On Evo Morales, Sex-Ed, and Rebellion in the Universe of Women

Mujeres Creando is a radical feminist organization that has been confronting the patriarchalism of Bolivian society since the 1980's. We spoke with one of the founders, Maria Galindo, in the restaurant of their small hotel and cultural center in the capital La Paz, while the Mujeres Creando radio station, broadcasting from another room, played on the speaker in the background.


Sharyl Green: The first big question is about the Evo Morales administration: how are specifically women's issues being handled? Is there being progress made? Today's newspaper says that 11% of the issues in the constitution passed 3 years ago have been put into laws now–how is this impacting women's issues? Of course, the caveat is that all issues are women's issues. But the abortion issue, for example, and other things that you see as directly affecting women's well being.


SG: So there is a hierarchy…

MG: Not only the hierarchy, but I will say it in Spanish: it is a process of caudillizacion [The making of a "caudillo," or charismatic leader]. The figure of Evo Morales is the center of everything. It is really a very big mistake. For the women it is very contradictory and it is very well disguised. Why? The first law, which was the most important, was a cash payment, the "bono Juana Asurdo" (named after a heroine of the revolution against Spain in the 19th century.) It's a payment for every woman who has a baby–as every fascist government did. It is not so much: a thousand, eight hundred bolivianos ($261 US dollars.) You cannot do anything with that. But again, "women" means "babies." The poorest women in Bolivia–maybe they could need that money. But to get that money you have to go to the doctor, the doctor gives you a paper saying you are going to have a baby, and then you have to go to the bank to get the money from the state. But the poorest women do not have an ID of a Bolivian citizen to go to the bank. So it is really absurd. And it is like a portrait of the thinking of this government.

On the other hand, since the nineties because of a policy of the United Nations there is a sort of quota of women in every political party. It is a liberal policy, not a socialist policy, this policy of "equality." So every party has a percentage of women, and some percentage of women are elected as deputies and senators. This began in the nineties, and it is copied through all of Latin America, it is not originally Bolivian. The social movement of women here never asked to get representation in parliament. It came from the UN. Since the nineties, the parties, also of the right, say, "OK, we are gentlemen, we are going to get this law."

So since the nineties you have a low percentage of women in the parliament, women who are elected to represent the party. Not to represent the society or the women in the society. And this percentage of women never means a voice for women. They mean a feminine voice for the party, which is really very different. It is a phenomenon of the whole of Latin American politics. Evo Morales has taken the same mainstream idea and put it in his policy. Now you have a higher percentage of women, I think it is around forty percent, I am not so sure, I really don't pay much attention to that. And they have the same policy for the cabinet ministers and the judges. But with the same rules: women from our party are going to do what we want. Women who have responsibility for health, in many things, they really didn't do anything for women. Because it is enough to be there and say, "I am here, I am a voice for women."


So your point with abortion–it is like going with a bus to the moon. We are very distant from that point. I have had interviews with all of the women in the cabinet [Maria has a regular radio program broadcast from Mujeres Creando], with all the heads of women's movements who are with Evo Morales, with Bartolina Sisa (a movement named after an Aymara heroine of the 1700's who fought against the Spanish), with everybody of these movements. I ask them about abortion. Because abortion is a problem of poverty. White young women, if they have four hundred dollars they can get an abortion. The indigenous, poor young women who don't have the money get an abortion with a big risk, and they die. And they have a lot of fear.


MG: It's just a question of hypocrisy. You can go to the big cemetery in La Paz, and then you come walking down–you will see on both sides of the street little clinics. And you know, a room cannot be a clinic. So you see clinic, clinic, clinic, clinic…"If you have a question, come here, woman's clinic" All those places are for abortion. Everybody knows, it is not a secret.

SG: And the government is not interfering?

MG: No, no, they don't do anything. But for example, last December there was a young woman in Santa Cruz who killed her baby–the baby came and she killed it. She went to jail, because of murder. And she said, "I have been raped. I didn't want this kid." The police do nothing. The doctors make money, not so much, but they make money. But when a woman is so alone, so vulnerable, as that girl, then she goes to jail. It is a case of hypocrisy. But no woman of these indigenous social movements is willing to speak positively of the right–not of my right, of a feminist–of the right of those girls in the country to make a choice. So they are not ready–I asked every woman in parliament about abortion. All of them are against abortion, all of them. There is not one woman who says, "OK, they have the right." We have to fight for this which is very concrete.



SG: Mujeres Creando–connection to the government, influence. You have two roles here–maybe they are combined–you're a journalist and you're a member of this community. What is the administration's connection, relationship, acknowledgement of Mujeres Creando?

MG: Acknowledgement in no sense. But I think that we, Mujeres Creando, have had a big influence in the society, because we speak very loud. And we don't just speak, we also make things. So we have a strong influence, I feel it everywhere, all the time. This government of Evo Morales acts as if we don't exist, we are not here, we don't make anything. But it doesn't mean anything, because we are not fixed on the idea that the only policy which has succeeded is the relationship with the state. We have analyzed this for many, many years: what do we want from the state? We don't want anything from the state. Not only laws–laws don't change anything. Many social movements in Bolivia have the domestication in mind, "We get the law, we get a change in the situation." But we are not asking for a law, we are not asking to be in the parliament, we are not asking to get money from the government, but we take positions on every governmental policy.

We are not on our Fantasy Island, but we are not thinking that we have to be recognized from the state. For example, when the constitutional process four or five years ago was going on in Bolivia we made a social theory which was very interesting. We said, "We don't want equality between men and women, this is not our view. We want a 'despatriarcalizacion' of society." I cannot say it in English because it is a word which we invented (de-patriarchalization). And now every document from the government that has to do with women says "despatriarcalizacion." They have taken the word from us. It is proof of our big influence in their minds, but it is not a reality because, for example, they never ask us to discuss what this "depatriarcalizacion" means. It is a complicated relationship.

SG: It's a big question in the United States, too, these days. There's a lot of movement outside the government, where the goal is not to work for the party, trying to get people elected. It's an exciting time: are you going to work on the outside or are you going to try to get people into the inside? So people are making some very interesting choices. It sounds like your choice has been to work on the outside and to have a wide influence, not just with women but with society as a whole, getting people to think more clearly or deeply, or to look at their own patterns in a new way.

MG: Yes, it's not that we think we are going to tell people what the truth is, that's very important. You made the point very well. For us, women are "political subjects" (protagonists.) So we work in this way, considering women to be political subjects, not "beneficiaries," "vulnerability," "Oh, poor women!" stuff like that. We not only speak, we act. For example we have little programs which have a very interesting methodology, programs which work, and programs which are for the people. We have a very interesting program in violence against women which is very practical, and we act in every case we can and we have a program for mothers which is about thinking about being a mother in another way. Both of them have a big influence in society, but we don't get many women because we function on a small scale. But they are examples–we are not only ready to speak, we are ready to act.




SG: Just the other day there was a lot of police presence near the capital, and there were women. I happened to look down and a woman policeperson had on very pointy boots with high heels, and I thought, "How can she do what she might need to do with high heels?" It struck me as very ironic.

MG: Ironic, that's the word. In many of those examples there is a lot of ambiguity. It does not mean a victory in Bolivian society for women to go into the military. The military forces committed a lot of abuses against boys [recruits.] Many died. At the time there was some thinking that there would be the possibility that they would reject military service. So the government said, "OK, for the boys it is obligatory, they cannot choose. But women can join, and they can choose." And the women stood in line from five in the morning to get into the military. They would make any sacrifice to get in. Why? There is a lot of contradiction. Neoliberalism and liberalism in Latin America says you have the right. You have to fight for your rights, but you have them–you are equal. We have now, in the whole world, lots of women with lots of power. What does it mean? It's a big question for us as feminists, also, because no woman in power, in Bolivia, Germany, or wherever, is there because of feminist thinking. She is there because of patriarchal thinking.






SG: Are they selling well?



MG: This man is Evo Morales. He is carrying a kid on his back like an indigenous woman. No man carries a kid this way, it would be against his dignity. And he is ready to clean the house and go to the market. This was the most important man of the Bolivian revolution (which is not a revolution, really.) We really sold these as if they were bread. Now no more because he is not so popular any more. Back when he was on top I went to a big political affair and I gave one to him as a present. He took it and threw it to one of his bodyguards. He didn't take it and laugh, he was hostile, it was disgusting for him. That was a sign! I wondered, "Why isn't he ready to laugh with us, and say, 'Why not?' or 'Interesting!' or 'Thank you very much,' or whatever."

This is the state of rebellion of women. If you don't understand you would say, "Ah these women are saying every man is a drunk…" but it is much more than that, it is a symbol.

SG: It's more about women…

MG: Yeah. Before coming here I was interviewing a woman. She wants to separate from her man. When she was fourteen a member of her family gave her as a present to a military man who was twenty-eight. He had a kid that he needed somebody to take care of. So she went with the military man and was with him, in my eyes in the state of slavery. But in the eyes of society as a wife. She was crying in the market and a woman asked, "Why are you crying?" When she explained the woman said, "Go to those women." [I. e. Mujeres Creando.] 

SG: How old is she now?

MG: She is between fifty and sixty. She has four kids with the military man, her whole life thinking, "I am going to leave him." You can say those stories cannot be true now, but they are now still true. They are not all our stories. That is not my story. But we, as women, are in the same historical and social place as that woman. If we take her as a sister, she was, or is, in slavery.










MG: I don't have a very deep knowledge about prisons. I began a series of radio programs every fifteen days from the prison. We went there and the women would speak. It was wonderful, we had permission for twelve programs, but we did only two. That's true, women can have there children with them in prison. The kids go to school and then after school they come back to the prison. It depends on their age. They work in the prison, but those are not state organized programs, the point is that the state does not have money for the prison, and they don't want to spend money on the prison, they want a cheap prison. The women work because if they didn't they could die of hunger. They couldn't survive there with out working.

The reason that I didn't have permission to do more programs was that the women do laundry, they get nine Bolivianos for twelve pieces. From these nine Bolivianos the police take some money. But they don't have permission to take that money. They told about it on the radio so everybody knew about it. So they put the woman who told about that into solitary confinement, there was a big scandal, and I lost my permission–no more radio programs.

You could go there. If you know someone you could go without any permission and say that you are scheduled to visit so-and -so and you would see, they have built a little society inside. But they have two showers for a hundred and sixty women, and they pay for the shower. They have two kinds of spaces. They have a place to sleep, for that they don't have to pay. But then they get out into a big place for the whole day. In that big place many have built places to spend the day. To get one of them they have to pay. A woman who doesn't have one Boliviano doesn't have a place all day. Whatever they have is the product of their struggle. 

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