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Chauvinistic acts have recently made headlines across Bolivia. This is true across all sectors of society: from insecurity on the streets running to the very highest of political spheres. From sexist rhymes and songs to threats, groping and violent crimes including rape, domestic abuse and femicide, women find themselves at the centre of these attacks, but fewer are prepared to keep quiet any longer.
Being a woman in Bolivia is a challenge. Chauvinism is so deeply ingrained in society that it can be hard for people to even recognize actions and words that imply violence, aggression and deep disdain towards women. Nonetheless, there are more and more women, men and organizations that want to draw attention to this situation.
One recent, prominent case is the murder and rape of Sophia Calvo, a young woman who was allegedly attacked by the security guard of the car park near her office. Beyond high and endemic levels of violence across society, the public has increasingly shifted its attention to the political sphere.
The campaign “Machistas fuera de las listas” - organised by a group of feminists - aims to denounce the multiple acts of sexim, misogyny and sexual violence which arise across the political spectrum. The movement’s goal is to expose and remove all candidates involved in such incidents from the official lists for the upcoming elections.
The issue of sexism and gender-based violence is certainly not new in the political sphere. Last year activists sought justice for a civil servant allegedly raped by ex-assembly member Domingo Alcibia. He was later sentenced to a mere 14 months for inappropriate use of state resources.
Before the movement acquired a common identity, disturbing images were also caught on tape featuring Percy Fernandez, the mayor of Santa Cruz, groping women on several occasions.
Machistas fuera de las listas was finally formed following comments from candidate for senator Ciro Zabala, who insinuated that women should behave themselves and dress appropriately to avoid being raped. Later, Presidential candidate Samuel Doria Medina was criticized after a recording exposed him threatening one of his employees who had been the victim of domestic violence at the hands of her former partner – now an ex-candidate for congress from Medina’s own party. The campaign also went on to protest against President Evo Morales’s sexist comments and jokes in public.
Far from isolated, these events are symptomatic of much larger and worryingly recurring trends.
Most recently a 17-year-old girl was raped and murdered. Two sergeants from the military training school stand accused of the crimes. And so these cases continue in discourse and practice.
All of these instances of violence against women are truly alarming and difficult to ignore. As a result, various demonstrations and protests have arisen in an attempt to put a stop to this pattern of injustice, violence and chauvinism.These events have also triggered a political feeding frenzy, as different parties and groups seek to use candidates’ sexist comments to further their own causes.
Jenny Ybarnegaray, a member of the “Machistas fuera de las listas” movement, states that this campaign reflects the constant, long-term struggle of women.
In Ybarnegaray’s own words:
‘This is a systemic problem that has cultural, social, economical and political roots that aren’t going to be resolved overnight with a campaign. However, at least our initiative has stirred the waters.’
It’s worrying to think that so many sexist and violent acts are taking place in our country and, most of all, that some of those responsible are both political candidates and those who either run the country, or are running for office. However, at the same time, by being in the public eye, these events are generating a widespread feeling of indignation and disgust in society. They are making us open our eyes and be more aware of what is happening in order to take action. They are making us continue to fight for the ability to live in a democracy with respect, equality, and the freedom for citizens to exercise their fundamental rights.
From theme tunes to advertisements, music plays an integral part in the media, but what role does it have in political elections campaigns?
If you want to get a message stuck in people’s heads, a song is a great way to go about it. From major political campaigns to launches of projects like the teleférico, a catchy tune is often part of the publicity package.
‘Do you want a man as president who sees it through and through? Cast a vote for Kennedy for a change that’s overdue. It’s up to you.’
That’s from John F. Kennedy’s 1960 election campaign ditty, and here’s a snippet from DJ Black’s ‘Los Locos Somos Mas’ that became the campaign song for Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, earning the singer the post of minister of culture:
‘Si tu tas cansao de la misma pendeja lo que el pueblo quiere es un cambio ya.’
(If you’re tired of the same fools, what the people want is a change now.)
An anthem that plays every time a leader walks on to the stage and up to the lectern to give a moving speech is something people identify with, and can’t stop humming to, until long after the election ballots have been counted and the deal has been done.
But not every election anthem is custom-made for a candidate—some are seized from a nation’s canon of rock, sometimes to the artist’s deep disdain. For example, Tom Petty threatened to sue George W. Bush for using his 1989 single ‘I Won’t Back Down’ during Bush’s successful 2000 election campaign.
Bolivia is no stranger to campaign and publicity songs either. The Zebra road safety song is a more recent addition to the repertoire. Morales’s party, MAS, has also indulged in some party tunes. ‘Somos MAS’ (We Are More) sticks in the mind, featuring the play on words ‘MAS, MAS, MAS’ in the chorus, which means ‘more, more, more’ in English. Even for one-off political events, like the handing over of Quipus laptops to students, MAS decided that music should be an integral part of creating the atmosphere of change.
Surprise, surprise, MAS chose the medium of rap to engage the stadium full of teenagers and made the original choice to open with a parody of the genre’s stereotypical intro:
‘Levantense las manos si les gusta Quipuuuuuus.’
(Put your hands in the air if you like Quipus.)
However, it’s not just modern campaign songs that are remembered today, some Bolivians would still be able to give you a rendition of the songs used in Bolivia’s electoral campaigns during the 90s. Take the former Bolivian dictator and later president Hugo Banzer’s patriotic-sounding ‘Mi General’ from his 1993 campaign, for example:
‘Mi general…el pueblo te eligió de corazón.’
(My general…the people chose you with their hearts.)
Although we might mock the often forced lyrics of campaign songs, Jose Miguel Liendo Claure, who was part of the group behind the creation of the ‘Somos MAS’ campaign song, underlines the importance of the words in portraying a strong message:
‘The language, words and the ideological stance that they express is important. For example, in Spain in the 60s, singing the song ‘Al Ven’ (‘Al Viento’), written by Ramón Pelegro Sanchis, was like a rebellion of the youth who no longer wanted to live under Franco’s regime. The lyrics were written in Catalan.’
Here Liendo alludes to the potent symbol the Catalan language had become in Francoist Spain. Wanting to unify the country, Franco had repressed Catalan nationalism, the most obvious manifestation of which was, of course, their own language.
Nearly a decade after Sanchis’s song had been added to the oppressed voice of the Spanish, a musical movement known as Nueva Canción strummed and plucked its way into the pit of Latin America’s social upheavals. Combining traditional Latin American folk music with potent lyrics calling for social change and an end to US intervention, the artists often faced brutal consequences as a result.
Victor Jara’s ‘Preguntas por Puerto Montt’ denounced the 1968 military attack on farmers near Puerto Montt, Chile:
‘Voy a preguntar por ti que quedaste solo, por aquel que murió sin saber.’
(I’m going to ask about you who ended up alone, about him that died without knowing why.)
He was later murdered in the coup of 1973.
The ‘Vote No’ campaign that supported ending Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile’s 1988 plebiscite also used a song to encourage reluctant, persecuted citizens to vote against their brutal dictator. And it worked.
‘You can’t have a revolution without songs’ is the motto that flies the flag for Nueva Canción. It was stamped on the banner framing Salvador Allende’s election success in Chile, in 1970, when he became the first democratically elected socialist president of that country. The slogan suggests that music not only has the ability to inspire a successful campaign, but that the pulse of a powerful movement which grows from the people, like a revolution, cannot begin to beat at all without it.
Liendo emphasises this point, sharing why music is so integral to inspiring support: ‘Music, rhythm and harmony awaken varied emotions in us. In the case of political campaigns, music helps to emotionally connect you to a symbol, a flag and an ideological stance.’
So what is it that gives a campaign song that twinkling spark of success? What was so special about Will.i.am’s Obama song ‘Yes We Can’, which went viral in 2008, and the Bolivian political party MIR’s famous electoral hymn from the 90s?
‘The most important thing for a politician is to construct a coherent, credible ideological stance. The job of a campaign song is to tie this stance to the image of the political leader using music’, says Liendo.
A memorable campaign song must unite these factors together, then, in a compelling format. And let’s not forget that Will.i.am’s popularity probably had a hand in the success of his unofficial Obama campaign song. Perhaps it was also precisely because the song was not commissioned by Obama himself that the public adopted it rather than ridiculed it.
Liendo affirms that, usually, ‘A song and its various interpretations are exposed to criticism from one side or another because a political campaign song is also a criticism, a complaint or a proposal.’
However, despite the critique campaign songs are often subject to, they continue to project their political melodies out into the masses. Still considered an integral part of inspiring support, yet not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of an election, campaign songs appear to be the politician’s unsung hero.
Morales goes for his third electoral campaign but is it legitimate?
‘It’s legal but it’s not legitimate, in the sense that Morales promised he wasn’t going to do this..It’s dangerous. El caudillismo will grow even more and the problems that have already started to appear with this government will grow deeper.’ (Fernando Molina, Bolivian journalist and writer)
‘Constitutionally, this will be his first re-election, that is to say only his second mandate. When the constitution allows a President to run for election he doesn’t become President automatically. The only thing the tribunal has made possible is that the people get to decide again. Nothing more.’ (Manuel Canelas, politician for MAS, Morales’s party)
Ah, there it is, we found it. Democracy gives us the ability to discuss, debate, and dissect even one of the most controversial topics in current Bolivian politics: Morales’s desire to stay in power.
For some (or indeed many) of you, finding out that Morales is running for President again might not be alarming. Perhaps you don’t know that the Bolivian Constitution allows only one re-election per President, for a total of two consecutive terms in office. Would this be Morales’s second or third term as President? Was his first term technically a full one? These are the questions that drive the ongoing debate about democracy in Bolivia in the context of the upcoming Presidential elections.
‘You have to respect the final judgment of the institutions, whether you like the final judgment or not.’ (Canelas)
The Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal, which adjudicates government power here in Bolivia, was the body that approved Morales’s right to run in the October elections. As long as we don’t believe that the tribunal lives in the government’s pocket--and Canelas assures that the last two judgments haven’t gone in the government’s favour--the system of checks and balances seems to have deliberated on the matter. Sure, Morales’s candidacy was not sanctioned in a national referendum (as the opposition had called for).
‘There would have been a legitimate way to run for a third term, a referendum, but he went via another route.’ (Molina)
‘A referendum is only obligatory when you are reforming the constitution. In this case a referendum was not obligatory.’ (Canelas)
Is Morales creating the atmosphere for a repeat of the “Manuel Zelaya incident”? Zelaya was a Honduran President who was deposed by a military coup after he tried to end presidential term limits so he could run again in an election.
Without getting into a ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ situation and end up making a political cover of Beverley Knight’s successful single, let’s discuss what Morales’s probable third term actually means to the people. After all, 8/10 Bolivians today, according to a non-governmental survey, approve of the way the country is being run and Morales is leading heavily in the polls. Do Bolivians really think that Morales running for a third mandate is a bad thing?
I spend the afternoon in Plaza San Francisco, where the mini bus lines create a La Paz/ El Alto melting pot, asking people what they think.
‘He seems to be just another corrupt politician.’ (Fernando, who preferred not to give his surname)
‘In my opinion, it’s fine for Morales to run again. If the people want him as President, why prevent him?’ (Young man who wished to remain anonymous)
Even if you concur with this sentiment in principle, surely you would agree that democracy shouldn’t be an infinitely flexible system, especially since Bolivia only returned to a democracy some thirty-two years ago. One of the ladies I spoke to in Plaza Francisco voiced this concern:
‘It’s a problem. Morales wrote the constitution with one hand and rubbed it out with his elbow at the same time.’
Moreover, according to Molina, the consequences of Morales’s third term in office could be serious:
‘It’s exactly what happened when democracy was first introduced: It can be manipulated until it loses its essence and the capacity for government to ever change.’
But what if Morales had not been allowed to run again?
‘If the President hadn’t been allowed to run again I think a lot of people would have been annoyed. We would have found ourselves in an unstable political climate.’(Canelas)
There is an element of Bolivian pragmatism in this whole debate. As you may remember, in the last issue of this magazine, we discussed what the new child labour law in the country would mean for Bolivian society. Initially, we screamed “no”, almost by instinct, against the lowering of the legal working age. But by the end of our reporting, our news team was torn between the ideals we cherish and the pragmatic concerns of average Bolivians.
Something similar is going on here. Instinctively, it would seem that Morales is bending the rules to his favour. Then again, one could ask if there is any harm in what he’s doing. Are there no alternative candidates within Morales’s party? What about outside of it?
‘Without Evo Morales MAS wouldn’t exist; the government wouldn’t exist. It would be a disaster. Everything depends on him and this is grave because it makes democracy and the whole country reliant on him.’ (Molina)
‘I don’t think there is anyone viable from another party and this is bad news for the country because it’s necessary to have opposition..It’s very difficult because of this current, exceptional political period to think that there can be other leaders of the same standard. The ideal would be to produce an alternative (candidate) from within MAS, or at least a form of collective leadership.’ (Canelas)
No matter which side of the Morales-shaped fence you stand on, there seems to be a unanimous opinion that he is not politically replaceable at this point in time. As a foreigner, I am left worrying not about the legitimacy of Morales’s likely third term in office, but about who will be on the voting card when it’s time for his fourth. Really, anything could happen.
