, but Mamani did not give up radio. She currently hosts another show called Warmin yatiyawinakawa (The women’s news bulletin) also in Radio Deseo. This is an ‘information laboratory,’ she says, in which they question themselves about women, politics, the economy and other subjects.

Mamani speaks in her role as a cholita, underlining how deeply entrenched the cholita stereotype is in the Bolivian public. For some people, the cholita will always be the maid, the cleaner, an uneducated woman who doesn’t know about politics, economics, or relevant social issues.

At a local book festival, vendors approached Mamani to recommend recipe books and cooking books, even though she wanted to learn about politics. When she used to live with a friend who was blonde and caucasian, their neighbours assumed Mamani was the cleaning lady. Despite these experiences, Mamani explains that this who she is, she does not have a complex about being a cholita. She dresses as a cholita because it is part of who she is, not because it is a costume, or her job to dress that way. And yet the stigmatisation of the cholitas doesn’t come from Bolivians alone. It is also present in how foreigners view them.

The only cholitas you tend to see in the media are cholitas who represent Bolivian folklore. ‘Cholitas are not allowed speak,’ Mamani says, to illustrate her point. They are exotic, a kind of tourist attraction. In her current radio show, Mamani tries to explain that cholitas are not only the women who sell things on the streets. But this will likely remain a difficult cause, as long as she is the only cholita covering cultural and political issues in the media.

Photo: Marie de Lantivy

Happiness Heals

On Christmas Day 1998, the movie Patch Adams was released. Both the movie and the real Hunter ‘Patch’ Adams, an American physician, comedian, social activist, clown, author and founder of the Gesundheit! Institute, have since inspired many doctors to practice a therapy based on happiness and laughing. And here in Bolivia, we have our own Patch Adams, Moisés Callahuara Medrano.

Callahuara specialises in risoterapia, happiness and laughing therapy. He visits hospitals to give joy to patients that are suffering through serious medical issues. He started in 2000 when he started taking clown lessons at the Fundación Doctores de la Alegría, where he eventually became its national coordinator. With the doctores de la Alegria, Callahuara learned the true meaning of the red nose and found the child inside himself. Above all, he discovered the positive impact a clown can have on those who are suffering. But ‘risoterapia is more than just putting on clown’s clothes,’ he said.

Callahuara also founded the Fundación D’Alarte – Alegría Para el Mundo, the first group promoting this kind therapeutic work in Bolivia. Nowadays, the foundation has three teams in the country: in Cochabamba, Santa Cruz and Tarija. Every year, doctores de la alegria are trained. ‘The schooling part is very important,’ Callahuara said. ‘A lot of people think one just has to put on a red nose, but without the appropriate preparation it is easy to get it wrong.’

According to Callahuara, risoterapia offers many benefits. ‘It helps to relieve pain, and promotes the healing process,’ he said. ‘It prevents and helps people cope with emotional and social problems. It also improves our breathing, strengthens the immune system, reduces stress and loneliness, as well as increasing self-esteem.’ Callahuara’s doctores de la alegria work with people who are battling depression, HIV, cancer and other pathologies.

Risoterapia is for people of every age. ‘From 0 to 129 years old, laughing is for all,’ Callahuara said. But ‘it is very different working with children or elderly people. And it is different depending if you’re dealing with children in situations of violence or children in situations of risks.’

To Callahuara, there is a difference between a payaso (the Spanish word for clown) and his type of clown. ‘A payaso is someone who is going to paint his face, to wear big shoes, colourful wig, etc.,’ he said. ‘The kind of clown who scares everybody.’ But a clown like Callahuara doesn’t need a costume. He uses particular techniques to liberate feelings, to spread joy in people’s lives.

But to make these people laugh, Callahuara said he had to learn to cross a line, to break the ice in order to get through to the person. ‘As soon as I put my red nose, the ice is broken,’ he said. And being a clown allows him to say things he could not say as a non-clown person. With his good humour, Callahuara goes to hospitals and puts a smile on the face of patients in order to make them laugh. And it can be a heartbreaking job. Callahuara spends time with people in dire health situations, and sometimes his patients die.

Callahuara also runs a tea shop in Tarija, aptly named Shadi, which means ‘happiness’ in Farsi. It doubles as a cultural space, ‘where clowns come and where people can go to laugh and feel good, an alternative, artistic, cultural and inclusive space for everyone,’ Callahuara said. ‘It is a space of joy and therapy, where laughing is the invitation card.’ This, ultimately, seems to be the motto of Callahuara’s life.

Photo:  Honor Scott

The high price of informality for Bolivia’s artisans and textile culture

Bolivia has been ranked 152 out of 190 countries in the World Bank’s “Doing Business 2018” world business-regulations report, casting a light on the burdensome bureaucracy that embroils Bolivian businesses. The report assessed the ease of doing business according to national contexts, giving Bolivia a score of 71 out of 100 for difficulty when trading across borders, which indicates large costs for business owners. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund this year estimated Bolivia’s informal economy to be around 62.3 percent, the largest out of the 158 countries in the report; due to its clandestine nature, the ease of doing business in this sector goes unreported.

La Paz is where Bolivia’s curious contrasts come to life: hot days and cold nights, Pachamama and the pope, market liberalisation in a land of socialist reforms. The contrast between the tightly wound bureaucracy of the formal economy and the free rein given to the informal economy is stark. Sagarnaga and Linares streets in downtown La Paz openly tell this tale.

Cluttered with kiosks, colourful keepsakes and alpaca-clad tourists, it’s an area where travellers come looking for mementos and bargains. The price tags alone provide insight into the different types of economies at play here.

An iconic llama jumper can vary in price between Bs70 to Bs600 – depending on where you go. While all are purported to be Bolivian-made and of 100 percent natural fibres, based on the price, market theory would suggest otherwise.

‘Tourists are being taken advantage of, and Bolivian producers suffer.’

—Artisan Ligia D’Andrea

Cash-only sales of these types of ‘bargains’ are rife in the area, and it means legitimate businesses are finding themselves competing on an uneven playing field. Business owner Mariel Ortiz Arzabe opened her store Época two years ago on Linares street. She sells only Bolivian-designed and -made products and focuses on supporting Bolivian artisans.

‘The [artisan] sector is totally saturated by products that come from China and Peru,’ Ortiz said. ‘They are made in large volumes and are completely synthetic.’ Despite tags saying that these products are Bolivia-made and 100 percent wool, it is common knowledge amongst business-owners and artisans that this is not always the case.

‘It is a complete distortion of prices in the streets,’ Ortiz said. ‘These items have no cultural significance; they are only for discounts or the yapa.’ The discrepancy in prices has meant shopkeepers and artisans have had to come up with an alternative method to challenge this underhanded competition.

Época is part of a group of nine stores and artisans based in La Paz’s tourist district called El Sendero Que Te Llama – a play on words meaning ‘the path that calls you’, as well as an homage to the beloved llama. The members have created a shopping route on which ethical and Bolivian-made handcrafts can be found (a map is available on its Facebook page).

The collaboration began in August 2016, when the founders noticed a need to create a ‘small nucleus of quality,’ artisan Ligia D’Andrea said. The lack of enforcement regulating the sale of imitation items means that ‘tourists are being taken advantage of…and Bolivian producers suffer,’ D’Andrea added.

‘This is the problem in Bolivia, there is a lot of informality and a lot of laws that do not give protection [to legitimate vendors],’ Juan Julio, a shop-owner and member of El Sendero Que Te Llama, said. Julio has been in the artisan business for over two decades and his store Comart is a shrine to the craft and culture of Aymara and Quechua textile traditions.

Julio said that both ‘an economic problem and a social problem’ faces him and his colleagues. ‘A significant consequence [of contraband textiles] is the loss of our cultural identity and the knowledge from our villages,’ he said. ‘We are now dependent on production from China [and other import countries].’

Contraband items like the textiles, knitwear and other souvenirs enter the country through avenues ‘impossible to control,’ D’Andrea said. ‘It is like a market of ants, little by little, and now Sagarnaga and Linares are full of these articles.’

However this kind of market liberalisation is a one-way street in Bolivia. While contraband crosses borders with ease, by-the-book business owners are burdened by bureaucracy when it comes to exporting goods through legal routes.

‘To export is very expensive; the taxes that [business] owners have to pay are very high,’ Ortiz said. ‘The cost to export is more or less [an additional] 50 percent of the cost of the sale.’ A sales tax is also attached to every purchase: ‘About 25 percent of what you pay’ on every product in-store is a tax, according to Ortiz.

‘We have created a base for our culture and our identity. Our work is our craft.’

—Shop-owner Juan Julio

Market conditions set the prices, and while bargains tend to entice a few, El Sendero Que Te Llama is creating consciousness among consumers about where they cast their dollar vote.

Likeminded businesses supporting each other and Bolivian artisans through initiatives such as El Sendero Que Te Llama changes their relationship from that of competitors to colleagues. ‘It’s fantastic that we are united,’ D’Andrea said. ‘There is a great chemistry between us all.’

For Julio, his culture will always be a large part of his work. ‘We have created our own employment,’ he said. ‘We have created a base for our culture and our identity. Our work is our craft.’