Sex And The Citizen: Barbies And Beauty Queens In The Age Of Evo Morales1
2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13569320801950682
ISSN1469-9575
Autores Tópico(s)Cuban History and Society
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 This paper was presented at the British Academy UK–Latin America and the Caribbean Link Programme funded workshop on Race and Sexuality in Latin America organized by Peter Wade in Manchester on 9 and 10 December 2006 and Cali on 28 April, 2007. I am indebted to the participants for their comments and general discussion over the two workshops. A version of this paper was given at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz on 27 June 2007 and I am grateful for the many comments, contributions and discussion that arose from this seminar. I also owe a debt to Michelle Bigenho, José Antonio Lucero and Melanie Wright for their comments on earlier drafts. 2 I am grateful to Lucinda Platt for her help with the translation from Latin. Montrose, however, has a slightly different translation: 'Americus rediscovers America; he called her once and thenceforth she was always awake' (1991: 4). De la Guerra, in turn, translates the caption as: 'Amerigo redescubre América, A partir de entonces ella siempre más fue despertada por este nombre'. 3 Although it is standard practice to use the term 'indian' in historical accounts its contemporary usage is controversial. I retain the usage when referring precisely to that colonial relationship which makes it so controversial and to indicate the unequal power relations embedded within it. I retain 'indigenous' when referring to contemporary indigenous politics and politicians who use the term; and other instances such as languages native to the Americas. Some slippage between these terms inevitably occurs. 4 This creole prerogative regarding the bodies of indian women is by no means exclusively an Andean phenomenon (see, for example Nelson, : 221). 5 This combination is what stands behind the erotics of octaroons in pre-Civil War US. Octaroons, who were notionally one-eighth black, were legally black and consequently sexually accessible to white men but they looked white. The famous New Orleans octoroon balls (placages) consisted of free white men (but no coloureds) and octoroon women (but no white women). 6 Kemala Kempadoo () in a wonderfully detailed and comprehensive account of sex work in the Caribbean notes a similar pattern: white foreign as well as local men are attracted to the sensuality of the exotic Caribbean and the allure of dusky bodies but in example after example she notes that the darker the woman, the greater difficulty she will have in selling sex. 7 'Campesino' literally means 'peasant' but since the Revolution of 1952 it has widely been used as a euphemism for 'indian', a term which was officially banned. The people from the mestizo village of Khacha (mentioned above), for example, are quite clear that they are not 'campesinos' but, rather, 'gente', which simply translates as 'people'. There is not the space here to go into the complexities of identity in and around Pocobaya (see Canessa, ) other than to point out that people in Pocobaya call themselves 'jaqi' and distinguish 'jaqi' from the people in Khacha whom they call 'mistis' or 'q'aras'. 'Jaqi' is also quite simply translatable as 'people'. 8 Domingo de Tentación or Temptation Sunday is the first Sunday after Ash Wednesday when the faithful reflect on Jesus' temptation by Satan in the desert. 9 This is a pseudonym. 10 Despite the small number of Afro Bolivians they do figure in terms of how the nation is imagined. My compadre Remigio once explained the position of indians in Bolivia in starkly racist terms: white people are cleverer than indians which is why they are so wealthy; black people, though, are less civilized and therefore poorer. 11 In urban areas, or those in close proximity to big cities, indian women have greater opportunities in claiming full membership of the nation. On a political level the Bartolina Sisa Peasant Women's Union has representatives in Congress (including senators) sponsored by the ruling MAS party and indian women have a long history of struggle in the public space of the market. In rural areas, however, few such political spaces exist for women. 12 Pseudonym. 13 There are, however, other examples of indian men successfully pursuing white women and that is the 'bricheros' who seek out foreign women in tourist spots such as in Cuzco (Alison Spedding, personal communication, Guevara ). See Kempadoo (), Meisch (), and Zinovieff () for similar phenomena in the Caribbean, Ecuador and Greece. In these cases the women in point are foreign 'gringas' and do not pose quite the same challenges to social mores. 14 El 2003 en la elección de Miss Bolivia, en Sucre, preguntaron a quién admiraban y 15 de 18 candidatas dijeron a Evo Morales … y no creo que fuera porque soy soltero (risas), alguna tal vez. Ellas son hijas de la clase media o alta. Las mujeres tienen otra forma de pensar sobre la vida. 15 For an interesting discussion on the role of beauty queens in articulating camba autonomy, see Gustafson (). 16 'Sus pequeños, medianos y grandes empresarios desean encarrilarse al tren de las inversiones, la producción, las exportaciones. Es decir, a la economía de las grandes ligas. Otro ejemplo, el apoyo de las juntas vecinales a proyectos de reordenamiento territorial para hacer de la urbe alteña una ciudad más ordenada, limpia y hasta cosmopolita. Y eventos singulares, organizados por primera vez, como la elección de dos damas que representarán a El Alto en un evento de calidad y reconocimiento nacional como el Miss Bolivia. ¿Parecen todos estos acontecimientos que los alteños quieren quedarse en el pasado? O, por el contrario, ¿no estarán enviando señales a sus dirigentes y al país de que quieren cambiar la imagen de aquella ciudad de conflicto y mostrarse realmente como son: gente con ansias de progresar y de edificar oportunidades?' La Razón, 25 November 2005. 17 In Cochabamba, where he is known as a k'ipador (from 'k'ipay' when you sow your crops one year and they produce for two harvests without you having re-sown – it applies to men who 'sow their seeds' in several places) there is also resistance to Evo's machismo. A piece of graffiti near the MAS headquarters in Cochabamba reads: 'Eva no saldrá del costillo del Evo' as well as 'Soberanía en mi país y en mi cuerpo' (Emma Felber, personal communication). 18 In the words of Félix Patzi, recently Minister for Education: 'Lo más importante es no negar la identidad indígena y originaria que tienen todos los bolivianos…. Durante 514 años nos negaron como civilización, no fue tomada en cuenta la mayoría poblacional y si últimamente fue tomado en cuenta como folklore, como museo y como arte, pero no como civilización viva, por lo tanto, hablar de descolonización es hablar de la civilización contemporánea indígena.' , 11 March 2006.
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