Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2013

DOI:10.1111/blar.12071

Chachawarmi: Rhetorics and Lived

Realities
KATE MACLEAN
Birkbeck College, London, UK

Latin Americas turn away from neoliberalism and adoption of decolonising alternatives to development has been spearheaded nowhere more
so than Bolivia by indigenous movements. The gender ideology of
chachawarmi is part of this decolonisation programme, but has been criticised for disguising gendered exploitation. These tensions are explored
by looking at, in Escobars words, the concrete struggles within particular communities. Based on long-term research in rural Bolivia, this
article situates the chachawarmi ideal in the multiple influences on the
recreation of gender identities, and considers the complex ways in which
chachawarmi as mobilised politically may influence gendered power.
Keywords: Bolivia, Chachawarmi, decolonisation, gender, intersectionality, indigenous.

Many countries in Latin America have been turning away from the ravages of the
continents neoliberal past, and Bolivia and Ecuador in particular have adopted
decolonising alternatives to development. These counter-hegemonic policies have
been led by indigenous leaders and framed by indigenous cosmovisions (worldviews),
the co-operative, reciprocal and complementary metaphysics at the heart of which
has inspired radical alternatives to the corrosive individualism of neoliberal policies.
Although Andean cosmovisions are often defined politically in opposition to Western
individualism and presentism (De Sousa Santos, 2010: 33), they also represent a
decolonial conceptual rupture with political orthodoxy (Escobar, 2010: 21). The
re-assertion of indigenous worldviews hence goes beyond a rejection of neoliberalism,
to embrace a distinct ontology in which beings are communities of beings before they
are individuals (De Sousa Santos, 2010: 33).
An element of these radical worldviews that exemplifies their co-operative and complementary ontology is chachawarmi. The term represents an ideal of complementarity
between chacha (man) and warmi (woman), and celebrates these distinct but equally
valued roles (Harris, 1978; Burman, 2011; Blumritt, 2013). However, there is more to
the translation of chachawarmi than the juxtaposition of the words man/woman. The
word represents an ontology of the unity of opposites that is essential to the symbolic
context of Andean cosmovisions. The translation of chachawarmi as man/woman
could arguably replicate the atomisation of modernity, and misconstrue the gendered
complementarity and co-operation that is central to the terms meaning. However,
this interpretation as man/woman has also become part of the everyday translation of
chachawarmi in bilingual, indigenous communities, and there is a complex negotiation
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Kate Maclean
of discursive and material power dynamics in the recreation of gendered identity in this
context (Lugones, 2012).
The notion of chachawarmi has been used as a political platform to argue for
womens equal rights and representation in Bolivia, and is also an element of the
Movimiento al Socialism (MAS) governments decolonisation programme. However,
although generally held to represent more equitable gender relations (Harris, 1978;
Hamilton, 1998), there is a risk that in being distilled from its lived instantiations
in the current politics of Bolivia, chachawarmi is being idealised and romanticised.
The strategic essentialism which is arguably behind some of the policies espoused
by the MAS in Bolivia in the context of resistance against neoliberalism entails a
2004; Canessa, 2006). Indigenous
multiplicity of political tensions and dilemmas (Albo,
systems tend to be defined in alterity to the individualising categories of the modernist
project, constructing a familiar dichotomy of tradition and modernity (De Sousa
Santos, 2010). In potentially being defined by what it is not, the postulation of the
Andean cosmovision at the political level risks overlooking difference and essentialising
indigenous people. This strategic essentialism is a political imperative given the continued
violence of colonial, modern and neoliberal hegemony and the consistent marginalisation
of indigenous people, but there is an important place for empirical research that brings
out the diversity and complexity of everyday life without losing sight of decolonial
resistance (Lugones, 2010). The aim here is to explore notions of co-operation, equality
and oppression as expressed by women in an Aymara-speaking area of Bolivia, so
responding in some ways to Escobars emphasis on:
the need to look at the concrete struggles within particular communities,
including the conflicts around who speaks for community and its cosmovision, and to take womens struggles as a standpoint for the actual reconstitutions of community that are always taking place. (Escobar, 2010: 36)
This article explores the lived experience of chachawarmi by drawing on qualitative
research in the inter-Andean valley of Luribay, Bolivia. The focus is on diversity and the
complex of material processes and discursive constructions that frame the recreation
of gender relations. By centring the accounts of women there, it attempts to situate
the chachawarmi ideal in the context of multiple influences on gender identities, and
to consider the ways in which chachawarmi as it is mobilised politically may influence
gendered power. First, I present illustrative examples of the use of chachawarmi in the
contemporary discursive moment in Bolivian politics and consider the importance of
understanding the multiple modes of exclusion faced by indigenous women politically
and conceptually. I then go on to explore the history of the term, before presenting
empirical evidence from the valley of Luribay.

Complementarity, Gender Equality and Decolonisation

The MAS government has achieved unprecedented milestones in terms of gender
representation at the political level, and the chachawarmi discourse has been prominent
in achieving these aims. For example, the members of the Assamblea Constituyente
of 2009 are 33 percent women (Rousseau, 2011: 12), and in January 2010, President
Evo Morales appointed a Cabinet in which 50 percent of ministers are women. In
announcing the new Cabinet, the President stressed that this was achieved in the
name of chachawarmi or, as the mestizos say, gender equality (La Jornada, 2010),

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delimiting an important distinction between the complementary ideal of gender equality
in the Andean symbolic universe and ideas of gender equality associated with Western
discourse and predicated on individual rights. Whilst this was hailed as a breakthrough
in terms of womens political representation, there was a tense political struggle, as
the 50 percent quota for women was seen by some to come at the expense of the
representation of indigenous groups. As the leader of the Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y
Markas del Qullasuyo, Rafael Quispe, lamented: we respect his decision, but we dont
accept that the pueblos originarios are not represented in the cabinet (Los Tiempos,
2010). The political struggles involved in achieving gender parity were described as a
permanent battle with union leaders to incorporate women into the political fight in
Bolivia (La Jornada, 2010).
The debates around womens political representation and the use of the idea of
chachawarmi in this context illustrate the conceptual and political tensions which
this article seeks to explore. There is a distinction between chachawarmi and mestizo
gender equality which is often elided. It is argued that chachawarmi can disguise
gender oppression and cannot be understood without a discussion of, and respect
for, womens equal rights. Vice President Garcia Linera states that there is a role for
womens rights as Chachawarmi often disguises the subordination of women within
organisations themselves (Svampa and Stefanoni, 2007: 11). This resonates with the
views of indigenous feminist organisations that in Aymara communities where they
supposedly apply chachawarmi, there isnt a correlation between this idea and the
reality and that Andean machismo is still present in every area (Julieta Ojeda, cited in
Bolivian Express, 2012: 16).
Claims based on gender, ethnicity and class may not coincide, and the dynamics
involved in exclusion by these categories are different (Radcliffe et al., 2003; Laurie
and Calla, 2004). Analysing exclusion in terms of these separate categories does not
capture the multiple exclusions experienced by people at their intersections (Paulson
and Calla, 2000). As Bertha Blanco, a leader of the National Federation of Campesina
Women of Bolivia/Bartolina Sisa, states:
Inside our struggle, they talk about chachawarmi where both men, as well
as women, decide. With the influence of the city on society, machismo has
been increasing. We have not been involved in the issue of women, but
we have looked at the state structures of the previous governments where
there were just men . . . Now you can look at the Constituent Assembly,
there is a woman who is from Bartolina Sisa. There is a place for us. (In
Motion Magazine, 2007)
The identification of the negative influence of the city, and the references to the
now displaced political class, indicate the common cause of indigenous peoples and
indigenous womens resistance in opposition to the oppression of the hegemonic urban
mestizo/criollo culture that itself has imposed gendered hierarchies and oppressions.
The statement that the Campesina Women have not been involved in the issue of
women draws on a distinction frequently commented upon (Paulson and Calla,
2000) between the gender-based political struggles that tend to be led by urban,
middle and upper-class women, and the priorities of indigenous women.
The discourse of chachawarmi is central, conceptually and politically, to the decolonisation project and broader re-assertion of indigenous culture. In May 2011, a mass
marriage of 355 couples was celebrated in an indigenous ceremony at which Evo Morales
was Padrino [Godfather] (INFOBAE, 2011). As Vice-Minister of Decolonisation Felix
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Cardenas
states, referring to the chachawarmi ideal: We are instituting a new model of
the family, which is neither patriarchal nor matriarchal, but will be a model of complementarity between man and woman (quoted in INFOBAE, 2011). This ceremony
also represented a religious decolonisation. It was presided over by pairs of Aymara
priests as the advice to married men and women is from a chacha (man) and a warmi
(woman), and not a priest who has no moral experience and cant be an example of
what hes preaching (Felix Cardenas quoted in INFOBAE, 2011). Religion brings a
further dimension to an understanding of identity and gender constructions, relations
and oppressions that complicates the anti-patriarchal and decolonial projects for which
chachawarmi is being used.
The centrality of chachawarmi to the decolonial project reflects the argument
that gender itself is a colonial imposition (Lugones, 2010) and that the binary of
masculinity and femininity underpinning ideas of womens rights or gender equality
is a continuation of that colonial domination, making an understanding of chachawarmi
on its own terms essential. Martha Lanza of Colectivo Cabildeo recognises the resonance
between anti-patriarchal and decolonial struggles:
There is no possible decolonisation without fighting patriarchy and vice
versa. We must decolonise the social, economic and political relationships
in order to emancipate our peoples and break the patriarchal power
relations that subjugate women. (AWID, 2011)
However, as Lugones points out, there is a long process of subjectification of the
colonised toward adoption/internalisation of the men/women dichotomy as a normative
construction of the social a mark of civilisation, citizenship, and membership in civil
society (Lugones, 2010: 748). A re-assertion of chachawarmi that does not recognise
this historical complexity might not capture the dynamics involved in indigenous
womens exclusion.
The conceptual and political complexity of the contemporary use of the word
chachawarmi as a decolonisation tool and a platform for womens equality brings out
the need for a renewed understanding of how various discourses are recreating gender
relations in the Andes that is cognisant of the cultural and colonial position of the term
gender itself. In order to situate and reflect upon the cultural construction of these
terms, the next section revisits scholarship on chachawarmi in order to bring out the
material, discursive and institutional underpinnings of the term.

Chachawarmi: History and Context

To understand how chachawarmi is being recreated both in political and everyday
discourse and how it is distinct from mainstream ideas of gender equality, I here give
an overview of scholarship on chachawarmi and contextualise it in Andean history and
society, exploring how the idea has developed and changed. Chachawarmi explicitly
valorises femininity on equal terms with masculinity, and this complementary union
of opposites permeates household and community relations (Harris, 1978; Lugones,
2010). This has been deemed to be more favourable to women than the patriarchal
gender relations associated with colonial or capitalist ideals (Balan, 1996; Hamilton,
1998), and has resonance with feminist critiques of political economy that challenge
the failure to recognise the value of reproductive labour and care work. However,
ideas of difference and equality are complex, and it has long been pointed out that

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traditional structures of gender complementarity can ossify womens traditional role.
As Aymara feminist Julieta Paredes puts it: the woman cooks and the man eats what
lovely complementarity (Paredes Carvajai, 2006).
The Andes has been seen as an area of weak patriarchy due in part to the inheritance
rights, marriage norms and ideals of complementarity that underpin chachawarmi.
There is a strong tradition of bilateral inheritance in the Andes, meaning that children
inherit from both sides of the family. This tradition has its roots in the system of vertical
farming. Marriage tends to be between families of different altitudes, and the woman
moves to the mans land but retains rights on her own, providing the family with access
to different kinds of crop. The woman also inherits livestock and is given sheep and
cattle upon marriage (Valdivia, 2001). The couple inherit part of the land on marriage
and although sons and daughters inherit from both parents, the sons stay on patrilineal
land. If a daughter marries someone from her home community then she can take up
her maternal inheritance (Bastien, 1979).
Despite this, land ownership in the Andes is predominantly male (Deere and Leon,
2001). Traditional systems of inheritance have changed with the hacienda system,
land reform, commercialisation of agriculture and out-migration. These various factors
have had a different impact on land inheritance patterns in different parts of Bolivia,
leading Deere and Leon to conclude that there is heterogeneity in inheritance patterns
nationally (Deere and Leon, 2001: 22).
Symbolically, the distinct feminine and masculine roles encompassed in chachawarmi
are expressed in terms of activities, with a formally strict division between masculine
and feminine tasks (Choque Quispe, 2007). Feminine tasks include reproductive labour,
tending to animals and weaving, whilst tasks associated with masculinity include
ploughing and working as a labourer. Both men and women work on the land but have
distinct tasks, symbolising the unity of opposites exemplified by chachawarmi with,
for example, the man digging and the woman sowing the seed. Informally, however, this
symbolic division between masculine and feminine activities is fluid (Choque Quispe,
2007). Maria Lugones, in conversation with Aymara scholar Filomena Miranda,
illustrates:
Filomenas sister will replace her father, and thus she will be chacha twice,
since her community is chacha as well as her father. Filomena herself will
be chacha and warmi, as she will govern in her mothers stead in a chacha
community. (Lugones, 2010: 750)
The definition of masculinity and femininity in terms of activities, rather than gendered
bodies, indicates the distinct symbology represented by the term chachawarmi that
frames interpretations and understandings of change and cannot be captured if the term
is translated as man/woman or gender equality.
The relationship of household to community is mediated by the chachawarmi ideal.
To be a full citizen of the community you need to be in a partnership (Rousseau, 2011),
and people are not seen as mature until they have a family. As Choque Quispe points out,
nobody, neither man nor woman acquire the status of a socially complete adult person,
if they have not been united before society with their partner, completing the unity of
the social persona jaqi (Choque Quispe, 2007: 2). Before being in a partnership, people
do not have a voice in the community. As such, young peoples aspirations are framed
in terms of forming their own independent family and neo-local household, for which
partnership and ultimately marriage are pre-conditions, but links with the extended
family and the community remain vital in terms of property, livelihood, community
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Kate Maclean
and identity. Initially the couple lives with the extended family, normally the husbands
family, where the wife will be educated into the ways of his family by the mother-in-law.
The wife is in a position of learning and obeying until she can form her own nuclear
unit (Balan, 1996).
The ideal of chachawarmi has its roots in historical institutions of family, land
and inheritance, and continues to frame interpretations and aspirations. However, the
material, political and discursive context of the Andes is myriad, changing and dynamic
and the multiple influences on gendered power may be overlooked by the re-assertion
of chachawarmi at the political level. The focus of the following empirical sections
is to bring out this multiplicity and the complexity of womens understanding and
negotiation of gendered power.

Research Setting and Methodology

The present exploration of chachawarmi is based on fieldwork conducted over five
years in Bolivia, including eight months in the Aymara-speaking valley of Luribay
in 2006 and two visits of one month in 2010 and 2011, staying in both El Alto and
Luribay. The advantage of this relatively long period of exploration, and the contrasting
locations, is to afford an idea of the complexity of gendered relations and the discursive
political context in which they are situated. The MAS government was inaugurated in
2006, and studying gendered relations over this period has presented an opportunity to
understand the diversity of households as a starting point from which to critique the
political assertion of Andean worldviews and the chachawarmi ideal.
The evidence to be presented here focuses on research in the municipality of Luribay.
Luribay is a fruit-producing valley about seven hours from the city of La Paz by bus or
truck. In the centre of the valley is Luribay Town, the capital of the municipality, where
the municipal government and NGOs working in the valley have their offices. Luribay
Town is surrounded by 78 hamlets. There are two vertiginous, winding roads leading
to the main highway between La Paz and Cochabamba. Many people from Luribay
regularly make the journey to La Paz, particularly during the harvest as they go to the
city to sell fruit.
Luribay is known as a rural, Aymara-speaking valley, but this disguises complex
dynamics of identity and difference. A total of 75 percent of the population are
bilingual Aymara/Spanish, with Aymara as their first language (Municipality of Luribay,
2005). Tensions remain between the mestizo Town and indigenous hamlets; economies,
languages, dress, institutions and ethnicities sharply divide these places. The tendency
of people in the Town to dress in Western clothes, speak Spanish and earn a living from
commerce rather than land-based production constitutes the Towns mestizo identity
(Crandon-Malamud, 1993; Maclean, 2010).
The socio-economic fabric of the hamlets is based more on the reciprocal, cooperative work practices for which the Andes is known. The ayllu is a form of social
organisation based on co-operation and exchange of goods among members of bilateral
kinship groups (Bastien, 1979; Rivera Cusicanqui, 1990). The traditions of ayni, direct
and commensurate return of favours, and minka, exchange of labour, mediate how
resources are distributed, and this lexicon is part of everyday language. Valley areas are
seen to have weaker attachments to indigenous culture and traditions in comparison
with the Altiplano. The social and political organisation in the valley has its roots
in the ancient ayllu of pre-hispanic origin, but, due to the incursions initiated by the

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Spanish during the sixteenth century, the people originating from this area have broken
with that form of social, economic and political organisation (Municipal Development
Plan, 2005: 54). The hamlets are administered by Agrarian Unions set up after the 1952
Revolution and agrarian reform, and are formed along the same lines as an ayllu. The
MAS decolonial project has been criticised for being led by Aymara people from the
Altiplano and excluding the views of rural people (Canessa, 2006), and some of this
complexity will be brought out by this valley case study.
NGOs that have worked in Luribay include Save the Children, Credit with Rural
Education (CreCER), Caritas and the Bolivian Valleys Federation, all of whom promote
commerce and inclusion in the mainstream market. The focus of the NGOs working
in Luribay is to increase agricultural production in order to make the valley more
sustainable, arguably constituting an example of the incursion of neoliberal economics
into the valley; but the local effects of the global economy are also seen in the high level
of migration to urban centres mainly El Alto, but also Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo and
Madrid (Municipality of Luribay, 2005).
The institutions of marriage, bilateral inheritance and agricultural traditions that
constitute chachawarmi are clearly in evidence in households in Luribay, as are the
co-operative and complementary ideals that frame interpretations of gendered successes
and failures and the ever-changing social context. The phrase itself was used to me
mostly when people were seeking to clarify their ideas of men and women to a Western
outsider, whom they assumed would have individualistic notions of gender and family.
One woman in a microfinance group took pains to explain to me that if my husband
and I had a joint bank account instead of, as I had explained, separate ones, we
would be much happier thats how it is here: chachawarmi. Another example was
the procession of couples in the Towns annual fiesta. One NGO worker from La Paz
explained to me: You cannot be in the procession alone; if youre single here youre
not a real citizen the citizen is chacha and warmi. The fact that the phrase itself tends
to be used to clarify Aymara ideas of gender and the household in contradistinction
to assumed Western norms underscores that cultural identity is defined by its others.
The term chachawarmi is hence both persistent and dynamic, and the aim here is to
illustrate the way that it is being recreated and challenged in peoples interpretations of
their changing circumstances.
In 2006, I stayed with three families, one in the Town and two in the hamlets. I knew
these families through an Aymara contact in the UK, and although it was made clear
at every moment that I was a university researcher, this did give me a very different
Magdalena and Don Pedro, from a hamlet about
reception. First, I stayed with Dona
three hours walk from the Town. The couple, both in their sixties, had six children
who had left Luribay to work variously in El Alto and Cochabamba. I also stayed with
Carol and her husband Don Eduardo, who lived in Luribay Town. They owned
Dona

a hostel and a small shop and also had property in El Alto. Finally, I stayed with Dona
Janeta and the Pastor, Don Rodrigo, who lived in between two hamlets with their four
children and his parents. His brother and his wife and family also had a nearby home.
Whilst in Luribay I attended meetings of the Agrarian Union, the Mayors Office
and the microfinance institution CreCER. I conducted 28 formal interviews in Spanish
with women I met through the families I stayed with. My position and positionality
throughout this is vitally important in contextualising the interviews, experiences and
reflections that I have had in the course of this fieldwork. I was discussing these
issues in Spanish my second language with bilingual women whose first language
was Aymara. The imposition of the colonial language in the research process is fraught
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Kate Maclean
with epistemological and political difficulties which can only be partly addressed by
a long-term, qualitative and reflexive approach (Maclean, 2007). The aim here is to
explore the variety of discourses and interfaces that are involved in the recreation of
gendered identities and it is important to recognise that I was one of those interfaces.

Chachawarmi Orthodoxy and Difference in Luribay

In this section I explore the narratives of women from different areas of Luribay, living
in various household situations and of different ages and religions. I start by looking
in more detail at how co-operation, complementarity and partnership are exemplified
and understood. The accounts explored indicate the importance of co-operation and
the fact that women can inherit, own property and earn. I then explore situations that
diverge from this norm of the chachawarmi household, including evangelical families,
women-headed households, single mothers and women without children. Many of the
women with whom I spent time in Luribay were not in a relationship that would
conform to any chachawarmi norm. Nevertheless, interpretations of family situations
and gender relations were almost always framed in terms of the ideals of co-operation
and partnership represented by the term.

Recreating the Chachawarmi Norm

In this section I look at the lives of four women whose family situations reflect the
and Felizas
chachawarmi norm, and the gendered power that they experience. Begona
households are typical in the sense that they are married, work together with their
husbands on the land, choose to live with their in-laws in Luribay and emphasise
the importance of partnership and co-operation. I then present Lucia and Celia, who
are in households that structurally conform to the chachawarmi ideal type, but who
nevertheless feel subordinate to their husbands for reasons that shed light on the changes
which are re-shaping gender relations. I conclude this section by exploring comments
from a course on self-esteem that demonstrate how chachawarmi is used to interpret
individualist discourses.
Begona
is an Aymara woman, de pollera, from the neighbouring municipality
Dona
of Cairoma, who came to Luribay with her husband. She is 23 years old and has
two infant children. She owns land inherited from her mother and emphasises that the
decision about where to live is dependent on where the couple would have more land,
giving the example of her sister and her husband who are living on her sisters land,
also inherited from her mother. At the time of the interview, she had been in Luribay
for two years:
I live with my parents-in-law but were lucky: we have a little house just
a little apart. My husbands younger brother doesnt have any land and
he and his wife live with the in-laws and thats a little more difficult you
dont have as much space. But we work together and share all the chores.

Begonas
reference to her luck reflects Balans (1996) assertion that the aspiration of
young married couples in the Andes is to form their own chachawarmi household. The
understanding of the household as a co-operative work unit is also illustrated here, and
the benefits of sharing emphasised, reflecting the chachawarmi ideal.

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Perhaps contrary to the emphasis on co-operation and partnership in the way in
which chachawarmi is defined politically, it is striking that within typical chachawarmi
households, individuals have clear ideas about what is theirs for example, childrens
respective parcels of land are clearly marked out. Nevertheless, although individual
property is clearly defined, a refusal to share or insistence upon individual property
Feliza, who grew up in the nearby city
or savings would be seen as selfish. Dona
of Oruro and married a Luribayeno,
illustrates the ideal of co-operation within the
family whilst emphasising the importance of individual property and independence. She
moved to Luribay Town when she and her husband were married and describes her
first experiences:
I was married when I was 16, and Im telling you I didnt even know how to
cook! But I was lucky. My motherinlaw is really, really kind. We lived
with them for twelve years until we had enough to move out by ourselves,
and she really took care of me and taught me everything . . . When I was
single, I didnt have anything, but his family did, a truck and everything, and
they shared everything with me. Hes good, really good. But sometimes you
want your own stuff too, particularly if there are problems in the family.
she also emphasises her luck, and contrasts the kindness of her familyLike Begona,
in-law with the vulnerability of her situation when she moved to live with them. Feliza
also clarifies that reproductive labour is unquestionably a womans role, and she went
on to explain in the interview that men and women might work together on the land,
but it is the woman who comes in and has to take care of the dinner.
There are a number of women in Luribay who own their own land, either via
Lucia is an Aymara woman de pollera who lives in a
inheritance or purchase. Dona
hamlet about half an hours walk from the Town, with her five children. She inherited
a large amount of land, and her husband lives with her:
My husbands from the Town but he had to come here, to the community
where I was born. Most of the time the man takes his wife away with him
but it wasnt like that with me. My mother had died, my sister lives in
Cochabamba, my other sister lives on the Altiplano. So I was the only one
living on the land. So my husband had to be present here with me. But Im
the owner of the land.
Lucia still feels subordinate to her
Despite the fact that she owns the land, Dona
husband. She complains that he just sits and drinks with his friends whilst she raises
their five children and two nephews, organises land-based production and the sale of
produce, is a member of two separate NGO projects and is active in the Agrarian Union.
She clarifies: Were exploited by our husbands. They just boss us around and we cant
do things on our own behalf. We have the right to rest.
Lucias husbands power, despite his lack of land
One of the sources of Dona
Lucia was
ownership, is his status within the community as a former soldier. Dona
known locally for being particularly outspoken and participating in public meetings,
but she expressed frustration at not being given as much right to speak in meetings
as men. She explained that it was difficult to be taken seriously if you had not done
military service, which discounted not only the participation of women but also that of
certain men. The military is extremely important in the construction of masculinity and
is part of the Andean machismo that Lucia feels is oppressive (Gill, 1997). Military
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service is obligatory in Bolivia, but whereas the urban middle and upper classes tend to
avoid it, in the countryside this is seen as a rite of passage as a man and a citizen. In
Luribay, a fiesta would be held on return from military service, and people would be
aware of the grade that men received on exiting.
Lucia and other women bemoaned that their husbands would only work
Dona
on other peoples land, for which they would receive money, rather than helping on
their own land. Money is by no means a recent arrival in the valley, but resources,
and particularly labour, are generally distributed via reciprocal traditions such as ayni,
defined above. These traditions are important elements of the co-operative, reciprocal
ontology in Andean cosmology, but the increasing importance of cash in the local
Celia is 48 years old, an Aymara
economy is changing how ayni functions. Dona
woman de pollera who lives in the Town:
I do all the work. I work on the land, I raised eight children, I go to La Paz
every week to sell my tomatoes. My husbands terrible. He just sits around
drinking all day and when I complain he just says this is my land, you,
you dont have anything, and you better remember that. He wont work
for me, on our land. He leaves me to do everything. Hell go and work on
other peoples land, because theyll pay him money and then he can buy
spirits and get drunk.
Celia is here invoking a gendered distinction between remunerated and unremunerated
labour that is a familiar consequence of development policies focused on production.
Despite the bilateral inheritance that has historically been a defining characteristic of
chachawarmi, Celias landlessness reflects the gendered distribution of land regionally,
and she identifies this unequivocally as a source of gendered exploitation. At the same
time, she refers to our land, evoking the ideal of a household unit that appears to be
breaking down. Her story indicates the way in which the increasing reliance on financial
capital is creating gendered dynamics that are not always represented in notions of
chachawarmi as marshalled politically.
The contradistinction between complementarity, co-operation and individual rights
is perhaps not as starkly defined as could be implied by some political rhetorics of
chachawarmi as set against Western individualism (De Sousa Santos, 2010: 33) or
gender equality. The way in which equality can be framed by ideas of reciprocity
and co-operation comes through clearly in comments about a training course on
womens self-esteem that had been offered by an NGO. The material for these sessions
encouraged women to have the confidence to go ahead with their own projects and
not be discouraged by what people may say. However, the participants interpreted selfesteem in terms that reflected the value of co-operation and reciprocity, emphasising the
Juana is 55 and comes from a hamlet about
importance of taking peoples advice. Dona
four hours walk from the Town. She has five children and lives in an old hacienda
building that is rented from its owners who live in the USA. Her reaction to the NGO
training courses suggests the ways that Western individualism can be interpreted in
context:
For me, the training is really key, I really like it. Self-esteem, I really liked
that one. Youre not meant to tell people what to do, but guide them. I like
that. Everyone wants something, everyone has an aim, and you have to
respect that and advise them. Some people are going wrong in their lives,
and you have to advise them.

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The self-esteem course emphasised the importance of going ahead with your own
projects despite what people think and having confidence in oneself and ones own
abilities. Juana does not position herself as the person with the aim, but rather as the
person giving advice a position which speaks to her seniority as a grandmother and
godmother and concludes, perhaps contrary to the intention of the course, that the
guidance of others is important.
Juanas interpretation underscores the importance of community and how it would
be quite shocking to not seek or respect peoples advice. I noted that before embarking on
any endeavour, the rhetorical question well what will people think! would frequently be
heard, and the axiom small town, big hell [pueblo pequeno,
infierno grande], referring
to the ferocity of gossip in rural communities and heard throughout Bolivia, was often
used by Luribayenos.
The individualist discourse of self-esteem could be perceived to

be helpful in this context, but Juanas comments also show up the culturally situated
nature of equality and empowerment discourses based on individualist notions.

Diverging from the Norm

A number of households in Luribay do not conform to the chachawarmi norm.
Examples include those that actively reject this notion and those who have been,
in their own terms, unable to achieve this ideal. In this section I look at various
people whose relationships and households do not conform to the ideals of partnership
and equal but complementary roles associated with the term chachawarmi. Firstly I
present Veronica and Janeta, and how they view their gendered position within the
patriarchal family structure promoted by the Evangelical church. I then look at how
single women mothers and non-mothers deal with the pressures of the norm of
partnership and gender complementarity.
Veronica is the sister-in-law of the Pastor, Don Rodrigo, and converted to the
Dona
Evangelical church as a child. The tropes of male headship in the family are marked out
much more strongly in evangelical households than in those that reflect more closely
the chachawarmi ideal. There is a poem on Don Rodrigos dining room wall about the
importance of obeying the father of the house, and the eldest son explicitly takes on
Janetas many
the role of head of the house when the Pastor is away. His wife Dona
business ideas, including making juice and empanadas for the local market and raising
turkeys, are spoken of somewhat dismissively by her male kin, who see her income
as secondary to that brought in from their work with the Church and the municipal
government.
The patriarchal structure of this Protestant household is placed into sharp relief in a
context where co-operation and complementarity is a norm. It should be said, however,
Janeta and Dona
Veronica seem to derive substantial power from their
that Dona
position in the Church, and put their literacy and business acumen down to training
received from the Brothers. Nevertheless, the gendered hierarchy in this household is
palpable, and supports the assertion that chachawarmi is a more equitable ideal.
Single mothers are by definition excluded from the chachawarmi household norm.
It is argued, however, that pre-marital sex was encouraged in the Andean community
until Spanish colonisers constructed sexuality as an abomination and the woman as
the temptress (Lugones, 2012). It is not unusual for single mothers to be welcomed
back into their family and for the extended family to care for them and their children.
Whilst being in a couple is important, the decision to get married has more to do
with the most appropriate time to hold the accompanying fiestas, given the financial
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Kate Maclean
burden that it represents, and children born into a stable but unmarried couple are not
remarked upon (Balan, 1996). However, single women who give birth experience a
familiar double standard of masculine and feminine sexual norms, which are enforced
by legal frameworks around divorce and paternity.
Sara had a daughter out of wedlock and the father, allegedly the son of one of
the richest landowners and politicians in Luribay, refused to recognise the child. Her
extended family was supporting her and was appalled at the mans unwillingness to
recognise the child. They were nevertheless aware that people were speaking badly
of Sara and that really, thats not done. It was emphasised that the daughter bore
a resemblance to the alleged father, and rumours on that basis put pressure on him
to fulfil paternal responsibilities. However, his father was adamant that he should not
recognise the child until they had a paternity test, and he emphasised that should the test
prove negative, Sara could be sued for slander. This story presents the many hierarchies
that are at play: the pressure to be in a partnership, the power that comes from wealth
and the patriarchal underpinnings of laws around paternity.
Sofia is divorced with six children. She was born in Luribay, but went to Brazil
Dona
to work when her husband left her. When her father died, she came back to look after
her mother and her mothers small plot of land. Her main source of income is from
working as a labourer:
I work the land alone. Im both a woman and a man. I plough and
everything, even though thats a mans job . . . Theres just me working on
my own, no one helps me . . . Sometimes I work as a minka [labourer]
every day of the week. I need the money!
Sofia makes explicit reference here to the understanding of gender as activity,
Dona
illustrating how she takes on both the masculine role of ploughing and feminine
tasks on the land. However, venerating the ideal of partnership does not capture the
realities of abandonment and the economic pressures on female-headed households.
Being chacha and warmi in Sofias case equates to a double burden of labour. Whats
more, she finds herself subject to ridicule people would call over to Sofia whilst she
was ploughing and tease her by saying what are you, a man?. This is an example where
the valorisation of the feminine in a context of a strict division between masculine and
feminine roles can reinforce gendered exploitation.
Those perhaps most clearly excluded by normative discourses of the chachawarmi
household are single non-mothers. Carolina was a university graduate who grew up
in Luribay before moving to La Paz for her education. She was a councillor in the
municipality and was respected among people in the Town and the hamlets for her role
there. As she was of indigenous descent and spoke fluent Aymara, she was particularly
admired for being able to communicate with everyone in the valley and not being too
proud, in comparison with others from the city. She felt however that her single status,
particularly as she was approaching 30 years of age, excluded her from the community
and made her vulnerable to malicious gossip. She bemoaned that only couples could
fully participate in fiestas and that as a single person youre not a real citizen, recalling
the importance of being in a partnership to community belonging and maturity.
Ramona, a single, childless woman in her 30s, had moved from the city of
Cochabamba to care for her elderly mother in one of the hamlets of Luribay. She
completed secondary school but as the youngest sibling it was seen as her duty to care
for her mother. She was referred to ungenerously as the starlet of Luribay, as the
absence of male kin locally meant that she was perceived as lacking protection from

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sexual advances. In both of these cases, womens education, age or wealth was not
enough to give them a full sense of belonging in the community because of their failure
to meet the demands of chachawarmi.
The expectation to be in a partnership, albeit it an equitable, co-operative one,
can itself represent gendered oppression and place the multiple femininities illustrated
here in the context of migration, divorce, and education in alterity. Single people,
both men and women, are excluded from the community, but single women additionally feel unprotected, exposed and judged. The discursive resources associated with
chachawarmi are evident in the way the women describe their situation the importance
of partnership to participation; gender as an activity but it seems these resources also
compound their exclusion and do not represent their subject positions.

Conclusion
This overview of the multiplicity of discourses involved in the recreation of gendered
relations and hierarchies in Luribay has indicated some of the diversity that is overlooked
by discourses of chachawarmi as marshalled politically. At the same time, it has
illustrated the importance of the recognition of a symbolic universe of co-operation,
reciprocity and unity that frames understandings and interpretations, including by
those excluded from the chachawarmi norm of gendered relations. It also speaks to
the importance of the military, religion, work, education and money to gendered
power and identity. Considering these stories suggests that an essentialist focus on
chachawarmi albeit strategic defined as different but complementary gender roles
may compound these hierarchies and oppressions.
The complexity illustrated here can be seen as the continued colonisation of Andean
worldviews the military, Christian religions and money being cases in point and the
negotiation of these processes in terms that recreate the discourses associated with
Andean cosmologies testifies to the importance of decolonial politics. The conceptual
and political tensions around the use of chachawarmi as a platform for gender equality
and decolonisation are readily apparent, and illustrate the complexity of exclusion in
the postcolonial context. Exploring the multiple political dynamics involved in gendered
power involves a detailed exploration of everyday struggles and a recognition of the
different forces at play. The transition of an intersectional approach from the level
of empirical exploration to political rhetoric is difficult to conceptualise, and even
more so to practice. Nevertheless, essentialism adopted strategically for a political goal
necessarily does not represent this diversity, and may indeed compound exclusionary
power dynamics.

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