A group of indigenous children in the last year of primary school, standing in front of the Miskhamayu school. Credit: Marisabel Bellido/IPS

By Marisabel Bellido
MISKHAMAYU, Bolivia , Nov 12 2012 (IPS)

Even before the sun comes up, Reinaldo starts out on the two-hour journey to the school he attends in a small native village in Bolivia, hiking along steep, narrow paths that take him across ravines and rivers.

And by the time he returns home lugging his heavy backpack full of books and notebooks, trudging along in sandals that barely protect him from the stones and thorny plants, it is after dark.

Reinaldo’s arduous daily trek to and from school is similar to the routine of many boys and girls in remote indigenous communities in Bolivia’s highlands region.

There are no roads leading to Reinaldo’s school, which is in a small village seven kilometres from the nearest town. But during the two days that IPS spent with the students at the school, the children arrived in the morning from different parts of this rugged region, determined to study and learn in the precarious school installations.

The Unidad Educativa Miskhamayu is one of the numerous rural schools scattered around Bolivia, which are often located in isolated, hard-to-reach spots and in many cases receive no assistance from the federal or municipal governments.

Sometimes the schools are old haciendas or estate houses adapted for the purpose, and in some cases they are rundown and lack even the most basic services. Some don’t have doors or glass in the windows, and a few don’t even have roofs, with the children exposed to the elements during class. Very few of the schools have electricity.

This is the case of Miskhamayu. Years ago it was one of the most prestigious schools in this wild highlands landscape, when it was financed by the famous Bolivian folk music group Los Masis. But now, the school depends on the state, and its neglect is clear at a glance.

Reinaldo, 14, is completing the last year of primary school. His family lives in Molle Huata, 12 km from Miskhamayu, and like almost all of the families in the area, they depend on agriculture and the production of the country’s world-famous handmade textiles for a living.

The two communities are located at around 3,300 metres above sea level, in the municipality of Tarabuco in the southeastern department or region of Chuquisaca, whose capital is Sucre.

Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia, where the judicial branch is based, is only 65 km away from the municipal seat of Tarabuco. But the trip takes two hours by road. And it takes a further two hours to walk from the town of Tarabuco to the village of Miskhamayu.

Reinaldo explains that only five of his eight brothers and sisters are in school.

This is another common problem: on average, 12.3 percent of indigenous children in the country are deprived of an education – they either never go to school or drop out before completing even one year, according to a study released this year by the United Nations children’s fund, UNICEF.

But that proportion goes up to 17.5 percent in rural areas, according to the report. In Bolivia, 35 percent of the population is rural, and the highest poverty levels are seen in the countryside. Official figures indicate that 75 percent of the rural population is poor, and of that proportion, 64 percent live on less than a dollar a day.

There are still native children who don’t go to school, despite the fact that the first eight years of education are compulsory and free of cost, and in spite of the strides made by the Education Ministry towards achieving universal coverage, as UNICEF and other international organisations have pointed out.

Carmen Rosa Sánchez, a teacher at Miskhamayu, said the problems of infrastructure and the rural exodus and high poverty levels are all factors that fuel the high school dropout level among native people in Bolivia.

But she stressed that the biggest hurdle for rural indigenous children is linguistic, in this country where more than 60 percent of the population of 10.6 million belong to 36 different native groups.

Most of the 120 students in this 12-teacher school belong to the Yampara Suyu ethnic group, and all of the students are Quechua-speakers. But in the classroom, the children are taught in their second language: Spanish.

“In the first three years of primary school, classes are given in their mother tongue, but by the time they reach secondary school, all teaching is exclusively in Spanish,” said Sánchez, who teaches biology and agricultural sciences.

The result, she said, is that “the students don’t understand us, because the language they operate in is the one they speak at home.”

Children in rural areas have to learn in two languages, unlike their urban counterparts, where students are taught in their mother tongue, Spanish, she pointed out.

Another complication is that schoolchildren in the countryside are fluent in their mother tongue but do not generally write in that language, making the task of learning to read and write – in two languages – even more complex.

“Their surroundings are overwhelmingly Quechua, and that makes it more difficult, because…we tell them one thing and they understand another,” said Leonardo Lucas, who teaches language and literature at the school. “Besides, there are monolingual (Spanish-speaking) teachers, who are not prepared to understand the students or the community itself.”

The Education Ministry has put plans in place to train all teachers to deal with two languages, in order to improve education in rural communities and reduce the school dropout rate. But the results so far have been limited, according to several of the teachers at the Miskhamayu school.

Another major problem faced by students in rural areas is finding a way to continue studying at the secondary and university levels, said Nicolás Fernández, a father of eight.

“All of my kids have studied. Some of them are at the university, others are professionals. My kids studied here, at this school. But there were only five secondary-level teachers, so I took them to Sucre, where they’re studying now,” he said.

And in the most remote areas, children are taught in one-room schoolhouses, where one teacher is in charge of all grade levels and every subject.

Another challenge is that primary and secondary schools can be over 10 km away from students’ homes, as in Reinaldo’s case.

To remedy that, some rural schools have boarding facilities. These schools are called “yachaywasis” (houses of knowledge, in Quechua).

“The yachaywasis provide a place to stay for children who live far away,” said Serrat Miranda, an education worker. “They come on Sunday night and go back home on Friday afternoon. At the school, they have a tutor, who gives them support.”

The Education Ministry is also working to implement the constitution adopted in 2009, which declared Bolivia a “plurinational” state, where the educational system must be inter-cultural and multilingual.

With that in mind, it is working to put into effect a new law on education that has made it a priority to meet the needs of the country’s native people and overcome the obstacles faced by so many youngsters like Reinaldo.

But when the 14-year-old is told that he’s a hero, he merely shakes his head, and says calmly but firmly: “I just want to learn a lot, finish school, and one day go to the university.”

Balbina Coragua weaves an axsu in a traditional Jalq'a loom / Credit: Victor Bellido/IPS

By Marisabel Bellido
CARAVIRI, Bolivia, Aug 7 2012 (IPS)

Sitting on the floor, deep in concentration, Marta Llampa interlaces red and black threads that converge in sinuous shapes, gradually forming khurus or mythical creatures through a unique, age-old technique rescued from extinction by the Jalq’a people.

Jalq’a women put many hours into making these world-famous weavings, which are the most ancient textile crafts of the Andes mountains. They devote so much time to it because “the money we earn selling these textiles has improved our community’s quality of life,” Llampa, a weaver from the rural village of Caraviri, told IPS.

Caraviri is located 64 kilometres from Sucre, the capital of Bolivia and of the southeastern department (province) of Chuquisaca, which, with Potosí, is one of the two departments home to Bolivia’s 26,000 Jalq’as, a Quechua-speaking people.

This special form of weaving almost disappeared in the 1970s, when the technique was appropriated by textile producers from other parts of Bolivia and the world. This, combined with a process of acculturation of the Jalq’a people, resulted in the craft being abandoned by its original creators.

Efforts to rescue the technique began in 1986 with the establishment of the Southern Andean Anthropologists’ (Asur) Foundation for Anthropological Research and Ethno-Development, which operates in Chuquisaca and neighbouring Potosí.

The foundation implemented the Rebirth of Indigenous Art programme, “with the aim of salvaging the traditional Jalq’a weaving technique, in order to save such a precious art from extinction,” Asur representative Alejandra Lucia told IPS.

The idea originated with Verónica Cereceda and Gabriel Martínez, two Chilean anthropologists who are also husband and wife.

“When they discovered the beauty of these cloths and started learning about the place they came from, they found that the (Jalq’a) people were living in extreme poverty, with no running water or electricity, and a high infant mortality rate,” Lucia said.

So they set out to rescue the traditional local pallays or weaving patterns, as a way of helping the people who created them. They began working with a group of women in a small community.

“The grandmothers collaborated with their minds and provided the technique, the girls contributed their hands and eyes, and that was how we began recovering these textiles,” Lucia said.

Neither the promoters nor the weavers knew what results, if any, their efforts would yield. But their work paid off, and the women started earning their own money and participating actively in the economy of their homes and community.

Before this initiative they had no income-generating activities – only the unpaid work of cleaning, cooking, raising the children, tending to the farm animals, and planting and harvesting the crops.

Asur now works with 150 weavers from different communities, although Caraviri is still the centre of its activity.

Llampa earns about 175 U.S. dollars for each cloth, which takes two to four months to weave, depending on how complex the design is.

That sum may not seem like much, but for this mother of two teenagers it makes a huge difference. “We used to live in great poverty and now we can cover our basic necessities,” she said, adding that she would like to have more hours to weave, but that would mean neglecting her duties to her family and home.

The communities also receive aid for various development projects from the provincial government of Chuquisaca, tourism director Verónica Rojas told IPS.

One such project involves opening up a store to sell Asur weaver products directly to the public. The business will be managed by the weavers themselves and all proceeds will go to them.

Under this project they will also receive ongoing training to enhance production of current weavings and to make other products, such as mantillas and different items typical of the region.

“It takes us two to three months to make each piece, depending on the size. Every design is unique because it comes from our minds – that is how we were taught by our mothers and grandmothers since we were very small,” said Balbina Coragua, a weaver from the Maragua community, also near Sucre.

Since she has only one son, who is fully grown, she can devote more time to weaving, and earns an average of 200 dollars a month. “My life and my family’s life has changed for the better, and it’s satisfying to know that it’s because of my pallays,” she told IPS.

The task of making the clothes worn by the Jalq’a people is also a woman’s job.

Jalq’a men and women typically wear white bowler-type hats with embroidered ribbons. They also use white pants and shirts over which they don dark, woven ponchos with stripes of subtly different colours that blend together, giving a monochromatic appearance from afar.

The most outstanding of these is the axsu, two long woven cloths with pallays, which are worn over their almillas (blouses) and typically dark skirts, and are stitched at the waist. This was the main garment worn by Quechua and Aymara women from the fifteenth century on, and today it only survives in some cultures, like the Jalq’a.

The axsus worn on festive occasions have elaborate designs and are richly ornamented. A woman’s outfit is completed with a lliklla, a thin embroidered shawl or half-cape.

Many axsus are exhibited as art in celebrations and ceremonies.

These are woven fabrics that date back 4,000 years and represent some of the most ancient, intricate and elaborate expressions of Andean cosmogony.

They are also a form of language, through which each community depicts its common identity and distinguishes itself from others.

For that reason, their pallays are interpreted and read like texts that tell the stories, thoughts and views of each community and each artisan.

Thus, when these garments are worn or exhibited, the Jalq’a can recognise each other and identify the different communities.

They are not only the most ancient Andean woven textiles, but their patterns are also considered to be the most expressive, in a country enormously rich in woven and embroidered designs and styles.

The landscape woven by the Jalq’a is the “Ukhu Pacha,” a sacred world described by these women artisans as a disordered and chaotic space, a place of darkness, death, dreams and fears.

The strange figures that populate it are the khurus, mythical animals that the Jalq’a people believe appear when you find yourself alone or in a remote place.

There are three types of khurus: imaginary or nonexistent; known but rendered unreal – horses with extremely long tongues or tails, and cows with elongated backs, for example; and more realistic animals such as monkeys or llamas.

Inside the khurus are what are known as “uñas,” which are the wawas (offspring) of these constantly-reproducing creatures.

The wawas are not of the same species as their parents, so that a dog may spawn a bird or a cat.

The weavers describe this confusion as “chaxrusqa kanan tian,” a phrase that means that the universe portrayed “must be disorderly.”

The results are immensely beautiful textile products possessing a unique expressiveness. The quality of these cloths elevates them above the category of craftworks, making them valuable works of art that are part of the world’s cultural heritage, and which the Jalq’a people are struggling hard to protect, overcoming many difficulties.