Trifonia Tordoya, two of her daughters, and a granddaughter during their last programme on women’s politics and rights. Credit: Jenny Cartagena/IPS

By Jenny Cartagena Torrico
CLIZA, Bolivia , Nov 27 2012 (IPS)

“Atispa mana atispa ñawpajman rinanchis tiyan” (“Power without power, we have to keep moving forward”) in the Quechua language, Ruth Rojas told her listeners at the end of a series of radio programmes on political culture, broadcast to indigenous women in Bolivia.

From the small booth in the Ecológica community radio station in the town of Cliza, located in one of the highland valleys in the central department (region) of Cochabamba, an intergenerational group of four women and girls sparked debate and reflection on topics linked to politics and women’s and indigenous rights.

They discussed the exercise of democracy, social control, gender equality, legal questions and other issues, based on their experience as indigenous women in South America’s poorest country.

Other community radio stations are involved in similar work empowering people in the highland valleys of this mainly agricultural region on the eastern side of the Andes mountains.

Throughout the department of Cochabamba, women who have never taken a course in radio broadcasting are using the airwaves to inform, empower and raise awareness, and to work for change in their communities.

They know from experience that radio is the best way to reach women in their homes in remote rural villages, where television is an inconceivable luxury due to the lack of electricity, and newspapers are impossible to get because of the distances involved.

In Bolivia there is no official list of community radio stations or stations run by trade unions or peasant associations, because most of them have a very limited range and operate without a licence. But the estimate is that there are at least 2,000 community stations.

Their impact in rural areas and poor neighbourhoods surrounding towns and cities is indisputable, thanks to their programming in Quechua, Aymara or Guaraní, the three most widely spoken native languages in Bolivia, where more than 60 percent of the population of 10.6 million belong to one of 36 different indigenous groups.

In some of the areas, there are bilingual or even trilingual programmes.

The biggest network of community stations is that of Educación Radiofónica de Bolivia (Erbol), with ties to the Catholic Church, whose chief focus is improving social conditions through grassroots communication.

For 21 Sundays in a row, 63-year-old Trifonia Tordoya led a two-hour programme broadcast live in Quechua along with her daughters Ruth, 25, and Tania, 30, both of whom are schoolteachers, and her 13-year-old granddaughter Madeleine Pereira.

The name of the programme was itself a declaration of intentions: “Wakichikuy wasiyuj allin kawsayta tarinapaj” (“Get ready to live well”, in Quechua).

In the Ecológica radio station, Tordoya told IPS in Quechua that the programme, which had just ended, was the result of her concern about the participation of women in productive activities and decision-making in her village.

She and other local women leaders took part in the programme on “Political culture and cultural diversity: Empowering citizens in Quechua-speaking populations of Peru and Bolivia”, carried out in this country by the non-governmental organisation Ciudadanía: Comunidad de Estudios Sociales y Acción Pública (Citizenship: Community of Social Studies and Public Action).

The aim of the programme is to foster an intercultural political dialogue and strengthen democratic values among women, while tapping into the knowledge of indigenous women.

For three years, women leaders of 20 rural community organisations from Quechua-speaking areas in the highlands valleys of Cochabamba worked to build their own definitions and concepts of key rights and issues, drawing on their own life experiences.

In the end, they chose 19 elements, including democracy, legitimacy, autonomy, rights, gender violence, exclusion, discrimination, transparency, corruption and justice, the coordinator of the programme, Olivia Román, told IPS.

“We didn’t know what exclusion was,” Tordoya said. “We asked each other what was the meaning of that word, which doesn’t exist in Quechua. Later, all together, we came up with a definition for that concept.”

She attended the workshops with her granddaughter Madeleine, who at the time was 10 years old. Madeleine was there to take notes for her, because she reads and writes with difficulty, having only gone to school through fifth grade.

After Tordoya was abandoned by her husband, she raised her six children on her own, farming a small plot of land.

None of the definitions were easy. “We had heard these words in Spanish, but we didn’t know exactly what they meant. So we discussed and debated, and defined them in Quechua,” said Norah Claros, another participant in the workshops.

They decided to call gender “qhari-warmi” (man-woman), because a key principle in the Quechua culture is the complementarity and parity of opposites. And their definition of gender is: “Men and women have the same rights, capacities and way of life, choosing and being chosen, helping each other in work and in life.”

The next step was to get the word out to other women, and help them incorporate these definitions and concepts in their daily lives, because the participants reached the conclusion that unless women were aware of their meanings, the rights would be neither demanded nor practiced.

Some of the participants suggested producing radio programmes, and others suggested workshops, or short radio spots, or radio plays. Tordoya’s idea for a radio programme prospered with the support of Ciudadanía: Comunidad de Estudios Sociales y Acción Pública, and she decided to get her daughters and her oldest granddaughter involved.

The four women from Villa El Carmen, a rural community outside the town of Cliza, decided to discuss one concept each Sunday, in 15 shows. But the enthusiasm of their listeners prompted them to produce six more shows.

They told IPS that they achieved their objective: reaching the homes in the rural communities around Cliza, and urging the local authorities to guarantee the rights of women and the exercise of democracy.

“The audience grew as the programme went on, and the public participated a great deal by calling in over the telephone,” the owner and director of the radio station, Roger Araoz, told IPS. “So we expanded it to two hours and produced another set of episodes.”

“Listeners have been calling in and asking the women to continue, because they did such a good job explaining the rights of women, and expressing constructive criticism of the authorities,” he said.

The Ecológica station belongs to the Erbol network, and reaches the entire rural area of the highland valley around Cliza, the town where it is located, 37 km from the capital of Cochabamba.

“Señora Trifonia is well-known and respected,” said Araoz. “She has participated in other programmes, and she would come to the station to discuss problems facing the community. So when the opportunity for the programme came up, we did not hesitate to give her air time.”

Her daughters Tania and Ruth agree that the general view, which not only prevails in their community, is that women don’t know how to think for themselves and should not participate in politics or be involved in decision-making.

For that reason, they said, many people were surprised to hear three women and a young girl speaking so articulately about these issues on the radio.

Both of them said they were grateful that their mother got them involved in the programme, because it helped them learn about their rights and how to exercise them, which they weren’t that clear about before despite the fact that they are teachers.

And more importantly, they said, the programme helped many Quechua women learn that they have rights, and demand that they be respected in their homes, their communities, and society in general.

Madeleine Pereira said she tried to put everything she learned in the workshops and on the programme “in practice in school, and I teach my schoolmates that they have rights.”

A Quechua leader at a meeting on rural women in Bolivia. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS.

By Jenny Cartagena Torrico
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia, Jul 26 2012 (IPS)

A growing number of Bolivia’s indigenous women are participating in politics, ready to break the barriers of gender and ethnicity.

Though spread across great distances and representing various realities,  many of these women share a similar history. Most started out leading civil society organisations and then went on to run for local public office, often overcoming resistance within their own families.

“The major obstacles (to accessing a government position) are domestic duties and economic issues,” Lucinda Villca, a councilwoman from Santiago de Andamarca, a municipality in the western district of Oruro, told IPS.

Villca is one of four councilwomen who shared their experiences with IPS during a national meeting of women leaders from rural local governments held recently in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba.

“We go out on the fields early in the morning to help our husbands, tending the crops or taking the cattle out to pasture. We come home at night and we have to fix supper and make some time to weave so we can earn extra money for the house,” Villca explains.

“With these obligations, there’s no time for anything else,” said this Aymara mother of nine who used to be one of the native leaders of her quinoa and llama farming ayllu (community).

“I now have a greater responsibility. As a member of the indigenous council my mission was to work for my community. In this new post I have to work for the future of my municipality,” she explained, describing an experience she shares with other indigenous leaders elected to local governments.

“I used to be a housewife. I’m a Guarani, and like many women in the countryside, I have no regular job. I was working for a women’s organisation when I was asked to run for office,” Marina Cuñaendi, a 55-year-old councilwoman from Urubichá, said.

Urubichá is one of Bolivia’s poorest areas, despite being located in Santa Cruz, the country’s most prosperous district. According to the last census, 85.5 percent of its 6,000 inhabitants – mostly Guarani people – live in extreme poverty.

Before being nominated in 2010, Cuñaendi never thought of holding public office. She planted rice and corn and, in her “free time,” weaved to support her seven children, along with her husband.

In Urubichá, she said, women have no time to organise and are marginalised from political life. She admitted that she had to consult her husband and children, who were “happy” to support her and encouraged her.

In San Julián, another municipality of Santa Cruz, Yolanda Cuellar, a Guarani, had to overcome a third barrier, that of being “too young,” in the eyes of her community to hold a municipal position.

She turned 21 a month after being elected councilwoman in April 2010, on the ticket of Without Fear Movement, the opposing the party of Movement to Socialism, which governs the municipality and the country.

“They didn’t trust me because I was young, and a woman to boot. In our municipality, sexism is very strong. Now there are four of us women in the council,” this accountant and mother of two said.

Cuellar has her husband’s support. “He understands me and tells me not to quit because people voted for me; he tells me to fight for what I want and not give up just because somebody doesn’t want me there,” she said.

But these women’s lack of political experience and the constant discrimination by male peers have not made the work in the council easier. Being a councilwoman is also very different from being an indigenous leader.

“There’s a lot of bureaucracy which slows down any project, but the worst is the lack of support. Our ideas are ignored and we feel alone. It’s like nobody is interested in doing anything for young people and women,” Cuellar said.

San Julián’s economy is also primarily agricultural, and, because one of the country’s leading highways runs through it, it is complemented with commerce and services activities.

However, 57.9 percent of its more than 70,000 inhabitants live in extreme poverty.

Under the 2009 constitution and other applicable laws, women must occupy at least 50 percent of all elected government positions. To ensure that percentage, candidate lists must be drawn up by alternating between women and men.

At present, 43 percent of the mayors and councilpersons in Bolivia’s 327 local governments are women, and 96 percent of them are holding public office for the first time.

Lidia Alejandro, a 50-year-old Aymara councilwoman from Llallagua, a municipality in the mining district of Potosí, in western Bolivia, also identified inexperience as a factor that puts them at a disadvantage compared to their male counterparts.

“I became a councilwoman without knowing a thing about how municipal affairs are run. I’m a teacher, but holding office is very different. I couldn’t even speak up at a meeting or give statements to the press,” Alejandro said.

“I had to learn as I went along,” she admitted. Training workshops also helped her overcome this limitation.

But training takes time, she said, and that causes problems with husbands as they reproach women leaders for neglecting their homes.

Alejandro is troubled at the failure to attain the goal of bringing the women of her municipality out of poverty due to a lack of specialists who can design projects to meet their needs.

Bolivian legislation requires that part of the annual budget at every government level be allocated to spending on projects that target the needs of women and other vulnerable groups. But most of these budget allocations are not spent and the funds are either returned or transferred to other areas.

“Women have come to us to complain. ‘How is it that we have four councilwomen and they’re not doing anything for us?’ they say. We’ve tried to join forces, but the truth is that we all have our political loyalties,” Cuellar said.

Bolivia has seen great progress in terms of women’s participation in politics, furthered by the Constitution and a number of different laws, Natasha Loayza, a specialist with the U.N. Women’s office in Bolivia, told IPS.

“The challenge is to translate this legislation into action, into real and concrete participation,” she said.

The U.N. Women’s office’s ‘Semilla’ (seed) programme, a three-year pilot initiative now in its final year, helps women in rural districts  exercise their economic and political rights.

Loayza said that one of the programme’s goals was to motivate more women to participate in politics by showing them the meaningful involvement of women who are already participating.

“Women can now access (public office), but it’s very hard. It’s a colossal task. The women who have achieved positions of responsibility in public bodies can bear witness to the problems they face every day to make their presence felt, and not just occupy decision-making positions on paper,” Loayza said.

“We’re still at a point where women have to work hard to really participate,” she concluded.

The programme is being implemented by the ministry of equal opportunities in 18 rural districts and so far it has benefited 4,000 women, with nine million dollars in financing from the United Nations.