Paceño writer Jaime Sáenz aptly referred to the Choqueyapu River, which runs through La Paz, as ‘the city in liquid state.’ Trash, dead animals, organic and chemical waste, rubble, heavy metals: the detritus of the city is unrelentlessly churning through the waters of the Choqueyapu. The contaminated water carries bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella which end up in vegetable crops downstream. But until the river is stopped being used as an open sewer, an alternative for this wasted water is to use it to produce flowers, like the florerías do in the Valle de las Flores, in the south of La Paz, transforming something vile into something beautiful.
We began 2018 with our chaos-themed issue, and how when something seems confusing and chaotic, there can be an order behind it that controls it. Similarly, we are ending the year by deconstructing what is around us in order to understand it better. Bolivia is a land of contradictions – a place where spirituality and capitalism have created a unique setting, where the modern teleférico and old micros coexist, and where all the seasons seem to take place within a day. Inexplicably, it’s also a country with a capital city that doesn’t have a proper sewer and water-treatment system.
There are things that we see every day but take for granted because they are part of our routine, and because sometimes we are just too shy to ask. Why is helado de canela red (and why doesn’t it ever seem to melt)? Why are there so many dentists in La Paz and El Alto? Why do you never (or very rarely) see a cholita wearing glasses? And why do you never see a cholita without braids? And what is the actual spelling: Abaroa or Avaroa?!
We’ve tried to answer questions like these for the past nine years – in all 90 issues of Bolivian Express. Month after month, we deconstruct the ordinary and make sense out of this apparent chaos. We’ve been deciphering Bolivia’s secrets and its people, looking at what connects us and at all the nuances which define Bolivia and every part of it: the highlands, the rainforests, the Chaco and the foothills.
Ultimately, one of the things that characterises Bolivians is their perseverance and determination. Their unwillingness to stop fighting and to keep living in the harshest conditions – from the palliris in the mines of Potosí to the women selling cheese in the street whether it’s pouring rain or burning hot under the sun. Understanding Bolivia is an ambitious and arduous task, a testament to its richness, beauty and complexity.
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Photos: Josephine Zavaglia
Muralism as an art form to transform the public spaces of La Paz
Graffiti and street art have the ability to turn a city into a tourist destination. Such is the case of Berlin, Melbourne or Valparaíso. In Latin America, however, this medium not only attracts visitors, but often creates a forum for topics like death, resistance and revolution.
The difference between graffiti and street art is a question of legality. Whilst graffiti can be anything from tags and slurs to feats of efficiency, street art affords artists time to complete their work, as they have permission from either the state or the property owner.
Graffiti as an art form has yet to really take off in Bolivia. In La Paz, graffiti is slapdash, if not juvenile, although there are some interesting pieces along the embankments of the autopista entering La Paz from El Alto. Street art, however, has found a vibrant home and a welcoming audience in the city, turning La Paz into an open-air gallery.
Street art has found a vibrant home and a welcoming audience in the city, turning La Paz into an open-air gallery.
The recent ‘Meeting of Latin American Muralism’ that took place at the Pipiripi children’s museum in the Miraflores neighbourhood is a testament to La Paz’s ever-growing street-art scene. The third installment of the annual event included over 150 Latin American and international muralists, who gathered at an idyllic vantage point that features one of the city’s best views and guarantees that the murals can be seen from various parts of the city.
The theme of the event was ‘Mother Nature’, and the result was an awe-striking, colourful and thought-provoking display of enormous murals that transformed the space. In total, approximately 30 murals were completed during the encuentro, which took place over a two-week period between August and September 2018.
The General Cemetery, in the centre of La Paz, is another place to see the role that muralism plays in Bolivia. While death is a topic frequently shied away from or ignored in many Western cultures, here it takes on new heights. The murals that adorn the walls of the cemetery deal with this sensitive topic in thoughtful, honest and beautiful displays. These displays of art are the work of the Perrosueltos collective, and are part of the Ñatinta Festival. In its third edition, the festival showcases over 30 national and international artists.
But muralism is not a new phenomenon in the Andes. From as early as the 1500s, evangelists used murals as a tool, although the art form was replaced by oil painting by the late 17th century, as Ananda Cohen Suarez writes in Heaven, Hell and Everything in Between: Murals of the Colonial Andes. There was a resurrection of muralism during Bolivia’s 1952 National Revolution, and one of the most important artists from this period was Miguel Alandia Pantoja, from Potosí.
Muralism in the Andes region is not a new phenomenon.
In one of the few interviews Alandia made during his lifetime, he said, ‘Muralism takes popular myths and legends and the very life of the masses of miners and farmers in their fight… to express a rejuvenated and resounding language of the universal desire of man of our time: the revolution.’
The Ñatinta Festival is made possible with the support of American Chemical, Parque de las Memorias, Bunkie Hostal, Gin La República, Bice Bugatti Club, La muela del Diablo, Magick Café Cultural, Toga, Il Falco, Umawi, ATPAC Andamios, Go Pro Bolivia, Parlana.
For more information on the Ñatinta Festival and the Perrosueltos collective, please visit:
Photo: Ivan Rodriguez Petkovic
Shedding light on the work of women in the Bolivian mining industry
A Bolivian mine can be a tough place to earn a living, especially for a woman. All miners suffer from periodic injuries, but women must frequently contend with physical and sexual assault. Oftentimes, women turn to working in the mines after their miner husbands are killed in work accidents. Someone has to provide for the family, and as dangerous as it is, the mine allows them to scratch out a living as long as they accept the risks of the job. These women form a near-invisible workforce, often working more than 10 hours a day for only US$70 to US$100 a month, less than half the national minimum wage. In 2001, women miners were finally able to join FENCOMIN, the national miners’ syndicate, but their fight for safety and economic independence has not yet been won. They still lack pensions, education and guaranteed access to health care. Also, in Bolivia’s western highlands, superstition still prohibits the entrance of women into the mines.
According to the country’s national mining corporation, COMIBOL, there are around 3,000 female mining employees today in Bolivia, 600 of whom work inside the mines. These women are called palliris, a Quechua term meaning ‘to harvest’ or ‘to collect’, but used exclusively for the female miners who have the gruelling task of sorting minerals extracted from the mines.
Without work contracts, health insurance or the right to maternity or holiday time, women miners are often the greatest victims of abuse in the mining industry. Even though men work under the same extreme conditions, female workers find themselves the most vulnerable. Working in bitter winds and torrential rains and at much higher risk of tuberculosis and rheumatism than workers in any other industry, the average life expectancy of mine workers is only 40-50 years, according to Al Jazeera. For more than 10 hours a day, palliris have the task of pulverising rocks taken from the mines and sifting through the remains to separate the dust from valuable materials such as silver and zinc. What is discovered of value is then washed using toxic substances such as mercury, a practise that takes a severe toll on the health of the workers.
Women miners are often the greatest victims of abuse in the mining industry.
Even though women have had a presence in the Bolivian mining industry since the Spanish colonisation, according to Pascale Absi, author of Los ministros del diablo – an examination of the mines in Potosí – until recently the idea of women working in a mine in Bolivia was considered taboo, with strong resistance from the male-dominated mining community. In fact, women were often forbidden from entering mines for fear that the female presence would ‘bring bad luck’ and dry up all the gold, according to Absi.
Absi notes the common belief that a woman entering a mine will make Pachamama jealous, resulting in a poor mineral harvest that year. She writes about the mines of Llallagua, in the Potosí department, where it’s thought that the minerals disappear following the end of the next menstrual cycle of the woman who entered the mine.
In addition to these superstitious beliefs, sexism is also a prominent stumbling block which holds women back from pursuing a career in the mines – for example, many people believe that mining is too physically challenging to be performed by a woman. Additionally, the exploitative and dangerous nature of the work is cited when justifying the exclusion of women from the workforce, as if it were more acceptable for men to work in these conditions rather than unacceptable for all to be subjected to this work environment.
Despite these prejudices against females in the workforce, women have played a vital role in the mining industry, especially during the 1932-35 Chaco War against Paraguay, when Bolivian women took to the mines to replenish a workforce depleted by conscription. ‘How difficult can it be?’ Doña Paulina, a palliri from the Ckacchas Libres mining cooperative, is quoted in Absi’s book when asked whether women were capable of performing as well as their male counterparts in the mines.
Lately, though, solidarity within the Bolivian and international communities for the work of the palliris is stronger than ever. There was a clear demonstration of strong public support for palliris at a recent book presentation for the latest edition of Si me permiten hablar (Let Me Speak), on 28 November 2018 in El Alto by the Biblioteca del Bicentenario de Bolivia.
Written by Moema Veizzer and translated into 14 languages, Si me permiten hablar is a biography of the late Domitila Chungara, a palliri who played an essential role in supporting the mining-syndicate movement in South American mines. Since its publication in 1978, it has shined a light on working conditions in the mining industry and exposed the issue to an international audience.
Born into a mining family in 1937 in Potosí, Chungara was raised in a house without running water and electricity for only a few hours a day. Following her mother’s death when she was only 10 years old, Chungara helped to raise her five siblings despite suffering extreme poverty. She became a prominent member of the Union of Miners’ Wives during 1960s and survived the San Juan massacre in 1967, when soldiers shot at protesting miners and their families, killing 20 and injuring 70. She was even imprisoned and tortured during the 1970s dictatorship of Hugo Bánzer as a result of her determination to secure better rights for the mining community. Her ill-treatment by that government resulted in a miscarriage and lifelong injuries. In 1978, Chungara organised and carried out a hunger strike in protest against the Bánzer government. Thousands of Bolivians joined her, pressuring the government to release political prisoners and allow her and her compatriots’ husbands to return to their jobs in the mines. In her later life, Chungara focussed her efforts on improving political education for the younger generations in deprived neighbourhoods. She passed away in 2012 due to lung cancer, an illness that afflicts many workers in the mining community.
‘If we want to live in liberty on our land, under the same sky, we need to be dedicated to working together.’
—Domitila Chungara
Si me permiten hablar, having been continually in print since it was originally published and having been translated into many other languages, has made Chungara a national hero – so much so that at the celebration for the latest edition, an auditorium overflowed with audience members. Greeted with an applause and cheers that shook the auditorium, panellists – including the biographer Viezzer as well as the president of the Biblioteca del Bicentenario de Bolivia – gave heartfelt tributes to the heroine. However, despite the international publication of accounts describing the horrific exploitation and countless accidents within the mining community, there is still so much to be achieved in order to secure a safer future for mining families and women. The latest edition of Veizzer’s book is another important step in achieving greater rights for Bolivia’s oft-overlooked workforce. And it is instructional in how to change the future for the better. In the words of Chungara herself: ‘If we want to live in liberty on our land, under the same sky, we need to be dedicated to working together.’
