Otherness

Being a gringo in Bolivia means constantly being reminded of your otherness, difference, outsiderhood. I had a Religious Studies professor my freshman year of college who taught an amazing course on African American Religious Thought. During the semester he spent an inordinate amount of time jokingly repeating the mantra "raceclassgender... raceclassgender..." to drill into our heads the importance of these three factors in the pervasive power dynamics that determine a person's social, cultural, psychological, and physical realities living in the world. In Bolivia, I'm finding myself repeating his mantra to myself all the time, flabergasted by how obviously my white skin, male gender, and upper middle class US identity shape my daily experience here. What's more, my head is swimming with thoughts and observations about how identity is shaped and power operates in Bolivian society at large. I could probably be more articulate if I took more time to write, and I definitely have more to say on these issues, but for what it's worth, some ramblings:

Race

I see race primarily as a culturally-constructed concept used historically by elites (cultural and/or economic) to divide various groups of people from each other in order to maintain social control. Whether it's Europeans distinguishing between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda or rich U.S. whites maintaining their socioeconomic status by turning poor Irish and Italian immigrants against poor blacks, there's a long history of racism and white privilege all across the world. In Bolivia there's a complex and confusing set of quasi-racial identity issues, with white (or whiter) elite descendents of Spanish colonialists still working hard to distinguish themselves from the majority indigenous population, with self-identified Aymara communities bristling at the more general "indio" or "indigena" or even more broadly defined "campesino" designations used often in the media and even by the Morales government itself, which is of course challenging the traditional oligarchy by Evo's very public indigenous identity. And then, of course, there's the ubiquitous "gringo" traveler, me, with all of my proverbial baggage, wandering and shopping my way through the country, supporting an extensive tourism industry and reinforcing stereotypes wherever I go. Watching "Crash" several weeks ago after the Oscars, I was overwhelmed by how complex racial dynamics play out in the U.S., and how different the issues are here. I wonder what Bolivian audiences took away from the film?

Class

Bolivia has never had a middle class. The term "oligarchy" is used without sarcasm or irony to describe a distinct set of economically elite families who have controlled most of the nation's wealth for hundreds of years. Poverty is pervasive, but you can still spot the occasional shiny Hummer rolling through Sopocachi. In a society like Bolivia's, where the average wage is $3/day and millions still live a life of subsistence agriculture, eking out an altiplano living by harvesting quinoa and herding llamas, class is everything. It seems like more so than racial/ethnic identity, social movements are powered by class resentment and a sense of injustice at the lack of economic opportunities. There's a reason Evo's party is called the "movement towards socialism" and not the "indigenous people's party." Thinking about class in the U.S., what I keep coming back to is the backward slide Bush is pushing towards a highly stratified Bolivian-style economy where most of the wealth is concentrated in very few hands and the vast majority of people struggle to get by. Clearly we're not there yet, but being here in Bolivia, it's easier to imagine such an outcome maybe 15 or 50 years down the road.

Gender

Machismo is omnipresent in Latin America, and in many ways Bolivia is still a very traditional society. Women sell food in markets, men don't. Women take care of children, men don't. Homosexuality isn't talked about, except disparagingly. But on the other hand there's an openness and flexibility to gender roles, at least in the cities, that's refreshing. Lots of female students, lots of visible female leaders in government and elsewhere... this is no Taliban-backward culture, far from it! Even so, the lives of men and women in Bolivia occupy distinct cultural and economic spheres that seem more rigid than those at home, and my privilege as a man, in comparison with the vast majority of women I see and interact with here, is more apparent to me...