In his 2010 visit to Iran, Evo Morales asserted that Bolivia and the Islamic Republic share an ‘identical revolutionary conscience’, aimed at fighting imperialism and injustice in the world. Bolivia’s expulsion of all USAID operations in May 2013 signalled a new era of international relations, in which Iran has become the primary patron of Morales’ Estado Plurinacional, with the promise of $1.1 billion in aid and infrastructure. Media reports of hospitals in which the nurses are forced to wear the hijab and mushrooming fundamentalist Islamic cells prompted Sorcha Thomson to investigate the reality of the ‘Islamic menace’ in La Paz.

The focus of the international media melée has been the Iranian Red Crescent Hospital in El Alto, the satellite city to La Paz, where poverty is endemic and, according to Olivier Javanpour of the Jerusalem Post, conditions exist that make it one of the ‘prime targets for fundamentalists and fanatics of all kinds’. On entering the hospital, I am greeted at reception by the gaze of Hassan Rouhani, current president of Iran, framed in gold above the desk. It appears that politics were not left in the waiting room.

However, in speaking with the head of the hospital, Mr Hassani, it becomes clear that for the staff and patients alike, the macro-politics of international relations are of no concern: ‘Here we don’t care about politics, we don’t care about religion, we don’t care about any issue which is going to jeopardise our principles. Our job is to help the people and that is all.’ And, in doing this, the $2.5 million hospital has been highly successful. In its four years of operation, it has provided advanced healthcare to thousands of Bolivians, including dental care, maternity care, and the use of a potentially life-saving haemodialysis machine. The nurses dress in traditional scrubs, and the only hijab to be seen is worn by one of the Iranian nurses offering her specialist services to the hospital. It seems the relationship between Iran and Bolivia is bringing genuine aid to Bolivian people; it is difficult to reconcile the media’s hyperbolic concerns with the tangible evidence of benefit.

Perhaps reports of the growth of fundamentalist Islamic cells, funded by the Iranian government, are more accurate. Bolivia, a country of approximately 10.5 million people, has a Muslim population of just 2,000. Nora Zimmett, of Fox News USA, writes that ‘the connection between some of the community’s religious leaders and Iran . . . has U.S. officials and terror experts keeping a watchful eye on them’.

Visiting the Association of the Islamic Community of Bolivia, this watchful eye appears to look in vain. Members aged 17 to 70 gather every Friday to pray together in this small mosque in the centre of La Paz. In operation for almost 20 years, the association has seen numerous changes in government and witnessed the shift in Bolivian relations from the United States to Iran. The majority of attendees here are Bolivian converts to Islam; they see no difficulty in mixing their Bolivian and Muslim identities. For the General Secretary of the association, Ibrahim Barbery, macro-politics are of little significance to his faith: ‘We don’t involve ourselves in politics. Whoever the president, we have to practice our religion. We respect the laws. What we ask is that they respect our religion’.

However, native Bolivian Lucio Perez, aged 24, has witnessed the collapse of this mutual respect. On the streets of La Paz, he sees Bolivian-Muslim women told to ‘go back to their country’ and denounced as ‘terrorists’. It is these instances that inspire the mission of the association, voiced by Ibrahim: ‘To clean the image that other people have about Islam: most people think we are terrorists or something like that, but the reality is another thing. We are trying to give people the correct image of Islam’. Having been welcomed into this diverse and astute Islamic community, I see that the spectre of ominous Iranian cultural imposition on the people of Bolivia appears unfounded.

Morales’ relations with Iran have sparked international concern about the implications of Iranian aid and the growth of Islamic culture in Bolivia. Yet, from the ground, it appears that politics fail to intrude upon the humanitarian goals of the Iranian hospital and the spirituality of the Bolivian-Muslim community.

However, as the history of international aid attests, there is no such thing as a free hospital. The pattern of exploitation and cultural imposition is too entrenched to ignore. While the media frenzy can be dismissed as hyperbole, it would be foolish to ignore the potential benefits that lie underground for this Iranian aid: beneath the Bolivian salt flats are 70 percent of the world’s lithium reserves. With Bolivia’s troubled history of natural resource extraction, the indigenous president has vowed that this time the riches stay in the country. But, in 2010, the Iranian Minister of Industry, Ali-Akbar Mehrabian, announced a deal to help the Andean nation conduct research on the exploitation of this high-profit mineral. With lithium’s spectrum of potential, from the production of car batteries to nuclear weaponry, the courtship between Bolivia and Iran is certain to remain one of international interest.

For the staff at the Red Crescent Hospital and the members of the Islamic community, politics is a topic they choose to ignore. But it will be politics, and its ubiquitous relationship with aid and religion, that will continue to knock on their door.

A Plea for Remembrance

When investigating the role of the National Revolution of 1952 in contemporary Bolivian identity, the memory of Bolivia’s mid-century history appears to suffer a generational rift. Asked what she knows about the revolutionary events of 1952, Viola, 19 years old, turns to her mother with a blank face and pleading eyes. Her innocent ignorance exposes the failure of the revolution to maintain prominence in the consciousness of Bolivia’s youth. Sorcha Thomson explores the significance of 1952, and the importance of remembering what Carlos Mesa describes as both its ‘lights and shadows’.

The events of 1952 cannot be viewed in isolation from the long history of Bolivian oppression, struggle, and defeat. In the countryside, the semi-feudal structure ensured 8 percent of the landowners held more than 95 percent of arable land. In the mines, three families controlled 80 percent of the industry, accounting for 80 percent of Bolivia’s exports. The indigenous population had no rights; they were dispensable assets to the ruling elites.
The events of 1952 emerged as a response to this ingrained and often violently enforced culture of exploitation. In 1946, the ideals of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers' Party (POR) were adopted by the Union Federation of Mine Workers of Bolivia, asserting their goal for the seizure of power by the workers. With the 1951 elections, won by the middle-class Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) but immediately annulled by the ruling military regime, the popular party, led by Victor Paz Estenssoro, were forced into exile. Having been denied their constitutional revolution, the masses took up arms in a violent uprising. From Cochabamba, Oruro, and Potosí, workers marched to the capital. In just three days the illegitimate government was defeated, and the captured prisoners forced to march through the city in their underwear. By April 11, there was no longer a state army in Bolivia. The only armed force in the country was between 50,000 and 100,000 men organised into militias by the unions. Real power was in the hands of workers. It would appear that a popular revolution had occurred.

However, as the exiled leaders of the MNR returned to govern the newly mobilised Bolivian masses, the ideals of revolution were diluted in political pragmatism. Despite legislative success in the granting of universal suffrage and education, demands for the nationalisation of the mines and agrarian reform were delayed and modified to allow continued dominance of the ruling elites. As such, the struggle created a semblance of triumph, but the culture of exploitation and inequality persisted to dictate society.

Felix Muruchi, whose autobiography charts his movement ‘from the mines to the streets’ as a result of the revolution, describes the succeeding years as a process of ‘self-colonisation’. Indigenous people were required to reject their roots and adopt Western clothing and language in order to enjoy social acceptance. The criollo minority maintained an exclusionary society, blocking the newly franchised majority from integrating socially, economically, and politically. To become a participating Bolivian required a mutation of identity; race continued to dictate status. It is this failure to transcend the culture of racial discrimination that has emasculated the revolution in both the official histories of Bolivia, and the popular consciousness of its citizens.

Mario Murillo, Bolivian historian and author of But The Bullet Does Not Kill The Target, has made a significant contribution to the historiography of the revolution. His work places emphasis on the human voices of those who experienced the revolutionary events. This oral history offers an alternative to the traditional presidential history that dominates understanding of the Bolivian past. As an astute historian, he dismisses a direct link between 1952 and contemporary life, ‘as nothing is a direct consequence of anything in history’. However, he does judge that ‘Bolivia was never the same after 1952’. The indigenous population had won the basic rights to gain a foothold, though a loose one, in Bolivian society.

Sixty-two years on from the uprising, as personal memory of the events slips from the living to the departed, it is necessary to assess the ways in which the revolution is represented in the Bolivian national consciousness. For the spirit of revolution and the ideals that accompany it to continue, it is necessary for the younger generation to remember both the ‘lights and shadows’ of 1952. In conducting interviews on the streets of La Paz, not one person under the age of 20 displays any awareness of the national revolution; ‘No, no sé nada’ is the recurring and disappointing theme.

However, Jaime Ortiz, a teacher from La Paz aged 54, demonstrates a greater understanding: ‘I don’t think it was really like a revolution, because it was unfinished. It had the spirit of a revolution, but things didn’t get done’. In his opinion, the significance of 1952 lies in this spirit: ‘It gave us the idea to start something different. Now, we can use these basic ideas to bring real change’.

And it is real change that is being promised by the presidency of Evo Morales, the first indigenous man to hold the office. His rise to power was made possible by the revolutionary actions of the miners of 1952. However, his rhetoric negates the uprising to a period of Bolivian history he describes as ‘colonial, not ever revolutionary’, claiming his own as the first and only true Bolivian revolution. His leadership is bringing tangible benefits to the conditions of indigenous life and has ‘refounded’ Bolivia as a plurinational state, constitutionally recognising the languages and cultures of the indigenous peoples. Yet in this plurinational state, ethnicity continues to act as a social indicator and a political tool. In order to move beyond essentialised identities founded in racial difference, it is necessary to remember and maintain the revolutionary spirit that has been the driving force of Bolivia’s progress to equality.

The lack of awareness amongst the Bolivian youth surrounding the events of 1952 is mirrored by the lack of official memorialisation in La Paz. The only permanent commemoration exists in the Museo de la Revolución Nacional, an imposing building at the head of the Plaza Villarroel. Despite the grandeur of the approach, the internal exhibition provides sparse information about the revolutionary events. Beautiful and obscure murals depict in rich colours a symbolic representation of the struggle. Yet the details, characters, and culmination of the revolution are undetectable; the only mention of Juan Lechín Oquendo, leader of the labour movement, exists as a small plaque at ground level. Here, it seems, empty grandeur and abstract art have taken the place of genuine remembrance.

Despite the notable limitations of the process in 1952, the rights it won for the majority of Bolivians should not be discarded to the dustbin of history. Historian James Cone offers a profound warning: ‘Amnesia is the enemy of justice’. To forget the past is to deny the lessons it can offer. The events of 1952 remind us of the power of popular mobilisation behind a cause. And its aftermath highlights the limitations of a revolution when faced with a culture hostile to its aims.

While 1952 did not provide immediate relief to the long history of Bolivian inequality, it did provide the fundamental tools through which the oppressed could lay claim to a Bolivian identity. The revolutionary ideals served as a template for the future Bolivia, even if this process was interrupted by 50 years of capitalist exploitation and military rule. Remembering this revolution is as important as the march upon La Paz 62 years ago. To forget would be to degrade the human lives lost in pursuit of an egalitarian Bolivian nation, and to fail in our duty to learn from their struggle. The blissful ignorance of youth, while beautiful in its innocence, bodes precariously for the future.

Bolivian Drag Queens Dance to their own Beat

Imagine: it's the 1980s in the U.S.A. Ronald Reagan is president, and homophobia is rampant across the country. There’s no Honey Boo Boo to sass her way into LGBTQ activism, and queer individuals hide inside a deep, dark closet to avoid violence and prejudice.

This is the backdrop for Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, a play that revolutionized the public’s perception of homosexuality in the United States. Over eight acts, a colorful spectrum of characters paints the portrait of a heterogeneous population with an even more eclectic appetite for carnal pleasure. The text’s rock is Belize, New York’s resident drag queen. Encircled by closed-minded, critical men who choose to mask their identities, Belize stands out for her unabashed self-confidence and her ability to somehow paste everyone together in an awkward but necessary relationship diagram.

Now, fast-forward to Bolivia in 2014. Instead of Reagan, Evo Morales heads the government of a country submerged in machismo, an unspoken social order that has driven indigenous civilization for centuries, only to be reinforced with the advent of Catholic colonizers from Europe. In the plazas and on cobblestone roads in La Paz, discussing sexuality is a taboo, and according to one local, short-lived underground gay bars operate as one of the only meeting spots for homosexuals in the city. Gay Bolivian vagabonds search for solace in more accepting corners of the world, and though Bolivia's youngest generation is more outspoken about sexual orientation, teenage boys are still thrown out of Internet cafés because of photographic mementos on their laptops from a night out with their boyfriends.

Sounds familiar, so where is drag queen Belize within this Bolivian drama?

Enter la Familia Galán from stage left. Fierce and fearless, the cross-dressing Family will take on any biting comment or hurtful snipe thrown their way as they strut down La Paz’s parade routes in 6-inch heels.

La Familia Galán is a nucleus for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) activism in Bolivia, challenging traditional values of sex and gender through drag performance. As Bolivia’s central unit for trans politics, the Family is known as much for its courage and resilience as for its good humor and playful attitude.

In her dissertation, University of Manchester student Fliss Lloyd referenced a Conexión Fondo de Empancipación study from 2011, which, according to Lloyd, found that transgendered Bolivian citizens ‘were the most vulnerable [to homophobia], with 75% reported… being threatened with violence, and one third having suffered physical abuse’. Whether straight, gay, or bi, when a member of the Family leaves the Galán safe space to make a public statement in drag, they risk their own necks in an attempt to foster a more egalitarian and open Bolivia. But never fear—when the group and its allies are united for one of Bolivia’s great fiestas, they’re practically untouchable as they inspire a political dialogue through makeup and dance.

‘The fiesta has given us the option to make ourselves visible’, Danna Galán, the starpower of the Family, said. ‘All of the microphones are for us. And from there, one gets a read on popular culture’.

While the Familia has chosen to use streetside parties as a way to interact with Bolivia’s mainstream, they also sit around coffee tables together and explore more nuanced viewpoints on what it means to be part of Bolivia’s sexual diversity. Their theoretical discourse is confined to a smaller group of intellectuals who are interested in the social implications of LGBTQ activism, and major themes include identity and the body as ‘a space of oppression’.

‘We don’t really believe in an identity’, Danna Galán explained. ‘To continue planting the lesbian, gay identity is to continue having conservative views because identity is oppressive when you believe it yourself’. According to the Galán Family’s main queen, however, intellectualism serves little purpose when it is not linked to action. ‘Reflection and theorization would not have any meaning if it didn’t enter daily life’, she added.

The Familia Galán may have altered Bolivia’s gender landscape to introduce options beyond the standard binary, but the nation’s pre-Hispanic origins continue to exercise an overarching influence on Bolivia’s social structure. Indigenous groups such as the Aymara and Quechua still believe that each gender has a set role to play. An article from Santa Cruz’s El Deber in 2012 cited an anonymous chiquitano correspondent, who claimed, ‘I don’t like homosexuals because it’s a small town, and in this town, there has never been that class of people’. It is evident that in this kind of traditional, dichotomized culture, there is no room for same-sex partners.

Even though these gender expectations originated in rural terrains with agrarian economies, where they proved necessary for survival, they have gradually seeped into urban life in cities like La Paz as families have moved from the country to metropolitan areas. Men rejoice when their wives give birth to baby boys, and both parents raise their sons to continue the bloodline in a heteronormative way.

Given these ongoing traditions, gender relations in Bolivia's social and political capitals remain conservative and restrictive. Sexuality is viewed as a given based on sex, and though homosexuality exists as a concept in the country, the topic suffers from a hush-hush policy.

‘It’s a matter of culture, I guess’, Bolivian citizen Andres Pereira said. ‘And in this culture, silence is so important. Silence and tradition’. He noted that almost 80% of his friends in the LGBTQ community have left the country to be a part of a more progressive environment.

Perhaps even more disconcerting than the public’s silence regarding homosexuality is Morales’ choice of words when talking about the subject. In 2010, Morales was under serious heat from the Western press when he implied that eating chicken with hormones would make men gay, and since his initial election in 2006, the president has become notorious for expressing controversial opinions on social issues.

‘This government is the most macho government you’ve ever seen in your life’, Pereira claimed.

While some members of the LGBTQ community are disheartened by the persistence of homophobia in both the public sphere and in their private worlds, others are optimistic about Bolivia’s social future. Despite Morales’ condescending quips, while president, he has passed several laws, including Law 045, that protect minority rights. Even if, in practice, these pieces of legislation are rarely enforced, they function as a symbolic olive branch to the LGBTQ population in Bolivia. And on the streets, where politics become passé, bold homosexual couples hold hands and sometimes steal a kiss in public. Though they may be surrounded by surprised stares, the stares are not always glares, but glances affected by the unknown.

A few days ago, a Bolivian man told me the story of his high school reunion, where he introduced his Belgian boyfriend to his former classmates. The alumni greeted both men with open arms, or in his case, with a drink to start off the night. No one was wearing drag. There wasn’t a parade with 6-inch heels. But, in his perspective, a beer with his buddies and boyfriend outshone the shimmer of sequins on a loud costume.

Perhaps the problem lies in that, for every high school reunion and kiss in the street, there is an outburst of prejudice that demonstrates why the Familia Galán is so important. Most recently, representative Roberto Rojas of MAS commented on a protest against homophobia that took place on June 27 in the Plaza Murillo in La Paz. His problem? Two women kissing on the steps of a cathedral. His conclusion? ‘Our country is not prepared for this situation, for homosexuals. A sickness. They seem like mentally ill people, it’s a lot of radicalism’.

‘The thing with Roberto Rojas was the most recent instance of homophobia’, Danna Galán said. ‘I’d rather be up against a Roberto Rojas who says that [homosexuals] are mentally ill people than someone who shows you kindness and gives you hugs and then gossips behind your back’.

Thanks to the likes of Rojas, Bolivia needs its version of Belize. The closet door is opening little by little, and the Familia Galán is standing by to make sure no one slams it shut again.