Companies have always viewed us as two-footed animals

Juan Nicastro

05/05/2010

Opinión

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Enriqueta Huanto Ticona, a 40-year-old Aymara from the village of Carabuco, near the shores of Lake Titicaca, is fighting to defend her homeland from large economic interests.

Her region, north of the capital, La Paz, is threatened by industrial sugar plantations for ethanol and the construction of a highway that crosses the pre-Columbian Yunga Cruz, an important part of Bolivia's cultural patrimony. The lake itself is polluted and has begun to contaminate some of the banks, and global warming threatens to turn Titicaca – the world's highest navigable lake – into three smaller lakes within 50 years.

At the age of 17, Huanto Ticona was a recording secretary in community assemblies. Now she is substitute town councilor and member of the Bartolina Sisa National Confederation of Indigenous Campesina Women, one of Bolivia's most important social organizations. The organization's members, known as “Bartolinas,” were some of the first to support President Evo Morales. Huanto Ticona spoke with Latinamerica Press collaborator Juan Nicastro about indigenous women's participation in Bolivia.

You recently participated in the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. How are you perceiving climate change?

We notice climate change. In the fields, the sun never felt so strong. We also have a lot of rain, excessive rain or drought. We need rain because our fields aren't irrigated and there's no other water. Our grandparents go to the hills, to an ancestral site to ask [the gods] for water. Then we have frosts. It's not like before. Before there were a lot of fish in our lake. There were lizards. There were toads. Not anymore. Now you see a lot of flies you didn't see before. The toads prevented certain crop plagues. Now, without toads, how can we prevent it?

What are indigenous women suggesting?

The women's response comes from their own life experiences, that policy of conservation, of care. That view of respect and complementarity with nature. As women, we are producers, like the Earth. So we women indigenous leaders, are trying to defend, like our forefathers, that harmony with the Earth, that respect between nature and human life that the capitalist system broke. Because that view was seen by capitalism as backwardness and underdevelopment.

Nature has just as much value as we do. In our Andean world, we say that the stones speak, the wind speaks, the sun speaks, the animals speak. That is the Buen Vivir [Living Well principle], that we all live with equality and in balance with nature.

It's an issue we have to think a lot about because the state needs greater income. But we indigenous women don't depend on the state. For example, the teachers marched for a just salary. But the indigenous women don't have a salary. Their income is for farm work, livestock, art or natural medicine. We sell fruit or animal feed or other products we produce ourselves.

Do women have a strong influence in the changes Bolivia is experiencing?

Not really. They don't take our proposal into account. Today we saw that in this workshop [on gender equality under the autonomy statute’s bill for La Paz department]. A representative from the Autonomy Ministry came. Women work with their bases and make their proposals, but in the technical stage, they take it out, repeating norms that already exist.

Is their participation growing though?

Our participation has a long way to go. We are participating as objects. In public life, those who have more access are the non-indigenous women. But we've changed things a lot. Before, if we wanted to report incidents to the police, we weren't able to; a man would have to go with us, with him exercising our rights. Now that freedom is used by liberal, feminist women. I don't agree because there hasn't been feminism in the Ayllu [indigenous community]. We were more about complementarity.

Do campesina women differentiate themselves from the men?

Yes, because women haven't received education because the educational system in Bolivia is based on the colonial system, of erasing identity and the values of the indigenous population, assimilating them into the capitalist system. Men went to school, but not women. In recent generations women began going to school — though even today there are illiterate women — and they've maintained their values, how to manage biotic indicators, when to rotate the crops, when to plant, when to fertilize the land, by the moon, the birds and the animals. Men go out and look for income in the cities and lose their values, but women hold a treasure trove of knowledge. Capitalist education teaches you that to survive you have to exploit and that goes against indigenous beliefs.

Indigenous women work more in parity, in complementarity because to build a family, both of us have to build – the man and the woman – because both of us are going to create the quality of life of the family. But it's different in the city now. The man is a worker and employee. The woman is a housewife. And now the woman has to fight for her work to be recognized. The Living Well outlook is respect between men and women.

How do you see the immediate future?

The social struggle is going to continue and some norms will be changed, but companies will continue to work against it. So what's coming is a direct fight against companies. You see it now: Who is the opposition to the government? Only the companies. In Bolivia, we need a new social, economic and political system, built along with the indigenous and non indigenous, because companies have always viewed us as two-footed animals.

How have the “Bartolinas” helped this struggle?

We've continued the tradition of our grandmother Bartolina Sisa. She was a leader in the indigenous rebellion to topple the [Spanish] viceroyalty in 1781 along with her husband Tupac Katari, fighting for a new state, just as we are doing now in Bolivia. Our organization is dedicated to political and social work. But now the government has asked for us to work on the economic issue as well so organizations become more productive.

The state has various agrarian and tourism projects. Taking care of the environment depends on the orientation of political production. The state should not steer the production policies — organizations have to.—

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