• by IPS Correspondents (cochabamba, bolivia)
• Thursday, July 26, 2012
• Inter Press Service

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia, Jul 26 (IPS) - A growing number of Bolivia’s indigenous women are participating in politics, ready to break the barriers of gender and ethnicity.

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

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.

© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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