Connor Larson explores how art is helping El Alto’s youths find personal growth. A volunteer, an MC, and the Minister of Cultures Pablo Groux help her understand how their cultural expressions can also help society develop.

El Alto is a city of contrasts. The seeming lack of consistency in the appearance of not just the people but the city itself adds a certain indefinable charm, as though El Alto was not designed or planned, but simply came to be. A well-dressed businessman rushes past a begging mother, whilst a red traffic light leaves a brand-new SUV idled next to rusted taxi. Walking through the bustling streets, it's hard to believe that a mere sixty years ago this sprawling city was home to only approximately 11,000 inhabitants. Severe droughts in the 1940s, a subsequent agrarian reform, government-driven neoliberal initiatives in the ’80s, and a long-term national shift towards urbanization resulted in a mass migration of indigenous Bolivians to El Alto, transforming the insignificant airport town into the fastest-expanding urban area in Bolivia—though it has only been officially acknowledged as a separate municipality for twenty-five years. Today, though the city is infamous for its high levels of poverty and petty crime (this I can confirm, as I had my phone pick-pocketed there on my second day in South America), El Alto holds itself with an air of accomplishment and pride, a uniqueness acquired from its unusual community-based organizational structure, and its stance of defiance towards discrimination, in part caused by its mockingly close proximity to La Paz, Bolivia's contrastingly well-developed and beautified administrative capital.

Photo by Michael Dunn C.

​Citizens of El Alto—or alteños —are typically first- to third-generation migrants; a generation of youth having both indigenous and urban roots, at high risk of being marginalized and disregarded by elders unfamiliar with this 'dual socialization'.

How do the people of El Alto identify themselves in such an environment? For youth in particular, elements of racism, political exclusion, poverty and lack of proper education create a mixing pot of potential destruction in terms of self-identification. There’s also an inherent conflict between the growing Westernization of Bolivian society and a still-strong traditional indigenous background. Growing up in El Alto, youths risk marginalization, with a large amount of discrimination from the wealthier, whiter citizens of La Paz. But it isn't just the inhabitants of El Alto who are discriminated against: Bolivia as a whole has been exploited and its people disregarded by much of the Western world for centuries. Alteños not only live in one of the poorest cities in the country, but in one of the poorest countries on the continent.​ As a result, parents can overcompensate by trying to 'westernize' their children, giving them Spanish names and ignoring Aymaran traditions, leaving them with little sense of pride about their heritage. Lack of education is also a huge problem, with many youths leaving school at a young age in order to work and earn money for their families. This in turn provides no stable basis for the next generation to remove themselves from the poverty they were born into, creating a vicious circle. A lack of opportunities, little government support, higher-than-average illiteracy rates, and poor role models also deter these youths from breaking the cycle. Additionally, there is also a strong distrust of politicians, creating a rift between youth and government bodies, pushed further apart by the standard authoritarian parenting style, giving young Bolivians little influence, even in their own households.

The youth of El Alto have hence turned to their own peer groups in search of social approval, a change which could potentially have disastrous consequences. Interestingly, however, a diverse array of youth groups which channel their struggles with injustice through art, music and dance, have appeared. I spoke to Charlie, a volunteer for COMPA, the umbrella organization for Teatro Tono, a theatre space in El Alto providing free talleres for young people. The organization is housed in a building made completely of recycled materials, reflecting El Alto's 'inconsistency'. No two doors are the same, the walls are splotched with multicolored paint and doodlings, and a cylindrical staircase spirals through the building’s centre. 'It's a family here', Charlie insisted, when asked about the bonds formed among the youths at COMPA. COMPA tries neither to direct nor 'mould' the youth participants; its only ideology is 'we accept everything except fascism', allowing these youths to explore 'inwards, to their core', and find their own balance between their indigenous roots and the inevitable 'migration of culture to the West'. Another notable quality of this form of expression is that nothing is preached or forced upon these youths, they 'don’t supply the recipe, only the tools'. Thus allowing the children to find their own identity, and preventing a return to previous ways when the influence of the group is absent.

I went to talk to Minister for Cultures Pablo Groux about what development means in the context of culture. In our interview, he acknowledged the value of positive intervention without limiting youth in their expressions, explaining the country gives rise to ‘various hues of what you could define as cultural expressions’. Most importantly, he explains why his is a Ministry of CultureS, in the plural. ‘One of the reasons for this has to do with the variety of ecosystems and environments you find within these million or so square kilometres’, he tells me, and goes on to explain how ‘many of these are expressions of indigenous resistance which show the strong colonization process that took place here [...] We need to emphasise recuperation without overlooking new emerging cultural forms currently in the making’. The government show themselves open to supporting cultural initiatives which arise from civil society. ‘We try to support projects which arise from society without any type of restriction’.

Photo by Michael Dunn C.

There have been many success stories: a program director was stopped on the street by a mother of one of the girls involved in COMPA. She began to tell him of her own upbringing and traditions, how her family maintained quite formal relationships, in which affection was never a priority. But her eyes lit up as she told of the changes in her daughter since being part of the theatre program. Not only had she become more expressive and affectionate with her mother, but she had hugged her for the first time in years. The program’s most commonly stated outcome is 'a big growth in self-confidence and self-love', and it 'creates an alternative for expression that’s nonviolent and nonaggressive', giving these kids a way to 'have a voice'. But it isn't just the youth who join these organisations directly that benefit from such cultural movements; these influences have also gained popularity beyond the streets, touching more lives than a single organization ever could.

Ariel Desmond, an MC I interviewed in La Paz, was not at all like I expected. He smiled shyly and chewed his water bolsita as I introduced myself in broken Spanish. After an hour-long interview three things were clear: he was in no way a thug or menace to society, he was very far from apathetic towards the struggles of his community, and rap meant more to him then a drum beat and profanities. Desmond first discovered his talent at a hip-hop marathon in El Alto in 2005. 'The competition brings us together', he comments when asked about the camaraderie that unites him to his fellow rappers. He tells of his first experience with hip-hop and how, on stage, he 'let himself free'. He agreed that hip-hop deters young people from drugs and crime, but accepted that he had his own 'rebellious stage', during which he found condolence in using rap as his 'diary'. Desmond epitomizes the positive benefits of these artistic movements. While Desmond doesn’t describe himself as a revolutionary, he says that ‘politics are in everything' and 'anyone who does rap is like a politician, his rap is his word'.

In a community where so few have a voice, Desmond's testimony of the benefits of self-expression through unconventional means is only one from a chorus of young people emanating the same expressive desires. Such is the impact of the movement that even those who aren't associated with an organization such as COMPA have began to explore the art of self-expression independently, with positive benefits. In such a unique, and in many ways unjust society, anything that allows the release of frustrations and exploration of identity through non-destructive ways should be greeted with open arms and an open mind.

Bolivia is now officially Plurinational, has South America’s first indigenous President, and is developing in unexpected ways. But with a racial past as murky as Bolivia’s, can the country overcome its differences to become a true rainbow nation?

Photo by Pablo Paniagua

‘The issue of race is not black and white here, like in America,’ Bethel Nuñez explains, ‘It is extremely complex and nuanced; It is such a difficult issue,’ she tells me, ‘that it goes beyond consciousness.’

As a foreign journalist in Bolivia, I have found that, in this palpably diverse Latin American country, there are more differences of opinion regarding race —and contradictions between them— than I ever expected. What I have found is a story of progress and setbacks, of hope and disillusionment; a story that, despite government efforts and valiant activism, ends with a question that remains unanswered: how far or how close does Bolivia stand today from becoming ‘post-racial’?

Ever since the conquest of South America, when the indigenous population suffered in manifold ways at the hands of its colonizers, the racial past of Bolivia has been dark and taboo. Unlike in Europe, the wars during the conquest in Latin America were not assumed to be wars between equals, local historian Magdalena Cajías tells me. According to her, the origin of the anti-indigenous racism that exists to this day stems from that period.

Bolivia’s independence did very little to improve the life of Bolivia’s majority in this respect. Until the Revolution of 1952, indigenous people practically had no rights or power to speak of. Many were ruthlessly exploited by the powerful classes, as Eduardo Galeano points out, speaking of the plight of the Bolivian pongo. Before the revolution, he explains: ‘the pongo slept beside the dog, ate the leftovers of his dinner, and knelt when speaking to anyone with white skin’.

Some might say that racism in Bolivia isn’t comparable to that experienced by slaves in Southern USA or apartheid South Africa, but it is hard to deny that its wounds have cut deep into Bolivian society.

Carlos Marcusaya, an indigenista catarista, told me in a recent interview, that in Bolivia ‘blanco used to be a synonym for rich’. And indeed, nowhere more so than in Latin America has racism so clearly had an economic slant. Galeano argues that, worse still, ‘the Indians were victims of their own wealth.’ Racism suited the Criollo upper classes, allowing them to both take the natural wealth of the native people and exploit them for labour.

In a society historically founded on racism, the election of President Evo Morales in 2005 came as shock to many. People expected Morales to help write a new story of race and power in Bolivia.

His critics, though, say that instead of ushering in a new era of post-racial and modern development politics in Bolivia, Morales has done the very opposite. His opponents claim that Morales has used his race as a political tool, increasing the tension and hostility between different ethnic groups in Bolivia. Luis Eduardo Siles, a journalist writing from the opposition, put it bluntly: ‘Morales had the chance to be the Mandela of the Andes,' he said, 'but instead he chose to be the Mugabe.’ In a similar tone to Siles, right-wing Peruvian presidential candidate and Nobel Laureate, Mario Vargas Llosa, said with reference to Evo Morales that ‘to put the Latin American problem in terms of race is reckless, demagogic and irresponsible.’

Morales’s controversial discourse around ethnicity and identity throughout his presidency, may be the cause of the fear that has arisen in Bolivia around the idea of ‘reverse racism’.

According to members of the Observatorio del Racismo (Observatory of Racism), the concept of reverse racism is more complicated than it seems. Politically, they explain, it may have manifested itself as a result of the current climate, but it is in no way similar to the racism suffered by indigenous people within the institutions of the country.

In a study conducted by the Observatory, the centre found that racism and inequality are endemic within the walls of the educational system in Bolivia. There exists an inequality of outcome between white and indigenous students as well as a lack of social mixing within these groups.

If you talk to indigenistas about the ‘phenomenon’ of reverse racism, they’re likely to laugh at the thought of it. According to them, there are more severe, underlying problems of racism towards non-white people in Bolivia than those that affect the white population.

Marcusaya, one such indigenista, claims that open racism still exists at an institutional level in the country. For example, military schools in the country, he said, still discriminate applicants based on physical characteristics and the origin of their surnames.

Something similar happens in the media. While a local TV station here might see fit to use an Aymara presenter in its screenings, this is much less common on national TV. To a foreigner, it might be astonishing to learn that in a country with an indigenous majority, people from these ethnic groups are confined to appearing as museum pieces, their identity confined to the traditions they are associated with. They appear wearing polleras and typical indigenous dress and are never associated with ideals of beauty or modern development.

Even worse are the incidents of racial violence, of which the indigenous majority is most often the victim. In 2008, for example, in the city of Sucre, an anti-Evo Morales demonstration became a racist attack against his mainly indigenous supporters.

Just as damaging to indigenous people in Bolivia is their internalisation of racism. In a conversation with Carlos Marcusaya, the activist compared racism to sexism in terms of how easily both become normalised. This is how the insult indio has entered into common use.

Aymaras, Quechuas and Cholas of Bolivia have experienced racism over such a long period that it often goes unquestioned and not worth seen as confronting. Experts say that racism in Bolivia has held back its development due to how it has excluded and demotivated a great portion of the population that now finds it difficult to integrate into modern society as equals.

This is not to say that there has been no progress at all on the race issue in recent years. Economically, the formerly oppressed and exploited classes of Bolivia have quickly become a rising and affluent group within the country.

‘While white people and the upper classes still have money, most of this is through inheritance.’ Marcusaya told me, adding that ‘indigenous people are becoming rich through businesses such as importing and trading.’

Indeed, a cursory glance at the mainly non-white city of El Alto demonstrates the upward mobility of many indigenous people, their place within Bolivian society has decisively improved.

On its side, the Bolivian government has been making significant efforts to combat racism in the country. On interviewing the Vice-Minister of Decolonisation —possibly the only senior government official with such a title in the world— I was given an insight into the efforts to cure Bolivia of its institutionalised discrimination. According to the Vice-Minister, the government aims for ‘a Bolivia free from discrimination and racism by 2025.’

A recently passed racism law in the country has pushed the issue to the top of the political agenda. The enforcement of that law, however, has proved a difficult task for the government.

The case of journalist Claudia Soruco, who upon being attacked and racially insulted tried to take legal action against her attackers, is especially illustrative of this point. Despite Soruco’s efforts, the state failed to lend her support, making her unable to follow up the investigation.

Progress is clear in the fight against racism in the country and in the improvement of the lives of indigenous people. Their growing affluence in previously impoverished socio-ethnic groups in the country, along with the renaming of Bolivia to a ‘Plurinational State’, are clear signs of the advancement of indigenous people in this society. Ultimately, though, only a concerted effort from all sectors of Bolivian society can make racism truly a thing of the past.

Changes in Bolivian Laws signal some progress towards recognising sexual freedoms, though for gay rights to improve in practice, society must follow suit. Can culture hold the key for change?

Photo by K-OS GALÁN

A good starting point to understand the historical development of gay rights in Bolivia, is an examination of how the LGBT community was regarded in pre-colonial times. According to Bartolomé de las Casas (a Spanish historian and Dominican friar), upon the arrival of the Spanish in Latin America, the amount of sexual diversity in practice amongst the indigenous people was ‘surprising’. Brothels with male prostitutes offered light relief for warriors coming back from battle, and images of men dressed as women were worshipped in sacred buildings. In fact, if a man wished to dress as a woman he could do so, find a husband and marry. Unsurprisingly the conquistadores, sentinels of the intransigent Catholic Church, found these practices abhorrent and promptly set about eradicating them.

Since the Catholic Church bases its attitude towards homosexuality on interpretation of the Scriptures, which define homosexual acts of intercourse as being in opposition to the divine nature of procreation, such behavior is considered ‘disorderly’. Interestingly, a dominant interpretation of the Scriptures holds that while homosexual desires isn’t itself sinful, the acts to which these desires give rise are. As a consequence, the Church’s response at the time was to deliver the corresponding treatment to those engaged in this type of behaviour, and regard all homosexual conduct as ‘diseased’. Yet, as we now know, this wasn’t an attitude confined to former Spanish colonies; the world as a whole had to wait until 1990 for the General Assembly of the World Health Organisation to remove ‘homosexuality’ from its list of mental illnesses, marking the long overdue evolution of attitudes within Western society.

Despite these advances, more than 500 years later, the Church (in it’s various guises, from Catholic to Evangelical), still exert a strong influence over Bolivia’s public morality. It goes without saying they don’t support the now universal fight for sexual rights. As a result, many ‘out and proud‘ homosexuals in Bolivia are subject to discrimination across various sectors of society. A national survey founded by ‘Emancipación Conexión’ in 2011, reported that 33% of Bolivian gays have said they have been discriminated against at school, by both teachers and classmates, with 15% claiming unequal treatment in access to healthcare services. This happens despite several articles in the 2009 Bolivian Constitution which declare all forms of discrimination against race, age, gender identity, and sexual orientation, to be illegal, and which understand freedom of sexual orientation as a fundamental human right.

Despite the discrimination being tightly woven into dominant social attitudes, the LGBT community has sought new forms of expression and found increased engagement with society at large, most notably in La Paz and Santa Cruz, the two largest cities in Bolivia.

While there have been important advances in urban areas, as far as gay rights and social acceptance of homosexuality are concerned, rural regions seem to exist in a different time-space continuum. In the campo, Andean conceptions and beliefs are combined in mysterious ways with Catholic values. Reflecting upon his work in the community of Wila Kjarka, the anthropologist Andrew Canessa explains: ‘they know about different sexuality, they know about homosexuality, but they don’t do it themselves. Homosexuality for them is what mestizos and gringos do. [Other researchers] might say I’m wrong, but I have no evidence at all that people have same sex relations’. Whether or not widespread same-sex relations exist, they appear to be virtually invisible. Traditional metaphysical beliefs, in which the sun and moon have a union of ‘duality and complementarity’, hold that men and women should emulate this cosmic duality. Those who are deemed to be homosexual, are dubbed k'ehua—neither man nor woman. Either due to discrimination or alienation, many rural gay people migrate to the comparatively more accepting urban areas.
Although far from being internalised by civil society, the recent additions to the Constitution signal a development towards a more accepting attitude, as well as a desire to make room for minority communities in Bolivian society. After all, in a Plurinational State made up of 36 nations, almost everyone is part of some minority or another. Yet there are ongoing challenges. In 2012, two bills were submitted to the legislature, one requesting the right to a ‘cohabitation contract’ for same-sex couples, and the second for the introduction of gay marriage with a right to adoption, though there’s been minimal progress to date on both fronts. The Constitution itself hasn’t been without its setbacks: an early draft declared that marriage was a civil contract between two people, yet the final version of the Constitution adopted in 2009, was altered to specify that this civil contract was between a man and woman, no doubt influenced by the Church’s ‘invisible hand’.

Statistics from the 2011 survey report that when members of the LGBT community come out to their family, 65% say they were accepted, yet 22% were ‘chased from their homes’. So what is it like to be an out-of-the-closet gay in Bolivian society? I asked Maria Galindo, an openly declared lesbian activist, whose feminist group Mujeres Creando not only promotes depatriarchalisation, but also urges society to confront homophobia. Galindo says that by outing herself as a lesbian, she ‘started a social fight,’ and that the problem lies in ‘a concept of normality in which there is no space for the gay man, the lesbian, the single mother, the clever girl or the fat girl’. Nevertheless, Galindo says that although as a woman in a machista society she faces male threats of violence, she also receives a lot of love and acceptance from those around her.

Another out gay Bolivian, David Aruquipa, is a member of the self-identified drag queen family La Familia Galán. Danna Galán, as he goes by, says that this family does not submit to the ‘conservative and Christianised concept’ of traditional families, and that they are ‘free, poetic, loving and connected’ to each other. Although La Familia Galan are a family of drag queens, they prefer not to be defined and categorised by their identity; be it heterosexual, homosexual or transvestite. Their cultural and political activities, most recently given a platform by their TV show ‘Transformando’, have been as much about performativity as sexual diversity.

From talking to Maria and David/Danna, it’s both surprising and refreshing to see that discourses surrounding gay rights have evolved substantially from traditional stories of pure oppression and discrimination. In these new voices, their communities are finding exuberant, fierce, and creative expressions capable of reaching new corners of society. Moreover, their unique experiences suggest it’s not necessarily possible to speak of a single LGBT community in Bolivia. The sexual diversity that can be found in the country is as beautifully fragmented as the voices it gives rise to.

So what is the future for the homosexual community in Bolivia, if it’s conceivable to speak of such a univocal entity with a single set of interests? One can hope Bolivian laws and attitudes ride the wave of events happening elsewhere, and legalisation of gay marriage eventually arrives. Given the influence the Church has maintained over the centuries, this may not happen soon. One important lesson from the Constitution is that laws are useless without a change in social attitudes. As Maria Galindo puts it, ‘there is nothing more useless than a rhetorical law’. As far as society is concerned, David Aruquipa seems to have found that the best remedy for discrimination can’t come from outside, it must come from within;

I criticise the notion that gender and sexuality are peripheral issues which are not part of culture, that they only belong to gays and lesbians. Culture has never engaged with these themes upfront. We are here to say that gender is not simply the concern of feminists, and that sexuality isn’t simply a property of TLGBs. We take culture as the starting point from where everything is transformed.

David Aruquipa/Danna Galán

At the start we used to be marginal, but the Familia Galan has now been co-opted by society, who’ve taken over and appropriated the Familia. By being a standard feature of Carnival [through Kullawada], we’ve forced our entry into the sphere of what’s most sacred in popular culture: traditional dance. Entering this space has resulted in the Family not acting from the margins, but becoming infiltrated at the core of society like a virus. We want to engage in a constant deconstruction of cultural dynamics to transform this space. We are penetrating popular culture.