The Populist Chola: Cultural Mediation and the Political Imagination in Quillacollo, Bolivia

The Populist Chola: Cultural Mediationand the Political Imagination inQuillacollo, Bolivia

Introduction: Electoral Populism

Mere months after the unexpected death in March 1997 of CarlosPalenque, founder and leader of the populist CONDEPA {Conaenaa de Patrta)part), Remedios Loza, the party's new de facto leader and presidential candi-date, was left with the task of negotiating a coalition government with thepresident-elect, former dictator Hugo Banzer. Usually referred to by the presssimply as the "'Chola Remedios," in reference to her "traditional'' A\maracho/agatb of gathered skirts called thepolkra, Remedios Loza—like the formervice president and Aymara Indian Victor Hugo Cardenas—is a powerfultestament tothe newh vis-ible role of the"popular sec-tor" on the na-tional politicalscene. \nd ex-plicitly "popu-list" politicalp a r t i e sC O N D F P \and the L'CS(Unidad Civ teaSo It da ridad),have shownsurprising stay-ing power afterbursting onto

AbstractThis argument situates the "image" of the popular

woman in the emerging electoral context of Quillacollo,a Bolivian provincial capital. Even as "cholaf remainlargely shut out from regional political power, their ubiq-uitous image culturally mediates political access to thepopular sector for men. Hence authorities initiate tokeneconomic exchanges with cholas. both to participate in-timately in the popular cultural milieu, and to solidifytheir claims to personal roots in this world. This argu-ment examines the interrelated contexts of national struc-tural adjustment, regional development, the domesticeconomy, agricultural fiestas, and sexual conduct, as theseare "performed" within a regional folkloric calendar,that turn on the currency of the chola as a political "rootmetaphor." In turn, the role of the chola's image sug-gests limitations upon her status as historical actor.

Tht journal Imenuitt \nthmpolo \ 5(2):30-88 cop\ right C 3000, \mencan Anthropological Association

30 The Journal of Latin American Anthropology

Robert AlbroWheaton College

the Bolivian political landscape in the late 1980s.1 But despite Loza's highprofile political career, we should not hastily assume that political fortunes ofpopular women have recently improved significantly, as against their pastalmost total marginalization from national electoral politics. Rather, the "chola"(woman depollerd) is instead proving indispensable as political cultural capitalfor men, who are looking for avenues of legitimation in an increasingly popu-list climate. As we shall see, in the provincial context of Quillacollo a relation-ship with the chola's image is now a virtual prerequisite for male popularidentity. And this

image, it seems,has precludedmore direct po-litical participa-tion by womenin regional mu-nicipal politics(cf. Caero 1997).Why, then, hasthe chola provento be such vitalcultural capitalfor men?

Up untilPalenque's death,

CholaRemedios lenther charisma tothe solidification

ResumenEste argumento sitiia la "imagen" de la mujer popu-

lar en el contexto electoral emergente en Quillacollo, unacapital provincial boliviana. A pesar de que las "cholas"continuan privadas de poder politico regional, suomnipresente imagen media culturalmente el accesopolitico para hombres al sector popular. Por lo tanto,autoridades inician intercambios economicos simbolicoscon cholas, tanto para participar fntimamente en elambiente de cultura popular, como para solidificar susreclamos de rafces personales en este mundo. Esteargumento examina los contextos interrelacionados deajuste estructural nacional, desarrollo regional, laeconomia domestica, las fiestas agricolas, y la conductasexual, al ser desarrollados dentro de un calendariofolklorico regional, que usan politicamente la divisa dela chola como una "metafora de rakes." Por su parte, elpapel de la imagen de la chola sugiere limitaciones a suestado de actor social.

Identity Politics in Bolivia La Nueva of the 1990s 31

of Palenque's own populist career, constantly appearing with him publiclyand on his radio show. She skillfully acted both as social mediator and ascultural broker for her political patron, bridging the gap between the mestizopolitician and his largely Aymara constituency (Archondo 1991: 150-154),while herself remaining relatively powerless. As Burkett (1978) emphasized,during the early colonial period urban Andean women were already specialintermediaries, given their "intimate daily contact" with the society of theconquerors (typified by sexual relations between Spanish men and Andeanwomen) and the exclusiveness of their "direct relationship to both sides"(1978: 106) of colonial society. Interpreters of contemporary circumstanceshave also made much of the status of the woman de pollera as a hybridfemale of an "intermediate mixed race" (Seligmann 1989: 698). As such, sheis understood to be both a uniquely effective intermediary—bringing to-gether the intimate and the public, rural and urban, or indio and mestizo—aswell as a frequent buffer, defending largely powerless indigenous people fromthe abuses of the criollo patron (cf. Stephenson 1999: 16).

Across the many descriptions of cholas as intermediaries, they have beenmost often characterized as peripheral but key economic brokers, articulatingso-called traditional nonmonetized "peasant" economies with "capitalist"modes of production and markets (Seligmann 1989); or alternatively, pro-duction and consumption across spheres of exchange (Rivera 1996). Theyhave been identified specifically as linking the informal and formal econo-mies, and as a mechanism by which "surplus value is transferred" (Babb1985: 289; 1989) within the capitalist system, thereby connecting the produc-tion and distribution of goods by an "extension of women's household roles"(Babb 1989: 3) into the marketplace. And within this domestic environment,cholas have been viewed as the "dynamic nexus" of a diversified householdeconomy dispersed across space and types of social relations (Paulson 1996).Perhaps more than any other social category, the chola has been thought toconnect up the different parts of mixed Andean economies.

Cholas have also been associated with less obviously economic varietiesof cultural mediation, such as the destabilizing and ridiculing of reified na-tional "ethnic categories" (Seligmann 1993), the projection of a critical mar-gin of Andean alterity as against Western "modernity" (Stephenson 1999), the"managing of contrasting gender ideologies" (Miles 1992: 125), as well as thetemporary erasure of class distinctions and the maintenance of sites of par-ticular social communitas such as the chicheria (Rodriguez and Solares 1990).The chola has shown a considerable capacity to put up particular resistance toimposed social classifications, while demonstrating deft skill in navigatingamong them.


But in the tactics of recent Bolivian populist parties, it is this same richlydocumented historical potential as an intermediary that has transformed thechola into an omnipresent but static caricature of electoral propaganda. Thoughherself relatively powerless, her image has now become politically crucial formen, enlisted by them for the cause of negotiating a shared popular sensibilitybetween poUticos and their electorates. In the words of one folklorist in theprovincial capital of Quillacollo, "Men themselves have gone about creatingthe chola." Hence the Chola Remedios is perhaps only the most nationallyprominent of these engendered instruments of popular political mediation.But what, then, makes the chola such an effective instrument of mediationfor men in the current neoliberal democratic era?

The new political orientation of the "popular" in Bolivia has been signifi-cantly shaped by ongoing state-level reforms. Since 1982, Bolivia has wit-nessed the restoration of national "democratic" elections after an era of dic-tatorships which started in 1964. Governmental decentralization undertakenin 1985 has promoted a renewed and more intensely mutual investment be-tween regional politicians and their electorates. And, as of 1987, local elec-tions have been held for municipal officials as well. Decentralization wastaken still further in 1995 with the new Popular Participation Law, whichprovides municipalities with direct access to monies and greater autonomyover budgetary expenditures, while at the same time recognizing "indigenous"forms of corporate organization and political leadership.2 For the popularmasses, these reform measures have been applied in a context of extremeeconomic scarcity and the failure of traditional national politics to respondadequately to the minimal socioeconomic requirements of those hit hardestby the new neoliberal policies. Pervasive disillusionment with traditional par-ties enabled these new populist parties (in particular, CONDEPA and UCS)to forge a niche for themselves, galvanizing the electoral participation ofdiverse folks of so-called "humble origin" (de origen humilde). In short, in re-cent years regional cultural "traditions" (as folklorically articulated via populistparties) and a preoccupation with harsh economic realities have become un-expected political bedfellows.3

The political challenge for these new populist candidates has becomehow to claim membership in a category quite resistant to any straightforwarddefinition, "the people."4 In the populist case, it is this elusive relationship ofapparent cultural and social intimacy which legitimates regional politicos. Italso provides an understanding of at least one way that the diverse Bolivian"popular sector" is currently politically constituted as a "populist" electoralobject (for different recent discussions of the question of social intimacy,consult Berlant 1998; Herzfeld 1997; Lomnitz 1992). But this relationship of


intimacy is elusive insofar as there is no general "rule" defining it. And it isprecisely with regard to the political performance of intimacy where themediation of the chola's image has been most evident in Quillacollo's elec-toral process. The florid folkloric personality of the chola provides whatBerlant has called an "aesthetic of attachment" (1998: 285), readily availablefor politicos to use in making their case.

Given the often harsh effect of recent neoliberal reform, the most com-pelling political issue for popular sectors that have absorbed the greatest post-reform hardship remains relief from economic uncertainty. But, as suggested,the accompanying decentralizing measures have meant that specific regionaleconomies must rely more on whatever resources they might generate them-selves. In Quillacollo, this economic turn inward has translated into a renewedpolitical recognition of household economies as the single most decisive re-gional economic variable. This turn is in keeping with the long-term historyof the primacy of the diversified household as the basic economic unit in theregion (cf. Dandier 1987; Lagos 1994; Larson 1988; Paulson 1992, 1996). Toestablish their popular credentials, then, regional politicians strive to advertisetheir frequent engagement with this intimate arena of the extended family. Atthe same time, given the perceived failure and demagoguery of establishedpolitical parties, new populist options have purposefully distanced themselvesfrom the disenchantment with the historical platforms of both the politicalleft and right. Rather than one or another retreaded ideological option, partieslike the UCS have opted for a rhetoric of the common denominator, directappeal to the immediate needs of this demographically dominant and cultur-ally "traditional Andean" popular sector. To effectively position themselves as"from" this world, potential populist politicians combine a reinforced re-gionalist attitude with popular self-reference by seeking symbolic access tothe intimate household economy via specific regional cultural traditions asso-ciated with this productive domain.

In Quillacollo the chola's image is a ready means for accomplishing thisend. In the words of regional politicians and folklorists, the chola is a "basicsymbol," a "symbol of the valley," and the "engine of man." It is often saidthat out of pride the "real" chola never changes her costume; she never switchesto modern dress over the pollera. She thus literally embodies the regionalintransigence of "tradition"5 itself in her unmistakable "social skin" (T. Turner1980). At the same time, the chola provides unique access as the critical link tokey locations of the regional economy, in her incarnations as: market woman,agriculturalist, chichera, and bulwark of the household economy. These mul-tiple roles of the chola define the parameters of engagement with a regionalmicro-political economy. As will become apparent, through these overlap-


ping roles the woman de pollera literally embodies traditional regional no-tions of economic "productivity" and "exchange"; and in so doing she en-ables social "reproduction." She is what makes male popular identity in theregion (at least symbolically) possible, and is thus a populist linchpin of thepost-reform economic context. Hence, politicians make constant public ref-erence to the valiant efforts of the woman de pollera as a way to suggest thatthey themselves are also from humble origins, which implies that their moth-ers (or grandmothers, or great-grandmothers) are/were de pollera as well.6

The emphasis upon a female ancestor de pollera is critically marked in thedaily sentiments voiced by male political authorities in Quillacollo about theirmothers and motherhood, and in contrast to their fathers. The earnestness ofthe celebration of Mother's Day suggests that even as adults these men ex-press a strong attachment to their mothers. By way of contrast, in the major-ity of cases they hardly know their fathers. Many fathers either passed away orleft for good while the son was still young, often on the basis of an acrimo-nious relation with the mother, and so are no longer present in the house.Also, in Cochabamba's lower valley, fathers frequently migrate, or have pro-fessions (such as transporter of agricultural goods) that keep them away fromhome for long stretches of time. Politicos' feelings about their fathers are thushighly ambivalent and often concealed,7 while the stalwart role played by theirmother is often publicly praised.

I knew adult men with families of their own, who routinely ate meals atthe nearby houses of their mothers, instead of with their wives and children.In Quillacollo, it is common for politicos to insist that their mothers still wearthe pollera "with pride," as does this local leader while relating his life history:"I have campesino roots...I'm inclined to women de pollera...I feel very proudthat my mother is de pollera. I walk with a strut (me pavoneo) when out withher." Men often offer testimony of the selfless and dogged persistence oftheir mothers, in the face of adversity, to provide for them as children. Evenin several cases I encountered where mothers had been abusive toward them,as adults these men insisted they held no grudge, maintained a relationship,and claimed to "understand" that difficult conditions or even simple igno-rance explained such behavior. Finally, whether with hostile, comical, or sup-portive intent, political rivals or allies often use short descriptions of eachother's mothers as sufficient for identifying their class or ethnic standing. Ca-sual conversations often produce such observations as: "Sure so-and-so's ateacher, but he's of campesino origin. I saw his mother once,...a fat, swarthywoman, with the pollera" (gordita, morenay depollerd)" And local cultural activ-ists use just such a synecdochic logic when referring to popular culture in theabstract: "We think about the cholitas"; or simply, "So-and-so is from the


pollera."But speaking of the Bolivian case, Silvia Rivera has insisted that it is not

enough simply to account for the gender of "native" women in politicaldiscourse. Such women instead must be able to realize their own historicalagency as active "subjects," and not simply as rhetorical objects of state action(1996: 24). In Quillacollo over the last decade a regional cultural movementhas sought just that: to revalorize a stigmatized popular cultural milieu.8 Themembers of this movement have repositioned the chola as an active agentand as a positive basis upon which a regional quillacolleno identity might rest. Inthe rhetoric and activities of this cultural movement, the regional chola isviewed as a local protagonist making cultural history, rather than as simply apassive object and victim. The cultural proselytizing of this movement hashad its influence upon the regional populist arena. In lieu of explicit politicalideologies and platforms, local activism has promoted such popular culturallogic where the woman de pollera fulfills her role as the traditional mediatorbetween such venues as the household, the fields, the market, and the chicheriaas a validation of the region's unique "patrimony."9

Nevertheless, control of these increasingly prevalent regional images oftraditional women have continued to elude the grasp of these women them-selves. Why do these images, essential for men, remain significantly beyondwomen's control? In part, this political fact can be traced to continuities be-tween the recent positive revaluation of the popular (and the primary roleplayed by the chola's image in this process) and a preexistent regional corpusof "indigenist" writing and thinking upon which these contemporary imagestacitly rely. As will become apparent, even amidst the positive revaluation ofthe woman de pollera by a cultural movement whose members are them-selves of "humble origins," her attributed role in the mediation of the popu-lar has its roots in a folkloric discourse characteristic of a bygone economiccontext of agrarian feudalism. In this now out of context and anachronisticmid-century idiom, the popular sector and indigenous women in particularlack significant access to a political voice. And yet it is this cultural structure ofasymmetry (as encoded in a regional indigenist project) that gives regionalshape to the current possibilities for the circulation of the chola's image.10

Regional populism has become a prevalent strategy for electoral successas part of an ongoing national process of "neoliberal democratization" whichhas indirectly promoted a renewed public investment in the cultural and eco-nomic venues associated with the chola. Here I explore the male politicalimagination in Quillacollo, as focused upon the cultural features attributed tothe regional woman de pollera.11 In their significantly folklorized politicaldealings with cholas, men hope to take advantage of these women's intimate


brokerage of popular cultural and economic spaces. 1 view this trucking in"name images of women as a political strategy of populist legitimation inthe regional context. \nd the political intersection of economic and popularcultural strategies is most apparent in the development context, where politicosregularly stage token interaction with the popular sector. These tokens mosttypically take the rorm of male leaders publicly 'delivering" development aidand domestic goods to cholas, who are treated as the traditional representa-tives of the household. But, 1 argue, in terms of political capital, such transac-tions are in fact between men, exchanging the legitimating potential they them-seh es hav e largely encoded in the image of the woman de pollera. 1 giveparticular attention, then, to the various ways that the new regional politicaleconomy of development reflects the emergent mediatory electoral role ofthe "populist chola" for male political identity.1

An Engendered Development Politics

Just prior to local elections in the town of Quillacollo, it is hard to ignorethe profusion of colorful electoral propaganda amid the dirt and cobble-stone streets of the colonial center. Such propaganda is usually painted orposted by groups of young party 'members ' {militantei) under cover of

darkness, often on ancientadobe walls. Posters arehurriedly slapped overstorefronts and private resi-dences, even against theowners'wishes. Accompa-nying typical campaign slo-gans such as "el candidate delas manos limpios, the pro-paganda feature both "re-gionalist" and "popularimages. Common imagesinclude: the Church of SanIldefonso, which housesthe international!} renowned image of the Vir-gin of Urkupiria, ceramicputibs, used in the elabora-

Fig. 1. 1993 Political graffitti in Quillacollo with the ttOn a n d s t o r i n £ of chdhi,chola's stovepipe hat. a traditional brew of fer-

Identity Politics in Bolivia LA Nueva of the 1990s 37

mented corn; the regionally symbolic molle tree, expressing ecological con-cerns; and most common of all, a cholita, with her typical stovepipe hat, ear-rings, braids, tassels, pollera, and a provocatively seductive expression. Withthis ubiquitous and idealized semblance of the cholita, parties hope to over-come a "native" distrust of politicians among the popular voting classes.These images are also meant to be visual projections of regional candidates'own past. A candidate's populist status significantly depends upon a self-identity which includes immediate female ancestors, ideally the mother, whoare themselves de pollera.

Given the new electoral exigencies of regional politics in Bolivia, whereentire local populations can, for the first time, elect their own municipal offi-cials, these images would seem to court the vote of a demographically domi-nant but historically disenfranchised population—the popular sector, morespecifically, the popular woman, even more specifically, the woman de pollera,with her conspicuously autocthonous dress style. And yet, conversations withpolitically active women de pollera suggest that they are not taken in by suchelection's-eve notoriety. When interviewed, leaders of the regional Federationof Mothers' Clubs claimed the image of the cholita to be pure "politicalpropaganda," a superficial device to imply a phantom political following. Intheir words, such images are a "manipulation" (manipuleo), "humiliating," anddesigned to "confuse people." Political parties, they noted, want to refer totheir "ancestors" in order to project an image as an "authentic Creole party,"that is "native to this place." Ironically, these de pollera leaders in fact concurwith male politicos, themselves, claiming that politicos merely wish to projecta "populist" image. These women are acutely aware of the ways that theirimage has been split off from cholas themselves by parties for self-servingelectoral ends.

Both men and women have also recognized that the ubiquitous image ofthe chola cochabambina (the regionally specific variant of the woman de pollera,the "qhochala" or livallunaiT) is doubly problematic, since a large portion of thecholas living and working in the town and environs are from elsewhere, andsport a slightly different costume featuring a bowler rather than stovepipehat. The desired electoral effect—to convince certain voters that the chola isbeing taken into account in the new populist politics—might backfire in thiscase, instead adding to a regionalist chauvinism alienating to the many high-land and Aymara-speaking migrants.

But as one leader of a mother's club {club de madres) jokingly put it, oncethe elections are over, "They forget us. It's like (a married man) seeking out hissweetheart {novid)V This comment, humorously tossed off by a female leaderas a paraphrase of taken-for-granted political realities of exploitation, is tell-


ing for several reasons. In politics, goes the implication, men come to womenonly in the short term and for immediate gratification. Politics are equatedallegorically with the love affair (aventura amoroso). From the point of view ofpolitically active women and wives, the electoral courting of women is like aman's adultery. The relation of the sweetheart to the husband is illicit, covert,risky, notorious, unreliable, based on self-interest, and temporary. In recog-nized contrast to the long-term commitment of marriage, with its obligatoryembeddedness in a public landscape of social relations, the love affair is anephemeral and socially quite invisible relationship. In fact, from the male pointof view, the skills of intrigue and deception used in "womanizing" (variouslyreferred to as negrear, chokar, or k'a/inchear), vis-a-vis concealment from gossipand from the wife, are quite similar to the strategic duplicity often required inpolitics.13 The comment thus further alludes to the seamy underbelly of "cor-rupt" political intrigue, which Bolivians typically refer to as "creole politics"{lapolitica criolld).

The local allegory of politics as love affair evokes a comparison with theearly colonial situation in the Andes, where the mestizo de sangre (person ofmixed race) appeared as the offspring of the often unwilling "sexual service"provided the colonizing Spaniards by Andean women (Rivera 1993: 62; seealso Burkett 1978; Silverblatt 1987). At the start of the colonial era in the 16thand early 17th centuries, such unions violated a social hierarchy that elevatedthe "Hispanic" and subordinated the "Indian" race (that is, the "racial mes-tizo"). But in contemporary Quillacollo they have become the very "creole"basis for the political affirmation of a desirable popular identity.14 And "na-tive" women, it seems, are all too aware of the form of their paradoxicalpolitical impotence. While their image has become vital to the political goingson, "legitimate" female political actors are, nevertheless, usually displaced bythe cultural capital of their own image in the workings of the regional politi-cal process.

Despite such open cynicism, women still have dealings with political par-ties. The acute need felt by regional politicos to carry the "Woman's Vote" isexpressed in another more concrete and time honored tradition of regionalpolitical parties—the giving of "gifts," usually food staples, or so-called "ar-ticles of first necessity," meant for use in the home. Typically, these are quan-tities of flour, rice, cooking oil, or combinations of these given as a basket offoodstuffs {alimentos), or on occasion, clothes and kitchen appliances. At theregional level, parties establish a foothold through a local male leader, whouses personal contacts—often his wife or female relatives—to organize localwomen's groups. Such gifts are then given to these women, members of aspecific barrio or mother's club, during programmed political rallies (k 'arakus).


These rallies also usually involve the distribution and consumption of chicha,amidst much political rhetoric, while politicos emphasize the "principal roleof the woman as the family base."15 In the context of widespread domesticeconomic hardship, exacerbated by the MNR's neoliberal policy since 1985,such basic foodstuffs do offer much needed and welcome, if occasional,relief. Indeed, as people strive to earn their daily bread {elpan de cada did), suchbiannual political gifts have come to form a calculated part of many increas-ingly diversified household economies in Cochabamba's lower valley. Savvyfamily providers might even be able to take advantage of the largesse ofmultiple parties at once during the several months that the regional campaignlasts. In a sense, then, political parties and popular women use each other.

Of course local leaders of women's clubs are not really seduced by such"largesse." As these women de pollera explained, "The parties only give...whenthe elections are near. Once the elections are passed, they give nothing of theoffer made." Or, if the parties actually do deliver the goods, they are in"minimum quantities." In fact, "never have they given in large quantities, norat the level of the federation." In order to show support for a local authority,parties often hold k'arakus where people are encouraged to attend "withthreats or with the offering of foodstuffs." In such cases, "the people gowithout knowing why they are going." As these regional leaders de polleramake explicit, for parties the gift giving is obviously a self-serving and piece-meal strategy, offering scarce tangible benefit for families. Little different fromdirect coercion, such offers are rarely reciprocal in nature. And for this rea-son, these gifts are interpreted as representing the virtual opposite of socialintimacy—one-sided and anonymous intrusions by extra-local figures.

Grass-roots and opposition leaders, men and women alike, often con-temptuously label such gifts prebendas, a word virtually synonymous with pub-lic political "bribe." At least since an earlier "populist" moment—the en-trenchment of the MNR political party in power after the 1952 Revolution—this practice of electoral gift giving {prebendalismo) to the popular masses hasbeen the standard modus operandi. And it is a practice rooted in much olderestablished cultural expectations in the region between patron and peon, where,for example, food and cigarettes were usually supplied by a hacendado andthen prepared by the wives of field hands for the traditional saqrahora duringplanting or harvest. Yet, this practice is still routinely cited in editorials of theregional newspaper as an important indication of the thorough corruption(politica criolla) of the Bolivian political system, now more than ever basedon the political party as the primary mediating agent between civil society andthe general populace. One disillusioned former participant in local politicalactivities aptly described the prebendalismo of distributing noodles, cooking


oil, sugar, rice, and so forth, as a case of politicos "hiding beneath the gathersof women's skirts." Nevertheless, there is in fact substantial cultural ambiva-lence over the issue of the prebenda in part because, as a cultural activity, itseems to resemble much more acceptable and established practices. I want tomention only two here.

On the one hand, the prebenda could be and has been viewed as a recog-nized sort of exchange relation expressing the well-known "Andean principleof redistribution and reciprocity" (Medina 1992), along with comparableforms of community or family self-help practices, such as ayni and mink'a. Ina more general sense, such practices of exchange are typical of how socialrelations are managed in many other arenas. The local cult of the Virgin ofUrkupina is a case in point, in which devotees make a "promise" to the Virginwith a yearly ch'alla (libation), accompanied by food and drink. In exchange,devotees hope the Virgin will grant them mostly material well-being, such asa new truck or house or, perhaps, an academic degree. In this case, displayingsound Andean logic, local politicos exchange basic foodstuffs for neededpolitical capital, the guaranteed vote of the regional popular sector. Theyhope to "influence" the popular sector in a way not dissimilar to devotees'propitiations of the Virgin with food and drink, designed to appease heroften "capricious" behavior.16 The prebenda seems in keeping with the new"democratic" spirit developing in Bolivia since the end of the Banzer regimein 1977, in which an implicit equation is often drawn between the erasure ofdictatorship and the reassertion of at least superficially more egalitarian, andtime honored, "native" values, which preceded it (or, in indigenist thinking,underwrite it).

On the other hand, relations between popular women and civil societyhave for some time been publicly constituted via similar forms of "exchange"with national or local government, or national and international NGOs (cf.Sandoval and Sostres 1989: 109-145). And in fact, through their gift-givingpolitical parties take on the attributes of NGOs. As well, NGOs are, notsurprisingly, often small fiefdoms of political parties themselves. A case inpoint would be the local program started during the UDP era and the severeeconomic crisis in 1984-1985 of delivering scarce basic foodstuffs in bulk tolocal civic organizations, such as the regional federation of "neighborhoodclubs" (Juntas vednaks), to be distributed to the population by several anointed"provisions committees." More contemporary is the case of the "food forwork" program (alimento por trabajo), organized by CARITAS. This Catholiccharities program was inaugurated in 1986 on the heels of the MNR's neweconomic policy. Its stated goal is to provide a "palliative" to the "familybasket" (canasta familiar) by mobilizing the available "unutilized" and "un-


skilled" workforce—primarily women—to work on public projects. Ratherthan cash, these women work in exchange for quantities of wheat flour,bulgar wheat, corn cooking oil, rice, sugar and salt.

As a result of recent governmental decentralization, CARITAS now worksdirectly with local municipalities (a/ca/di'as), who in turn actually distribute thefoodstuffs to the mostly de pollera workforce. Since approximately 1985,the local municipality has become the primary institutional medium of re-gional development, replacing the national government and internationalNGOs. In Quillacollo, such food distribution programs have come to forma part of the alcaldia's own program of "self-help" {auto-ayuda), where com-munity organizations contribute both financial and labor support for devel-opment projects (pbras) in their barrios. Women's groups themselves usuallydo the work, in a way reminiscent of traditional practices of communallabor (faena), such as the yearly cleaning of irrigation ditches, or the agriculturalharvest. And municipal authorities view these economic and cultural goals ascoinciding with traditional Andean practice. A member of the mayor's staffequated this "self-help" program with an "Inca socialism" of the popularimagination, rooted in the ayllu (a traditional ethnic federation based on kin-ship), and reflecting the Andean institution of ayni, the exchange of equiva-lents. In practice, this relation can easily become one of patronage, a politicalcarrot, between the party or parties in control of the alcaldia and women'sgroups.

In contrast, CARITAS officials tend to view such projects in apoliticalterms as promoting the "welfare of the family," and these women's own"communal" identity. One CARITAS representative described to me the typi-cal practice of the "communal cooking pot" (plla comunal), where womenprovide shared food and child care for each other during such work projects.This image of the popular woman, with an implicit emphasis upon her lackof professional skills and primary role in the family, is reproduced in local,including female, representations of the chola or cholita. While a distrust ofpolitical propaganda that uses the chola is evident among women in the town,women de pollera still appear willing to risk self-caricature by engaging inexchange relations with political parties based on these same propagandisticimages. This suggests that cholas are willing to be defined in such terms undersome circumstances, such as for short-term economic gain. Rather than sim-ply treating these development exchanges in typical top-down clientelistic terms,we can view them as strategic maneuvers by women employing the diversi-fied logic of the household economy.

The sudden success of the UCS party in the province, beginning in 1988,can be largely credited to its usage of the cultural logic of reciprocity and


redistribution, typified by the fact of prebendas (cf. Medina 1992: 183-187).As Max Fernandez, its maximum leader, explained: "We aren't giving anygifts. On the contrary, we are returning to the community the feeling that itoffers us, the affection that it gives us, transformed into material works, sothat the pueblo can enjoy it as we enjoy the sustenance and faith that it offersus" (quoted in Mayorga 1991: 84). A sign of the popular, this is the logic ofsaint supplication turned around, with Don Max taking the role of the Virgin.The establishment of both publicized and unpublicized exchange relations,characterized by a flow of basic household staples to popular women, is oneamong several absolutely fundamental current party strategies. This is not truejust of the UCS, though it is perhaps best epitomized in the successful groundswell harnessed by this party in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The local story of the UCS began when, in the words of one local partymember, Don Max "began giving his little gifts everywhere," concentratingparticularly on mothers' clubs.17 At the same time, he was still merely just thehead of the national brewery, and "no one thought that he was going to arma party." It was important that he be able to use the pretext of "generosity" asa non-politico before sallying forth into the political arena. But he was stillobtaining a high profile—as a friend joked, "rising quickly like the foam on abeer!" One day two high-level employees of the brewery simply showed upat a meeting of the town council, saying, "We want to do something forQuillacollo." They brought along a new Toyota, a gas stove, a refrigerator, aSony color T. V, and a "pile of kitchenware." These were given away in araffle, with the car "miraculously" going to the brother of the eventual partychief. Don Max also provided public lighting for the stretch of road leadingfrom the town to the Virgin's chapel, a project inaugurated during her fiesta.The inauguration included a "misa to the Virgin."

Between these initial provincial contacts and the official founding of thenew party in October of that year (see Mayorga 1991: 55-80 for a fulleraccount), the gifts kept coming. More community-level gifts were given withthe same pomp, timed to coincide with important public events. These in-cluded a roof for the town's stadium, several water wells and playing fieldsfor marginal zones, as well as a promise to build a larger bridge across theSapinku river for Urkupina's pilgrims. Less pomp accompanied smaller giftsgiven to specific mother's clubs, such as bags of cement, bricks, kitchen appli-ances, and cooking staples. These gifts were incorporated into the basic cam-paign strategy of the UCS in the province, as carried out by the party's cadreof regional leaders (of course, using party funds). This was in fact a keystrategy to recruit provincial-level leadership, using a regional idiom ofclientelism. Finally, wherever Don Max went, he exhibited impressive per-


sonal largesse, providing food, chicha, and beer in large amounts.18 On handfor the Fiesta of Urkupina, which has become an important campaign stopfor national politicians in recent years, I watched his entourage constantlyrunning cases of Pacena beer to the frenzied crowd on Max's signal. "Drink-ing to the Virgin," sometimes to excess, is of course a key aspect of theactivities of her "faithful" supplicants. This effort culminated in a decisivevictory for the UCS in the 1989 local elections.

Though a successful party strategy typically directed toward female do-mesticity, many politically active women strongly feel the prebenda is in factdirectly contrary to their best interests as a block. The case of one erstwhilepolitical activist is instructive here. This young woman de vestido (in "Westerndress") was enticed into politics through her efforts teaching the Catholiccatechism to women from nearby rural zones. As a woman and a youngcommunity leader who was "known," a political party asked her to workdirectly in this same zone to help facilitate the "participation of the woman"in the party. Taking this as a sincere request, she earnestly began her laboramong the wives of "active party militants of humble origin from peripheralbarrios." She focused upon obtaining sanitary posts, sex education, and ageneral consciousness-raising about key provincial issues. Witnessing her suc-cess in galvanizing the interest of the women, the party leaders themselvessoon began to pay attention. In their turn, they immediately promised that theparty would "provide clothes, appliances, articles of first necessity, and attimes, cash," in exchange for loyalty to the party. For the activist, this proveda great disappointment. She saw the immediate positive reaction on the partof the local women she had been working with, and soon understood that"they in fact expected such material gifts from the party." She saw that "therewas no clear conception on the part of women." And when she strove toformalize a "secretary of the woman" within the local party structure, sheencountered grave difficulties and recalls the many fruitless "clashes againstthe machismo of the companeros." Frustrated and disillusioned, she eventu-ally gave up, and now no longer participates in the party. She summarized theparticipation of the party leaders as "very strategic, astute, and jealous of theirinfluence."

The direction of prebenda exchange, always from national and regionalpoliticians to local women, is a sign of the asymmetrical political relations ofthe genders (and a contemporary reflection of the cultural structure of asym-metry encoded in regional indigenist writing). Women are always the passive"objects" of political action, typified as the publicly grateful "receivers" ofmale political largesse. This fact is most obviously demonstrated in the very"objectification" of the chola's image itself.


Chola Incarnations: Fields, Fiestas, and Folklore

As a kind of regional "native" woman, the chola's image has recentlysurfaced as a basic output of the entangled discourses of cultural identity,populist politics, and economic development in Quillacollo. She articulates ajuncture between emergent "neoliberal democratic" realities and a preexistentregional folkloric idiom. As the literal embodiment of a definite set of no-tions about "gender" and "tradition," the chola points to the thorough inter-weaving of "ideology" and "political economy" in regional political practice(cf. Friedrich 1989). This, then, begins to explain the indispensability of thechola as regional political "cultural capital" (cf. Bourdieu 1984: 31).19 Forquillacollenos, the chola is emblematic of the peculiarities of women's power,but more importantly, of the uniquely local political culture. In the words oflocal men, she "represents the human being in this place," "the nucleus of thefamily and of society," and "the process of consolidating our cultural roots."She is a contemporary reminder of a past economic context still salient asfolkloric idiom.

In fact, as a critical mediating agent and regional "native" woman, thechola has been the object of a regional process of root metaphoricization.20

As we shall see, the contours of the chola trope take shape across an array ofrhetorical and folkloric expression, including: political propaganda, direct dia-logue with politicos, journalistic polemics, participation in fiesta and festiveevents, public municipal exhibits, traditional word play, and regional indigenistwriting. The sum total of this cultural production represents a corpus of malewriting and thinking about the chola, linking the past and the present, but atthe expense of cholas' own voices in their political self-definition.

In what follows, I highlight several incarnations of the chola in fiestas, thehome, romance, and the fields. These outline her folkloric attributes, typecastas controlling matriarch, aggressive market woman, tireless agriculturalist, andpotentially subversive sexual object. Together, these incarnations, frequentlyoverlapping and co-present, amount to a durable and synthetic ideal popularimage,21 linked to agriculture, itself a fast disappearing economic resource.The political value of this image is that cholas are not supposed to changesocial status or class. Often commented upon, this folkloric reading depictsthe pollera as a conscious act of choice, as a cultural stance against modernity.An older woman de vestido once instructed me on this fact about the chola.As she explained, "The chola is very moral. She is never moved in argumentsbetween husband and wife. She loves and marries among her own kind."This truism was distilled in the saying, "La ra^a se abra^a" (that is, "Each raceembraces itself").22 In contrast, she added, the cho/o, the chola's male counter-


part, is not nearly as intransigent. He was dismissed in our discussion with animpatient wave of the hand, "The cholo has no loyalty." For this very reason,viable political careers for men, I suggest, depend upon the stability and avail-ability of this image as a popular root metaphor and political object. A legiti-mating metaphoric figure, the chola provides typically socially mobile politicoswith a means to publicize their supposed engagement with the often publiclyinvisible and intimate features of regional popular culture, including those ofpeoples' livelihoods, the home, the body, and sex.

The Chola as Mother and Matriarch

In an article originally appearing in a monograph authoritatively titledBolivian Cultural Anthropology, published by the anthropologist Mario MontanoAragon (himself familiar with Quillacollo), the "matriarchal chola" is de-scribed as:

Generally dedicated to lucrative commercial or business activities: sellerof food, and agricultural produce, butcher, called "manasa" in theCochabamba valley, and chichera; in a modern version one finds theseller of illegal contraband who, upon the lack of sources of income forher husband, works to maintain the home.

This situation of supplementary work in order to attend to the family'sneeds, done by the woman, gradually moves her to become the personwho decides what is best in the house and for her children. Along withthis she controls the house finances completely. And the logical outcomeis that the husband is relegated to the role of assistant or inferior.

The commitment of the matriarch to her own family is enormous; themembers of the husband's family are treated very diplomatically, if notwith cold courtesy or even rejection.

Her role as a dominant woman obligates her because her children mustreceive "the best" of society, principally hispano-criollo society. And shespares no effort or expense in order to obtain it. If she has daughters,they will not have to wear the pollera, and she will aspire to give them aneducation in the best schools. This is carried to such extremes that shemight sacrifice her social personality, disappearing from the panoramaof relations of her children so as not to threaten their possibilities forascent, embarrassing them with her presence (1977: 195-196).


In contrast to the evident visibility of the pollera, here we encounter theinvisibility of the chola's particular skills, as a facilitator of social careers, oftenbeginning with those of her own family and at her personal expense. Theenergy of the matriarchal chola makes her a vital "middleman." In turn,regional poh'ticos trade on the pollera's very visibility to remind a potentialconstituency of the ostensibly invisible role of women de pollera in their ownlives (as having come from within the popular sectors). In so doing, theymake the chola's intimate politics of the home a public part of their owncultural identities.

The sentiment of the chola as controlling the household economy is par-ticularly illustrated through her use of language, rather than through her directauthority, as suggested in Silvia Rivera's recent account of the cholacochabambina:

In contemporary talk among male and female friends of the rural orurban middle classes, the informal reference to a Cochabamba 'matriar-chy' is unanimous. This is expressed in the mode that women of thepopular and middle class strata control their men through exuberant en-dearments, which include Quechua diminutives, and an abundant andvaried regional cuisine (1996: 30; translation mine).

Peredo Beltran's analysis of chola market women in La Paz makes a similarpoint: "In terms of men, or their husbands, the women interviewed developself-images as independent and maternal, with the power of decision, a cer-tain sense of emancipation and capacity to cut off their husband" (1992: 150;see also Paulson 1996; 104-107). In this romanticized view, the matriarchalchola is of more account than her male counterpart precisely because shecontrols—as an essential economic and linguistic broker—vital (though typi-cally invisible) productive networks of social relations.

Not surprisingly, in regional folklore there is a close association betweenthe roles of the chola as "mother" and in agricultural "productivity." Herproductivity is metaphorically both "economic" and "fertile" in nature. Ameasure of the importance of Mother's Day are the poems read aloud bychildren as part of the municipality's public commemoration. The followingrepresentative sample, "Asies mi main" (Such is My Mother), was written bya school child, and plays extensively on a transformational theme between


polleras and fertile agricultural fields:

She wears the pollera,A shawl and sap'anas (braids),With a face the color of wheat,And teeth white as the corn.

She's from the campo,She comes from the wild flowers,From the smell of garlic,From the bittersweet taste of the quince-tree.

Her pollera,made from green onion.Her blouse, from peach flowers.Her strength: of corn and wheat.

Her sandals, of leather,her feet, dirty from working the earth,her hands, callused...But firm as the poplar trees!

She has a gift, my mother,which multiplies with the potatoes, the bread,with nourishment,to satisfy my hunger.

She's affectionate one moment,and severe the next.She speaks to me in the exquisite idiomof her ancestors,but also in the sour idiomof vulgar men.

Such is my mother!Tender as the rose,strong as a rock,soft as the breeze,but also with the ire of the gusty wind.


Such is m\ mother!With pollera and sap'anas,face the color of wheat.But, as beautiful as the flowers of thecottonwood [PS 1).

Whether good poetn or not, this is agood example of the pastoral anthro-pomorphized in the identity of thechola, now focused upon the pollera,and as equated with the visible agricul-tural landscape. In similar fashion, pa-tron saints can be both male and fe-male. Mam attributes of thePachamama, and specificallyQuillacollo's Virgin of I rkupiiia (par-

Fig. 2. A chola cochabambina in Quillacollo s ticularly her penchant for "punish-camival carrying corn stalks. ments," if crossed) are also culturally

"male."J" Along these lines, the matriarchal chola subsumes a gender"complementarity," suggested b\ her typical association with a variety ofmasculine traits, which are ironically essential to her productive success.-4 Theseinclude her market aggressiveness, her capacify for work and, as this poem implies,her linguistic mastery of a largely culturally male Quechuariol idiom.

Perhaps nowhere do the various ele-ments of this image better coincide thanin an extended description of provincialCarnaval, celebrating the impending bountiful harvest, which appears in Medinacelt'snational folkloric classic, IM ChaskanamQuechua: starry or velvet-e\ed cholita

parts of which were first published in 1929,and from which I will quote at length:

For days the youth of San Javierworriedly fretted over {curcuteaba,from the Quechua: knrk.ny, to worn,to harass) the preparat ions for Fig. 3 The masculine chola: \oung man

Carnaval. This was the occasion m t h o l a dra& at ca rmva l

Identity Politics in Bolivia La Nuc\ <t of the 1990s 49

where excess was indulged, the world and its rules forgotten, celebratingto the glorious god Momo, which there should have been called the godMona {borrachera, drunken revelry), given the excess to which the men,and in no less measure, the women, were moved. In San Javier it was atime when no one, even the infirm, got by without at least moving theirlips (to drink): everyone, willing or no, was obliged to participate in thefandango, but above all, the element of the town traditionally called the"cholitas," those who best moved their hips and most often waved theirhandkerchiefs [that is, they danced the cueca, a traditional creole dancedescribed by quillacollenos as dramatizing an "amorous conquest," a "flir-tation" {coqueteo)].

These cholitas worked year round in order to compete in the days ofCarnaval, in their luxurious lambskin leggings, and in the elegance of theirpolleras and ample shawls. It was an almost liturgical point of honor thatthese cholitas should unveil a completely new outfit, from the blouse tothe shoes, during the eight days that the constant dancing lasted, fifteendays in extreme cases.

Each social class had its place for its dances and feasts...the last, the highestlevel, was that of the "cho/as decentes" (cholas of the town), who, due tothe particular circumstances of the place, enjoyed the greatest control{mandd) over the men. Because of the chola decente's economic fortitude,she had more money; she managed the town's economy and commerceat a level equal to that of the cocanis (cholas of the highlands). She bought,sold, bartered, and traveled to the nearby mines, carrying the region'sproducts, and products from Oruro, and then returned with goods to fillthe shelves of her store. She was a market genius, and, at least in the ruralhamlet, and in the home, the person who directed the domestic economy.

While their husbands and lovers—tailors, cobblers, shirt makers, or in themajority of cases, layabouts without a job or positive attribute, passedthe time arguing over politics and drinking chicha in the hovels (chujllas)and chicherias of the outskirts of town, the women courageously con-quered league upon league, tirelessly following their beasts of burden,challenging the dangers of the fords and the rigors of the storms, and insum, fighting energetically for life. To live in San Javier de Chirca was tolive in an authoritarian matriarchy. These cadcas (adapting cacique, female"strong men") were the cholitas, with control over everything, and deci-sive influence in the poh'tica criolla (Medinaceli 1981: 104-105; translation


mine).

This account becomes a paean to the "matriarchal" woman de pollera (asboth market woman and mother), in her productive mode. Medinaceli's novel,still a standard part of the Bolivian public school curriculum, equates thetraditional provincial Carnaval with the chola. Quillacollenos in fact some-times use the term 'Chaskanawi to refer to a particularly striking cholita.Here again it is the chola, and in particular her costume, that animates theframe of the fiesta. In Medinaceli's panegyrics, she is also intimatel} associ-ated with the chicheria, as we shall see, a regional space of political mediationpar excellence. The chola in fact indirectly defines the contexts of politicalintrigue. As represented in the folkloric fiestas, it is precisely this "traditional"productivity which mediates the political engagement of provincial men, whomake frequent rounds of the chichenas, by way of a ''matriarchal" but mas-culine creole politics.

The very aggressive independence of this folkloric matriarchal chola, as akey regional metaphor, serves as a timeh reminder of regional political au-tonomy during an era of decentralization. But, at the same time, Medinaceli'swriting is a suspect inspiration for anyregional revaluation of chola identitysince his novel, written in the mid-cen-tury indigenist style and as part of acorpus of so-called "national" litera-ture, sought to assimilate the "Indian"to a national discourse of mesti^aje.This use of such blatand\ indigenistchola themes in Quillacollo's contem-porary political campaigning is an ex-ample of what Paulson and Calla (thisvolume) refer to as

"transversalization.""

The Cholita as Erotic Object

The chola is also an essential pro-tagonist of the more performative tra-ditions of regional folklore. In herincarnation as a "cholita,""0 she is in

. i i • i j - • i Hie. 4. Young mestiza posing as a cholitatimately associated with traditional b c

5 , r. as part of a caporalcs fraternity,patronal fiestas, as well as increasingly


Fig. 5. "Real cholas' from a morenadasfraternity practicing for Urkupina.

frequent regional folkloric festivals. Themtrada of folkloric dance groups during the fiesta of I rkupina features a va-riety of dances which evoke Andean cul-tural practice. Perhaps most notable arethe groups of mostly city girls who don1'nnni-polkras" to dance in the popular

caporaks fraternities. But "real" cholas alsoparticipate in large numbers as well,mostly in the more traditional morenadas.These mini-polleras, usually worn bywomen who are normally de vestido,are festive costume versions of the "ev-en day pollera, for folkloric purposestreated as ' native Andean dress. Some

female fraternity organizers feel that thistrend toward increasingly mini mini-

polleras is little more than the cult of the body, and represents the "exploi-tation of feminine beaut}". They feel this distorts the solemn and religiousnature of the fiesta, which some scofringly assert should be renamed "Urku-piernd' (with "pierna" being Spanish for leg), to emphasize the increasinglyexposed sensual bodies of the female folkloric dancers who imitate native\ndean women. But such criticism also ignores the fact that this sensuous

incarnation of the cholita as an erotic object is an essential ingredient of hercultural capital.

During the entrada, politicos often come out of the crowd to "dance"with these folklorized cholitas. It is also typical for an important populistpolitico to sponsor dance fraternities to pertorm during their regional visits.During a rally I attended for then L"( S party leader Max Fernandez in 1995,a line of caporales literally followed the politicians entourage from the air-port to the ralh site several miles away! The act of a politico and chola danc-ing a cueca is an obligator* part of almost am sort of public and festiveoccasion attended by municipal authorities. Dancing the cueca is thought topromote a spontaneous affection" [caruio) between the leader and the as-sembled crowd. On several occasions, I have seen women decline to dancewith a politico, perhaps not wanting to be the object of a machination, butclaiming that he should Hnd a real chola" with whom to dance. This per-formed flirtation between politico and cholita is a reminder that the lo\eartair with a mestizo is integral to the public rolkloric identity of the namewoman as a metaphor ot hybrid social reproduction.


Fig. 6. Caporales dancers showing some leg as k'alinchas.

An old standard of the Quillacollo entrada for Carna\al, whichpronouncedh equates the cholita's essential self with an erotic impulse, is the"cho/a k 'alincba and her compadre A satirical feminine figure, described b\ afriend as 'mischie\ ous, a "jokester," and "brusque," the chola k'alincha al-ways appears in the company of her upper-class lover. Again, we encounterthe illicit love affair. K'alinchear, recall, is an idiomatic verb that refers to themale propensity for womanizing.- In reference to the t'ena d- io Montana(Apple Fair) in nearby Yinto, one columnist wrote effush ely about a "coctelitodubbed the imilla kjalincba, prepared appropriately from apples, which illumi-nated the eyes and whet the tongue of those who tasted it. I judge the spiritof this delicious liquor to be none other than that of live, re\ h ed and primal,in the fronds of the apple trees of Vinto (PS 2) Here, 'imilla" (Quechua for'young unmarried woman," but also "servant girl":, functions as an explic-

id\ indigenist and regionalist synonym for "cholita. Notable as well is thepervasive association of the chola with Nature's agricultural gifts, and withthe cult of the Virgin. This relation takes on particular force in the historicallyproductive region of Cochabamba, euphemistically referred to as Boli\ ia s"breadbasket." In a sense, the Virgin and the chola are telluric and terrestrialincarnations of each other.

The chola's ovtrdetermined cultural rele\ ance, recenth reinforced b\ thesefolklore festivals, has inspired a new round of regional literature :in significantimitation of writing from Medinaccli s era:, with the chola as a ke\ thematic

Identity Politics in Bolivia LA Nue\.t of the 1990s 53

element. This literature implicitly demonstrates how the many culturally chargedaspects of the chola's metaphoric potential—her agricultural productivity, in-carnation as a patron saint, and erotic energy—are always in a close, oftenreinforcing, relation to each other.2' A typical sentimental sample, written in aHarlequin Romance style, is provided us by the organizer of the apple festivalin Vinto. His story tells a tale of love blooming and dying between a provin-cial youth and a cholita. As is explained, they meet during a fiesta:

I met her in the fiesta of the virgencita of Rosario, where the pueblolessens its sorrows and expands its gaiety. I saw her for the first time asshe blessed herself next to the Virgin. Upon comparing her, she seemedprettier, satanically beautiful. Her grenadine lips shone with the flickeringof the candles. For a moment time stopped, and the angels, the flowers,and the candles faded, and my heart sang..."

The young man continues to expound upon the cholita's beauty with roman-tic descriptions that focus increasingly on the pollera: "Florinda, with herardent multicolor pollera, went tracing flaming shapes through the paths ofthe countryside \campind[" And again, "Her pollera formed of rose petalsenveloped me in its turns, and I could drink your essence, Florinda, my can-did flower." And finally, "Very quickly upon seeing Florinda, my eyes wereadorned with the most beautiful of cholas, arising from the corn fields[mai%a/es], with her sensual face projected onto the infinite and resplendent sky,and passion embedded in her multicolor pollera..." (Garcia Canedo 1995:45-49). The romance fades only when Florinda, supposing her lover wouldwant her to, changes her pollera for pants (becoming a chotd).

While certainly hyperbolic, this use of imagery is far from fantastic. As afigure, the k'alincha suggests the depth of poKticos' intimate involvement inthe province,30 as well as the extensive mestizaje typical of current provinciallife. The chola thus draws attention to the mixed heritage of the town's popu-lation. Whether a product of upward or downward mobility, in the post-1952 provincial climate, goes the suggestion, there is the great likelihood of awoman de pollera somewhere in one's past. The love affair, the intimacy ofsuch an illicit shared tryst, both carries colonial echoes (of mestizaje) andredefines inclusion in the "popular" as something that need not be visiblyapparent.

The Productive Chola

In conversation with one young municipal official (then working in


Quillacollo's Department of Culture which organizes such traditional culturalevents as Carnaval, and a person also active in the region's cultural move-ment), I was offered this strongly worded commentary on the perceivedincrease in women opting to dress de vestido:

It's part of the alienation. It amounts to denying your own heritage, yourown ways. What happens? They think that to wear skirts (faldas) (insteadof the pollera) means to be better than other women. But seeing a womande pollera do twice that of those de vestido, I know that these others feelmuch more incapable than the woman de pollera. And this is demon-strable, because she has a much greater capacity through her community,her simplicity, to be able to produce much more than those de vestido.At times the women de vestido don't even produce. They do nothing tohelp their families grow economically. This also underlies the importanceof the woman within the house, because in terms of women today, forsome time we've seen an evolutionary process of the working woman.The majority of women no longer work, but have become homemak-ers. They wait for the man's salary to arrive and invest it, but don't, them-selves, produce. But cholas produce. They're active. They're workers. Theyhave creativity. They produce. They go to their fields and take care ofbusiness. They sell things. They trade {rescati) potatoes, sell food. That isthe true chola, and the real woman, producing and seeing to the eco-nomic development of their families. And so, there's a big difference.The chola speaks three languages—Aymara, Quechua, and Spanish—something the woman de vestido can't do. Sometimes those de vestidofeel embarrassed to speak Quechua. She thinks, "I'm no Indian (indid)"\There's a total confusion of identity (translation mine).

In this extemporaneous lecture by a young politico, himself with a mother depollera that works as a street vendor (vivanderd), one detects the repeatedtheme of chola productivity. This comment is typical of the recent and posi-tive revaluation of the chola in Quillacollo.31 In this young activist's view, suchproduction (in the market, the field, or the home) is essentially female andcreative and is defined by the chola's multiple roles and skills as the fulcrumof the Cochabamba's agrarian economy. It is the "modern" self-limitation ofwomen, who have wrongheadedly attached a stigma to manual labor andthereby become unproductive, that preoccupies this young politico here.

The association of the chola with agricultural fecundity in fiesta contextsis most clear in the annual fiesta of the Virgin of Urkupina, the town's patronsaint.32 In a social strategy reminiscent of the prebenda, mamita Urkupina (as


the Pudhiwuwti) is propitiated and "fed" with a ritual libation of cigarettes,beer and chicha, streamers, fireworks, confetti, coca leaves, an aromatic "burntoffering qou , and sometimes prepared dishes of food. If properly sated,she will in turn attend to the well being of the supplicant. This traditionallyincludes insuring the continuity and equilibrium of reproductive forces, whichin the past meant success in agricultural production and human procreation.Now adays such success might mean an\ thing from the purchase of a newtruck in obtaining a desired Macintosh computer. If incorrectly propitiated,or left unsated, she can become malignant and cause "bad luck," includingdeath which is considered a 'punishment' (castigo) of the Virgin. Particularlyin her incarnation as the Virgin Maria, Urkupina brokers the supplicant's rela-tion with God, interceding positively on the supplicant's behalf and putting ina good word to insure that his 'petition" (pedido) is addressed. Just as thechola is the productive "engine of man, the Virgin is considered, "the serioraof the home, ot the fields, of the mountains, and of the vital cycle of men"(Rocha 1990: 74) The \ irgin, in short, animates the frame of reference withinwhich men traditionally operate. \nd development exchanges are transactedwithin and dependent upon this frame.

Many commentators have stressed that the term "Pachamama" is composed ot the Quechua root "patiia" which means at once the "world," the

earth,' and "time." Hence, the Pachamama has been conceived as the "an-cient space time conceptimmanent in the earth"(Nash 1979: 121-122, seealso Bouysse Cassagne198"), or defined as the''creator of time" (Girault1988: 9;, a circumstanceembodied in pre Conquestagricultural ntes. I wish toemphasize a specific folk-loric implication of theequation of thePachamama, and so the\ irgin of I rkupina, withtime. In a region increas-ingly characterized by ur-banization, a scarcity of

, . , , . , . . , , - ,. , fertile land, and the declinerig. Man dancing the stint tail with (.hulas to fertilize his

propcm during Urkupina. i n importance of agricul-


ture as a way of life, libations to the Pachamama signal a ritualized temporaldisplacement, a temporal*)' return to a now mostly gone "utopic" time oftraditional agricultural lifeways.33 In short, devotees engage in relations ofreciprocal exchange with the Pachamama, who mediates their access to avanishing "allochronic" tradition (Fabian 1983) via a popular folkloric cul-ture. This is an important aspect of the process of root metaphoricization,where key engendered concepts of productivity are made to undergird andframe the cultural logic of the regional economy.34

This allochronic and utopic folkloric context is perhaps best illustrated bythe recent emergence of regional folklore festivals. They first began to appearin the region in the mid-1980s through the impetus of a regional culturalrenaissance and have since grown in number. There are presently at least adozen such regional festivals, creating a year long calendar of regional folk-loric events. The themes of these festivals are resolutely agricultural and in-vested in the "mysteries and enchantments of the provinces," with festivalsdevoted to chicha, corn, apples, peaches, trout, and huarapo, a regional fer-mented beverage. The festivals take place over several days in different townsof the region and promote a carnivalesque atmosphere designed to attractfamilies from the nearby city. Employing a neo-indigenist logic, organizers ofthese festivals maintain that their popularity proves that diverse urban sectorsstill have identifiably "provincial roots" as qhochalas (that is, "native"cochabambinos), and that urbanites still wish to maintain rural "customs in-terred by false modernity" (PS 3). Each festival features an abundance ofregional cuisine (platos tipicos), live concerts by folkloric bands, performancesby dance fraternities, games, and different special features, such as a cholas-only bicycle race, or a contest among cholitas to crown the "Queen of thefestival."

These festivals are also referred to as ferias (fairs or markets), therebycultivating an intentional relation between folkloric festivals and the "agricul-tural market" (ferias agricolas). The latter compose a regional network of mar-kets, greatly expanded after 1952, where sundry products not only from thevalleys but also from the highland regions beyond, are bought and sold on arotating weekly basis. The folkloric version, often put on with the sponsor-ship of local NGOs and international organizations, is meant to evoke thebustling atmosphere of the genuine agricultural market where the chola astransactor predominates. When explaining the rationale for the festivals, orga-nizers emphasize the familiar necessity of "recalling" or "rescuing" the "tradi-tions most associated with the valley," but also an economic angle. They talkof tourism and the need to revitalize a flagging agricultural market, colonial inorigin, and in which the newly autonomous alcaldia's have an important eco-


nomic stake. In these festivals the municipality colludes with the small-scaleagriculturalist, and promotes their shared interests. For example, Quillacollo'sfirst Veria delMat\'m 1986 sought to "revalorize the culture of mai'z, demon-strating its productive capacity, as well as its nutritional value." To this end, thefestival promoted the many traditional uses of corn in regional cuisine: insoups (/aivas), on the cob (choc/o), off the cob (moti), as an alcoholic beverage(chicha), and in baked goods (humintas, cornbread). During the festival, collo-quia were held for chicha producers, in which "experts" offered detailedsuggestions to further rationalize the "inefficient" chicha industry.

The festivals thus have a straightforward economic goal of stimulatingthe consumption of regional agricultural produce, as an important regional"patrimony," in the neoliberal context. As a regional journalist and folkloriststated the issue, these festivals are designed to encourage "the enrichment ofCochabamba's gastronomic and gastroethyl (referring to the elaboration ofchicha) culture," but are also a means "to become aware that Cochabambawill be initiated on the solid road of progress only when it takes advantage ofits farming and cattle industries in the most optimal way" (PS 4). In thismanner, the cultural idiom of folkloric festivals converges with a seriousattempt to meet the regional economic challenge at the level of the munici-pality by likewise focusing on the productive transformation of a diminishingagricultural sector. This approach at the level of the municipality parallels thatof CARITAS at the level of the household. And the symbolic appeal foreconomic stability is made through the woman de pollera, primarily in herguise as a calculating market woman, who provides potential consumers com-mercial access to the folkloric renegotiation of traditional identity.

This image of chola productivity (as circulated in the regional develop-ment context) is of course used by men for co-optive political ends as well. A1994 photographic exhibit in the same Department of Culture, accompaniedby folkloric music and featuring the town's mayor, documented the many"communal labors" (faenas) performed and public "works" (obras) deliv-ered during his self-described "communal administration." The mayor ap-pears in the recurrent guise of material benefactor and town patron, andthere is a special section devoted to his relation with mothers' clubs. There arenumerous photos of the alcalde lending a hand in the different work projects,surrounded by women de pollera. There is also a photo of him handing out"baskets" of food to women in honor of Mother's Day. Below runs thiscaption:

The communal government has initiated action within a model of sharedwork and with the particular presence of women's clubs. With the char-


acteristic beaut] of the women, accustomed to responsible work, andthe beauty of the \:illuna. .The presence of the woman in this task especialh marks the consequential nature of such everyday work (PS 5, trans-lation mine).

It has been suggested that the "exotic" chola corresponds well to the idealimage of Third and Fourth world women held b\ development agenciesand, so, to the expected recipients of development aid (Page Reeves 1996) Asimilar scenario has been noted for market women de pollera, who are viewedas more authentic by prospective customers (Paulson 1996: 88; Peredo Beltran1992: 36; Buechler and Buechler 1996: 171;. Here the productive woman depollera, as the "traditional" basis of the household economy, is viewed as thelogical collaborator and exchange partner for the productive activities of themunicipality. In fact, as the primary symbolic complement to the mayor'slargesse, such "native' women bolster his public image as a selfless benefac-tor to the "mothers" of the region's popular masses, the literal producers ofpopular culture. And these women are, to repeat, ostensibly a compositepublic semblance of the mayors own female ancestors.

Conspicuous both in the city and rural province are fliers circulated topublicize these folklore festivals which always feature a cholita. As in the po-litical propaganda, she is depicted wearing a shortened stovepipe hat, mini-pollera, with a red-lipped sensuousexpression and ample bosom. Sheis also shown in association with thefestival's agricultural theme—hold-ing a bushel of corn, or a tutuma ofchicha, biting an apple, or offeringa toast with a glass of huarapo. Fes-tival organizers offer a variety ofreasons for why the cholita has be-come the poster girl for these festi-vals. One such organizer noted theneed to "maintain this social cat-egory (of the chola) as a dignifiedtradition." Another festival orga-nizer, and writer of a romantic regionalist literature in his spare time,claimed her image was used "tomake the feria more authentic be

i i i - • ! Hg- 8. Poster advertising the annualcause the chola is a very typical , , , . , , ,.J ' r corn beer festival with a eholitd.


personage,...and the woman is the pollera." The chola cochabambina is also"more colorful and provocative" than cholas from other regions, and sherepresents the social class that is "closest to nature and most involved in agri-culture." He concludes, "The earth (tierra) is her richness." Yet another orga-nizer noted that her accentuated physiognomy attracts attention and recalledEve's role leading Adam into sin. The cholita displays, in his words, a "greatcapacity for work" and is traditionally responsible for "inviting" people tofiestas, a social fact that has received ethnographic support (Paulson 1996:134).

These cholita posters are meant to facilitate symbolic access to "tradi-tional" festival spaces. In fact, active participation in dance fraternities, withthe concomitant need to don the expensive festive costume, has been cited asa strategy employed by women de vestido who wish to switch permanentlyto the pollera (Buechler and Buechler 1996: 183). While cholas organize fies-tas, at the same time, these fiestas quite literally produce cholas as well. As therole of the chola's image in the region's folklore festivals suggests, an aspectof her cultural capital is the way her image is used to frame regional culturalevents. And this potential to enact social reproduction is another aspect of thechola, explored in this section, which for poh'ticos make her particularly fe-cund as a regional figure and trope.

The Chola and Political Mediation35

The "natural" habitat of the chola k'alincha, it seems, is the chicheria. Inthe folkloric mode, it is in the drinking context where she becomes especiallylibidinous—a virtual exhibitionist. The cholita of Medinaceli's novel, herself achichera, dances the cueca with particular passion in the chicheria: "...with alicentious grace, voluptuously wiggling her behind {nalgueando), and wavingher handkerchief in the air" (1981: 58). In fact, in Quillacollo conversationamong men about cholas often quickly shifts to a ribald innuendo with markeddouble entendre. Asked to describe the "typical chola valluna," one friendticked off her braids, pollera, her k'epi (woven earning sack), and stovepipehat. Unsolicited, he then characterized her unique personality. The chola vallunais identified with "mischeviousness" (ptcc/rdi'd), and "pride" (in that she doesnot change class). A companion breaks in, laughing, "with her milk cows!"(vacas lecheras), referring to her breasts. My friend continues, she is also "mas-culine" (varoml), and "sentimental." Beginning to laugh as well, he concludes,"She feels and loves strongly. With this love, she'll kill you it you cross her.She'll yank you by your plumbing (picbuhi)r This sort of ribald word play,characteristic of drinking companions talking about womanizing, is quite com-


mon. In tact, I spent significant energy during field work extricating myselffrom attempts by politico friends to set me up with supposedly interested,but mythical (in that I never met them), cholitas.

As her antics during Carnaval attest, the figure of the chola k'alincha is bynow quite "institutionalized" in QuHlacollo's chicherias. A case in point is thelocal legend associated with the town's popular watering hole, the chicherfaChola Milagrosa (Miraculous Chola). As the story is told, the establishment isnamed after its owner, now an old woman and ironically de vestido. As ayoung cholita, she jealously shot and killed her lover, erected a cross over thespot and eventually started up her chicherfa there. The fame of the establish-ment has persisted due to its consequently "miraculous" chicha. Another caseof the institutionalization of the chola cult is the recently "renovated" tradi-tion of the wallunk'a (Quechua: swing), also usually performed in chicherias,which now traditionally accompanies the celebration of the Day of the Dead(Todos Santos) in November throughout the region. Although it is historicallyunclear whether the wallunk'a was traditionally typical of the region (say, priorto 1952), it is an important expression of the regional folkloric renaissance ofthe last decade and an evident example of the local invention of tradition forpolitical ends. As one activist, also a journalist, pronounced: "Despite whatmany insist to the contrary, the festival (of the wallunk'a) now forms a partof Quillacollo's patrimony, which has surpassed local frontiers" (PS 6).

A local folklorist who recently published an authoritative account of re-gional agricultural ritual—written in a timeless ethnographic present—describesthe wallunk'a in the following terms:

During Todos Santos the fiesta of the wallunk'as begins, which lasts untilthe day of San Andres, November 30th. On the 2nd of November thefirst swings are built, many of them several hundred meters from thecemetery....In each swing there is music (of accordions, guitars, and bands).Different sorts seek to be pushed on the swing, but above all it is thecholitas who stand out. One accedes to her requests (pedidos) with thecondition that she sing a few couplets (cop/as). If she does not carry outher promise, she is pushed even harder and is not permitted to get offuntil she begins with the first verses....Everything unfolds in an ambianceof enjoyment, laughter, whistles, and cat calls" (Rocha 1990: 64-65; trans-lation mine).

At the apex of her swing, the cholita is supposed to try and seize with her feetone of several "baskets" of flowers and foodstuff suspended in front of theswing. In the past, I was told, these baskets were adorned with real "money"


(billetes) and the cholitas could win livestock as prizes. I was also told, by aguffawing former mayor no less, that "innocent" cholitas sometimes swungwithout undergarments, causing quite a spectacle. Sung in Quechua and "in-terpreted by pretty cholitas {simpdticas cholitas) and young men (Joven^uelos)"(PS 7), the couplets are resolutely bawdy in character, referring to amorousand often illicit relations between the sexes and utilizing double entendre al-most exclusively. The wallunk'a, then, enlists both erotic and pastoral aspectsof the chola's image to the end of social reproduction.

One such wallunk'a I attended was advertised in the province with thefollowing poster:

Popular artists of the Cochabamba valley. Platos tipicos and the bestchicha. Festival of the wallunk'a and couplets of the Day of the Dead.Homage to Encarnadon Latfarte (a famous couplet singer and cholita ofCochabamba). Organized by the cultural group Itapallu (translation mine).

The chicheria that served as host for the event, on the town's outskirts and ina zone densely covered by zig-zagging agricultural plots, was owned by thesister of the founder of the local cultural movement. Her brother, whoseinfluence wTas apparent in the electoral propaganda adorning the town's adobewalls, was an ardent backer and client of the mayor of the town. In recentyears, he had made an unsuccessful foray into the regional political arena asthe local candidate for a "socialist" party of the reconstituted political Left.Another notable feature of this particular wallunk'a was the presence of theregional indigenist writer and journalist, Ramon Rocha Monroy, who gaveaway copies of his novella El run run de la calavera. Although written in amagical realist style, the novella "authentically" depicts the peculiar popularbeliefs associated with the region's celebration of the Day of the Dead. Aspart of a literary corpus on regional cultural identity, the novella is thematicallycontinuous with the earlier works of Medinaceli and others. Throughout theevent, Rocha Monroy drank with eroticized cholas, who we are to under-stand would otherwise be found busily selling, trading, harvesting, and man-aging their families somewhere in the region's three valleys.

The couple who owned the chicheria offered me their views on wallunk'as.For them, this is not a custom inspired by literary convention. Rather, thewallunk'a has been practiced at least "from the time of the tata-abuelos (Quechua:great-grandparents) and the Inca, as a custom of the ancestors." In a familiarrefrain, they also asserted, "The principle motive is to rescue and maintain thetraditions of the llakta (town, but also region), but not to profit from it."36

And as a root metaphor, the swinging chola represents "the alternations of


life and death." Themselves de vestido, the owners insisted that the wallunk'ashould be performed only with "pure cholitas," since the couplets impart"something of romance," of "mischeviousness" (picardia), and of "obscen-ity." They added that originally those who practiced the wallunk'a were notde vestido, as the upper class {alta estratd) was prejudiced against it. The cholitas"liked these customs more. They are by nature happier, from more rusticparts {tierra adentro), more aggressive, open,...a symbol of the valley." Indeed,during the wallunk'a, cholita after cholita was called up to mount the swing totry for the baskets, while a folkloric group performed their bawdy coupletsand, in between songs, drank heavily. The region's cuisine, in addition to thecouplet performances, is the other main pole of attraction for this sort offolkloric event.

The event was attended by several town VIP's, including the mayor him-self, who was made the subject of a satirical carnivalesque couplet, in which acholita openly surmised about his sexual potency over the microphone. Inanother typical illustration of the allochronic effect of this root metaphor,during the event the mayor was called jilakata (a Quechua term for "indig-enous" local leader, in this case an archaism with colonial implications) ratherthan the standard Spanish term, alcalde. He was then predictably implored todance a cueca with this cholita, a request he obliged. Given that the Day ofthe Dead takes place mere days before biannual regional elections, the pastyear this particular wallunk'a was heavily attended by local politicos. The ownersof the chicheria recalled how the different regional candidates came "withtheir people," and dressed in the "caps and t-shirts" of their respective politi-cal parties. Party members also handed out political fliers to the attendees,encouraging people to vote for their candidate. As a regional cultural event, itwas indistinguishably both folklore and politics.

The politicization of these folkloric venues has become so standard thatit is a frequent cause for complaint. One folkloric festival organizer lamentedto me the necessity of having to, in his words, "prostitute culture" in order tobring off the festival at all. Consider this representative complaint by an out-raged female non-politico, which appeared in a section of the regional news-paper dedicated exclusively to the provinces:

The rural markets (ferias) and fiestas are one of the few opportunities inwhich the inhabitants of communities can come together: friends,compadres, relatives, authorities, etc., in order to share and converse to-gether {compartir), around a provocative pitcher of chicha, or around asucculent chicharron (a regional dish of deep fat fried pork parts), gos-siping about conceptions that reflect at once religion, the national reality


(read: politics), and other peculiarities, confined to the daily tasks (faenascotidianas) in the furrows: planting, care of crops, and harvest. But, giventhe nearness of the elections, very curious things take place. It is a differ-ent environment, with a strange flurry of activity.

One Sunday, I met with the members of a community in order toparticipate with them in a religious event, prepared for this date. Thereappeared suddenly a small vehicle, up until now unknown by the locals.From the vehicle descended three persons. And then, oh, pre-electoralmagic! In the blink of an eye, they inundated us with political propa-ganda. And we, stupefied, asked ourselves: "But how did they know tofind us meeting here?" Then, one of the group responded, "These typeshave eyes everywhere...."

Yes, the above tale is nothing but a paradox, given the amount oftimes that those sorts are seen in these parts (rincones); But somethingimportant which should deserve the attention of all who aspire to arriveat the precious seat of power, is, without doubt, whether those wholook for aid or support in order to rise to their political offices {cargospoliticos) also know how to respond from above to the needs of theforgotten areas of our territory (PS 8, translation mine).

This is an all too familiar parable of the "ambush," as the article put it, ofrural festive occasions by political parties. Note the idealized portrait of pro-vincial fiestas as moments of collective communitas that form the backdropfor political meddling. This perceived politicization of regional folklore ispart of the decadence many feel threatens the region's cultural integrity. Whenclumsily done, indeed it might depersonalize such intimate cultural ties which,as political symbolic currency, depend for their effectiveness on a convictionof the presence of that very intimacy (cf. Herzfeld 1997: 1-36).

Not everyone approves of these reconstituted wallunk'as. This traditionalpractice, some feel, has been "given over to electrified musical groups and thesale of chicha." It has been reduced to little more than advertisement. Ex-claimed one disenchanted local, 'All they do is teach a few cholitas to attractpeople to the establishment." In the case of the wallunk'a, in fact, a similarlydecadent political machination can be said to inform the folkloric frame. Inessence, a client of the mayor used his sister's establishment to provide a"populist" public forum for his political patron. In so doing, the cholita, as avital folkloric figure, became the medium for these two male politicos tonegotiate their ongoing relationship. Politicians themselves are the ones requir-


ing the presence of this woman de pollera, as a symbol of the llakta in theseidealized folkloric spaces. Despite the cries of prostitution, events like thesewallunk'as have proportionally less traditional import and greater politicalvalue, as a way to convince others of a politician's "traditional" identity. Cholas,as the central protagonists of folkloric events like the wallunk'a, provide theframing rationale of tradition within which political authorities also perform.This, in short, is the essence of the chola's cultural mediatory potential.

It is not coincidental that the wallunk'a, as well as the folkloric festivalsmore generally, take generous advantage of the social space of the chicheria.Drinking and drinking etiquette is a ritual inevitability in the Andes (cf. Saignes1993). In the province of Quillacollo, as I was told countless times, drinking,and in particular drinking chicha, is thought to build a communicational frame.A drinking companion becomes, however briefly, a co-conspirator and con-fidant. In Bakhtin's parlance, most interaction in this ambiance is "withoutfootlights" (1984: 265). The chicheria is one of the important public spaces—with the feria being the other—where the Quechua language asserts itselfover Spanish, most often in the telling of jokes and in the word play de-scribed earlier. In chicherias, therefore, interpersonal expression is thought tobe notoriously intimate, direct, and without social masks ("a calôn quitado"literally, "without pants," referring to blunt talk). But, while pants might berhetorically dispensed with in the chicheria, the pollera remains a fixture.

In Cochabamba's lower valley, the chicheria is treated as the ideal site for

fostering a collective regional identity as vallunos, despite pervasive class dis-

tinctions. This sentiment, imbued with a notable nostalgia, is detectable in the

following characterization of the chicheria before the 1952 Revolution: "In

this social microcosm an ample democracy was practiced which was totally

unknown in all other environments of this oligarquic society. That which

politics could not do, the fraternity of the chicheria was able to achieve"

(Rodriguez and Solares 1990: 142; translation mine). Among popular cultural

spaces, the chicheria in particular activates what Berlant calls a "collective inti-

macy" (1998: 283).37 For this very reason, the chicheria has always been a

place to stir the political cooking pot. Sharing a memorable drinking bout

(farrd) and exposing one's personal side goes a long way toward establishing

relations of "trust" {confianâ). Through imbibing at chicherias, distant friend-

ships can be converted into confidential friendships {amigos de confianâ), a

necessary bond with the trusted lieutenants vital for building successful pro-

vincial political machines. In fact, the first established meeting place {comandd)

of the regional apparatus of the populist UCS party in the late 1980s was

none other than that infamous chicheria, the Chola Milagrosa, with its impas-

sioned, miraculous chicha. And behind the scenes, facilitating local party mem-


bership, is none other than the tireless and de pollera chichera.Just as much pragmatic "back room" political work is hammered out

amidst tutumas of chicha—the electoral potential of the chicheria has notbeen lost on provincial politicos. They have made the k'araku a standard partof their stumping repertoire. During such campaign stops, chicha is liberallydistributed to the assembled crowd, ostensibly in exchange for peoples' votes.Stories told to me about the formative years of the late 1970s and early1980s, when current regional political apparati were being actively built, dwelton the selfless work of political "couples" (a local party leader and his wife),who exhaustively trekked the length and breadth of the province makingcontacts. One such wife, a veteran behind-the-scenes operator, recounted themany times she and her husband—then a prominent ADN leader of whatwas later to become the UCS machine of Chola Milagrosa fame—maderecruiting visits to the houses of "peasant" {campesino) families. They wouldapproach their prospective political clients using strategies similar to thosefound in Lagos's (1994) account of rural women traders in nearby Tiraque,armed with chicha. While her husband explained about the party, she wouldgive to the client's wife a gift of food and chicha which she called a necessary"stimulus" {estimulo).

This gift can be understood in Andean terms as an example of t'inka, amodest gift designed to signal the existence of a relationship (poorly imitatedby prebendalismo). This informal reciprocal exchange between women depollera, then, opens up negotiations for the consolidation of dyadic politicalties of patronage and clientage between men. In similar fashion, the k'araku,the wallunk'a, and the chicheria are all illustrations that bring across the media-tory value of the chola for facilitating male political interaction. The ambianceof fiestas and drinking provides the contexts politicos require to flourish. Asa root metaphor, then, the chola plays a metacultural role.

Cholas are perhaps tolerant of their own self-caricature in political pro-paganda, of which they are well aware, because in the political arena this sameconstruct contributes to the social reproduction of the domestic economyvia the sorts of development exchanges described here. This awareness oftheir predicament is reflected in the idea, made most explicit in chicherias, thatpolitics is like an illicit love affair. Allegorically, women have at best an adulter-ous (and so, indirect and unofficial) relation to political power—a prospectrepresented by the incarnation of the "chola k'alincha." In turn, this overlap-ping set of images of women de pollera has its roots in the "indigenist"folkloric expression of the hacienda era, where the popular classes were hier-archically subordinate. This situation of cultural mediation and their aware-ness of it, then, defines the regional possibilities for the woman de pollera as


an active historical subject in QuiUacollo.

The Decadence of the Chola

People entertain a looming pessimism about the future cultural integrityof the regional chola in Quillacollo. One encounters the conviction that shemight soon disappear entirely from view, trading in her pollera for pants ormodern skirts. This in part explains the nostalgic tone often adopted whenconsidering the chola's plight. Recall the feeling of social alienation ascribed tothe growing sentiment among women to switch from polleras, voiced earlierin this essay, as well as the conviction that the shrinking hem line of the pollerain the festival entradas amounts to a distortion of traditional values.

This sense of things out of joint also informs rhetoric about political"corruption," such as the use of the prebenda. I even met with such talkwhen attending a town beauty pageant. The complaint was that the girls com-peting were no longer all from Quillacollo itself. As one female fraternityfounder stated the problem, "If we talk about the current chola cochabambina,now with her short pollera, high heels, and makeup, she is no longer authen-tic." This woman, de vestido and working as a hair stylist, has sought tocounter this, striving to "move against the principle of exhibitionism" and to"not treat the woman as a commodity," by founding a local dance fraternitythat promotes the "costume of the authentic qhochala." With increasing regu-larity, the "authentic" qhochala is on public display only during such folkloricperformances.

Commenting on the omnipresent political propaganda, with which I beganthis discussion, another young politico offered me some choice words aboutthe decadence of traditional regional identities:

(The political parties) wanted to identify themselves with this symbol ofthe valley. But well adorned cholas, with earrings and hat...are no more!She (the chola of political propaganda) is a fictitious chola. She no longerexists. There has been a change in costume, in colors, with polleras de-signed in Europe. It's a transformation of fashion. Now we have themodern chola. There's an evolution in the form of dress. Her undergar-ments of the past are no more (laughing)! There aren't any more plainhand-woven polleras. Her hat is no longer of the stovepipe variety. Nowit is lighter and made in Panama. She sports a sweater made in Brazil...Ibelieve that there is a conflict. This (the political propaganda) will distortmatters. The original chola is no longer.


A notable characteristic of these criticisms about the chola garb giving way tomodern dress styles is that what counts as modern is the dispersion of thelocal into the global, and so, the perceived loss of regional cultural fixity.Notable as well is that all these criticisms were voiced by men and women, devestido to be sure, in variously close and active relations to the local politicalarena. It is, in short, the political class that seems most concerned about thepossibility that the chola might disappear into the global flux. This is odd, in asense, given that it is also this same political class that most doggedly adheresto a local rhetoric of development and modernization for the town. Butthen, we have to remind ourselves what it is that popular politicians require tobe effective in the electoral context.

I have suggested that an enduring problem for regional politicos is thetransposition of self-identity into political image. In part, this is an argumentabout how the "popular sector," as an electoral object, is politically consti-tuted in the context of neoliberal democratization. These men need to con-solidate a "popular" self-identity, which is then dovetailed with a candidacy ina "populist" political party. In Quillacollo, with the exception of one term ofoffice (1993-1995), the core of politicos currently occupying the UCS partyhas had a stranglehold on the provincial political arena since the advent of alocal electoral process in 1987. The UCS party itself has been characterized aspopulist (Mayorga 1991), in conspicuous tension with the national politicalcenter, as represented by the traditional MNR party. But what does this meanconcretely?

The label of "populist" is itself unproductively inexact for political self-definition. Populist figures must constantly demonstrate access to the interiorspaces of regional popular culture. Hence they seek intimate contact withliving embodiments from within this frame of reference to repeatedly recon-firm their own popular identities, as well as to build up political networksamong themselves. As things stand, male politicos frequently deliver eco-nomic staples to women's groups, as half of an exchange typical of theregional development context. The other half, extracted from women in re-turn, amounts to the ready potential for the spectacularization of popularcultural intimacy. These exchanges are organized, however, by a local malepolitical representative who, in turn, eventually becomes the political client ofthe regional leader providing said goods and services to the zone. Whilegoods pertaining to the domestic economy visibly change hands from mento women, I submit that, in fact, the objects of these transactions are theimages of prototypically "native" women, exchanged among politically ac-tive men.

This state-of-affairs returns us unexpectedly to a familiar anthropological


problem, that of the reproduction of political categories and alliances byvirtue of the exchange of women (cf. Levi-Strauss 1963; Leach 1954). How-ever, the exchanges we've examined take place mostly within a regional politi-cal imagination. Across the various cultural frames of reference we've con-sidered—the "matriarchal" domestic economy, the cult of the Virgin, fiestalibations, folkloric parades, agricultural and folkloric festivals, indigenist re-gional literature, the wallunk'a, different traditional forms of Andean recip-rocal exchange, and so on—I have emphasized the woman de pollera's emer-gent role in the mediation of the popular as a root metaphor of productivity,exchange and social reproduction. In short, as a key folkloric protagonist, sheboth constitutes the popular frame of reference and provides men with ameans to attach themselves to it, by way of the pastoral field, market, fiesta,romance and drinking establishment.

Cholas are consummate cultural brokers who embody "traditional"folklorized culture, "frame" the construction of dyadic political ties and in sodoing manufacture potential populist contexts. In this sense, obviously thechola serves as invaluable cultural capital for politicos seeking to redefine theirself-identities along popular lines. These men are exchanging with women depollera for the mediatory potential that they culturally represent. Men seek outsuch exchanges to solidify their partly fictional political identities; and these, inturn, come about through the manipulation of a significantly utopic and re-constructed folklorized universe, populated by saints, festival personae, andliterary conceits lifted out of a bygone feudal era. And this kind of spectacu-lar relation, often talked about by women themselves as a kind of politicaladultery, is itself an excellent example of the machiavellian duplicity that bothwomen and men associate with the politica criolla.

In line with Canclini's (1995) suggestion that in Latin America "moder-nity" often unexpectedly nurtures "tradition," recent Bolivian structural ad-justment has encouraged the blossoming of an elaborate yearlong folkloriccalendar in Quillacollo, with the chola cult at its center. But in response to therepositioning of the region's own political culture, the extent and essence ofthis folklore has also changed. This is evident in the new connections drawnbetween political categories of gender, ethnicity, and popular identity on dis-play during public performances involving municipal authorities.

The image of the chola, though circulating more widely, has been signifi-cantly split off from cholas themselves, who are historical actors in their ownright. In fact, the very ubiquity of the chola's image can be taken as a sign ofthe negation of her participation in municipal politics. This folkloric context,with its impression of cultural intimacy, directs attention away from the evi-dent fissures and contradictions within current Bolivian populist rhetoric (a


theme taken up in different ways by several contributions to this issue).As a case study of popular participation in the patria chica, this argument

explores the uneven possibilities for men and women's political expressionacross Quillacollo's social sectors. These inequalities in potential political ex-pression reflect a male monopoly of the municipal arena (as distinct, say,from the much different and more representative historical participation ofboth women and men in local agrarian unions), as well as the privileges ofcultural expression enjoyed by regional intellectuals (folklorists, teachers, jour-nalists and fiction writers), who in most cases are themselves active politicosof popular descent. The status of recent intellectual discourse in Bolivia, andits particular role in national and local policy making, has been given substan-tial attention in this issue. In the present case, the evident disparities in popularparticipation (particularly between the genders) can be traced to the closedcircuit between the regional male intellectual cum political imagination andregional folkloric performance.

We are now in a better position, I think, to appreciate the anxiety voicedby political types over the apparently inevitable passing of the chola from thesocial landscape. Politicos are anxious about a potential loss of valuable po-litical capital, that is, the chola as populist currency. If the chola indeed "mod-ernizes," politicos will have that much less to hang their populist hats on.WTiile they might be able to continue appropriating the chola's "image," theywould be at an increasing loss to stage token exchanges with flesh and bloodcholas (that is, women de pollera who have not obviously dressed for theoccasion) and,therefore, politically cut off from the intimate and interior spacesof regional popular culture. There would thus be fewer avenues for popularlegitimation in other than transparently folkloric terms.

However, such a concern is ambivalently encoded in the folkloric versionof the chola as well, most detectable in the many references to her deceitful-ness and "capriciousness." Gradations of chola garb are increasing, and womenthemselves are acutely aware of the cultural potency of the pollera. Womenmake their own strategic use of this "native" dress (Healy 1996). Needing tolook the part, they often change clothes several times during the day, depend-ing upon the requirements of the situation. As such, the static, caricatured,"imagined" chola is in increasing tension with the multifaceted, and flexible,"real" woman de pollera. This tension is reflected by a recognition of theinstability of the image of the chola who, as "masculine" matriarch, cacica,and breadwinner (cf. Weismantel 1995), threatens to change her gender alto-gether, the one thing that, politically speaking, she is not permitted to do.


Notes

Acknowledgments. The field work for this research was carried out with thesupport of a Tinker travel grant from the University of Chicago's Center forLatin American Studies (1991), a Fulbright-IIE fellowship (1993-1994), and aNational Science Foundation doctoral dissertation support grant (1994-1995).I would like to thank: Susan Paulson, Paul Friedrich, Aurolyn Luykx, StuartRockefeller, Shao Jing, Mary Scoggin, Wendy Weiss, Tom Lyons, MaryWeismantel, Heather McClure, and the JLAA's anonymous reviewers for use-ful comments on earlier drafts. A shorter version was presented at the 1997LASA meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico, in a session entitled: "Bolivia and thePolitics of Development in the 90s: Class, Gender and Ethnicity in LocalArenas of Power." Of course, any confusions, inaccuracies or blunders arepurely my own.

1. This said, since the deaths of the caudillo leaders of both parties, in1995 and 1997 respectively, each has had its share of factional turmoil, andboth have lost some of the luster they enjoyed through the late 1980s andearly 1990s.

2. See Healy and Paulson's introduction (this volume) for a more thor-ough discussion of the specific features of recent Bolivian structural adjust-ment.

3. This article, then, explores the relationship between the context ofnational structural adjustment (as it has played out in a particular region) andaccompanying populist political practice. In this sense, it explores for the caseof Quillacollo what Maria Lagos (1997) analyzes for Bolivia's national politi-cal culture as a whole in her contribution to our LASA panel. Lagos highlightsthe incongruities between a "populist rhetoric" by the recent MNR govern-ment of Sanchez de Lozada (with an emphasis upon autonomy, cultural self-determination, and self-government) and the realities of economic hardshipand political oppression suffered by specific popular sectors, epitomized inLagos's treatment of the plight of Bolivia's female coca growers, and theirchoices for political mobilization.

4. Summarily characterized as "one of the least precise terms in the socialsciences" (Kuper 1987: 188), "populism"—as with such terms as "fascism"or "liberalism"—has proven notoriously hard to define except in concreteinstances. Most attempts, such as one recent definition of Latin Americanpopulism as: "urban, multiclass, electoral, expansive, 'popular,' and led bycharismatic figures" (Conniff 1982: 3), become entangled in tautological rea-soning, in which "populism" first always seems to require the "popular." Partof the problem with this definitional approach is the persistent desire to


classify political engagement in terms of distinct "types" with identifiablefeatures. But supposed populists of all stripes, we typically assume, are calledso precisely because they are in some way taken to be "with" the people,"closer" to the people, or "from" the people. Hence this relation is indeedtautological, depending upon both parties to the equation—the supposedpopulist and the "people" themselves—agreeing to its existence.

5. Throughout this argument, "tradition" is treated as a provisional, con-tested, and politically charged cultural construction, and as a frame of refer-ence manipulated by politicos in particular (but among others) as they at-tempt to stake authoritative claim to regional cultural representativeness (intheir view, synonymous with the political representation of "tradition"). Assuch, the various uses made of the chola's image are attempts to constructparticular versions of "tradition" (in the sense of Hobsbawm and Ranger's(1983) path breaking discussion of the "invention of tradition") which rein-force a sense of inclusion in the newly ambiguous category of the "popular."Since the people discussed here often engaged in the process of strategicessentiali2ation, my argument seeks to draw attention to the effects of thisprocess.

6. In contemporary Quillacollo "chola" garb is associated with "tradi-tional" women, as embodying the regional qhochala or valluna. The chola isthus associated more with the popular Andean arena. And in much of thecontemporary Andes, the chola's costume is typically associated with urban-ized or upwardly mobile "Indian" women, who have made their way tocities from their rural home communities. However, during the colonial pe-riod the chola's traditional outfit (its many variations notwithstanding) wastraditionally worn not by upwardly mobile Indian women, but by criolla ormesti^a women who were part of the rural town elite, as an easy means ofdistinguishing themselves from other social statuses (cf. Barragan 1992 for ahistory of these changes in attire). Crandon-Malamud (1991), for example,records the coexistence of generations of upwardly and downwardly mo-bile women in Kachitu, both wearing the pollera, although some are formervecinas (members of an erstwhile rural agrarian elite, which dominated thetown prior to 1952), while some are Aymara Indian women. Similarly, inQuillacollo there are signs that the women of the town's elite were still regu-larly wearing the pollera at the time of the Revolution. As one current leaderof the local Federation of Mother's Clubs explained it, herself a Quechua-speaking "campesina" from a small community in the lower valley, "I believethat in the past, the ancestors, the senoras, were de pollera...That's to say thatCochabamba, more or less, is de pollera, the majority is from the pollera."This is an important point, when considering "who" many of these politicos


are, and what sorts of families they have come from. Men can claim anancestry of the pollera, while still perhaps being descended from either avecino or a campesino family background. This is one of the characteristics ofprovincial popular culture in Cochabamba, where the long history of intensemestizaje has meant that current "popular" figures might be either the prod-ucts of upward or downward mobility.

7. For a more extensive treatment of the particular relations of fathers tosons in and around Quillacollo, see Albro (1997, n. d.).

8. The name of this group is Itapallu (Quechua for a plant thought to curerheumatism), and it was officially founded in 1988 on the heels of unsuccess-ful attempts by its members to establish a cultural program associated withthe political Left from within the municipality's Department of Culture. Sincethen Itapallu has undertaken regular activities of journalism, organizing cul-tural events in the region (most conspicuously the folklore festivals), and pro-moting Quillacollo's "patrimony" (typically as centered on the town's patronalfiesta to the Virgin of Urkupina). For an in-depth account of the history ofthis cultural movement see Albro (1999a; chapter nine).

9. "Patrimony" is a term with both strictly jural and more encompassingcultural implications. It is used by town authorities and cultural activists whendiscussing what pertains historically to Quillacollo. This includes economicresources as well as a cultural heritage. In the aftermath of national decentrali-zation measures, the definition of local patrimony has taken on a new ur-gency. The gendered characteristic of the term, which has its origins in Span-ish legal parlance and refers to rules of inheritance from fathers to sons, isitself an illustration of the argument advanced here. The sum total of culturaltradition associated with the household, the fields, the market, and the chicheriais something like what local authorities mean when they refer to Quillacollo'sunique cultural identity as its "patrimony." And it is the chola (though herselfwith no claim to one) who serves as the key figure mediating men's access totheir own patrimonial identities. For an extended treatment of patrimony forthe quillacolleno case, see Albro (1998b).

10. This case is reminiscent of several other analyses advanced in thisvolume. In her exploration of the tensions between the pursuit of "genderequity" and the doctrine of "cultural relativism," Luykx echoes Rivera's con-cerns by similarly drawing attention to the ways that "traditional" interpreta-tions of gender relations (as with the widespread Andean notion of "gendercomplementarity"), were often advanced by educated men in their roles aspolicy makers. These interpretations rely on the authoritative claims of relativ-ism as a defense, even as they perpetuate an unequal role for "traditional"women within Bolivian society. At the same time, Paulson and Calla (this


volume) focus upon the rhetoric of development planning in which the cul-tural authority for programs dealing particularly with issues pertaining to"ethnicity" and "gender" is derived from a "paternalist impulse" these au-thors trace to the mid-century politics of Leninist vanguardism. Just as thechola's image in Quillacollo is framed by a mid-century corpus of indigenistwriting produced by a now nonexistent regional elite, Paulson and Calla sug-gest a similar equation, in which an obsolete intellectual tradition yet continuesto frame contemporary possibilities for development.

11. In terms of the national political arena, this case corresponds to adetailed examination of the deployment of the "usosy costumbref referred toby Lagos (1997) in her discussion of the nature of Bolivian popular partici-pation, and in terms of the possibilities that exist within popular sectors foradvancing a "moral critique of the state."

12. The overall thrust of this argument is to suggest some of the condi-tions placed upon the potential agency of women de pollera in the region,even as the chola's image has become particularly widespread. At the sametime, it must be recognized that, as a particularly visible dimension of Andeanpopular culture, cholas express their agency in a wide variety of ways, includ-ing but not only the many cases of "brokerage" discussed both here andelsewhere (Albro 1999b). While an examination of the role of the chola'simage (as, itself, a key aspect of regional popular culture) in Bolivian politicshas yet to be undertaken, several scholars have given their attention to thedirect forms of economic and political mobilization undertaken by cholas. Ashort list of recent analyses of the political mobilization of cholas (and womenmore generally) in the Andes might include: Seligmann's (1989, 1998) discus-sion of market vendor unions, Page-Reeves's (1999) analysis of the politicsof grass-roots knitting cooperatives, Leon's (1990) history of Bartolina Sisa,the women's wing of the katarista movement, as well as Lagos's discussionof female coca growers in this volume. But these direct expressions ofwomen's political organizing is not the main concern of this analysis. Rather,the agency of cholas is considered in terms of the circulation of her "image"(as separated from cholas as actual "persons"), in municipal electoral contextswhere her direct participation has been virtually nonexistent.

13. In fact, stories of the role of womanizing in political intrigue areubiquitous. Take the case of EH, who once "sacrificed" his girlfriend—he ismarried and was referring to one of several women with whom he hascarried on affairs—for the "good of the town." As one element in a largerstrategy to woo the favor of a visiting party higher-up, EH asked her to sleepwith him. In the telling, it became a patriotic cause. They bought her newclothes for the rendezvous, took the VIP to an out-of-town chicheria, and


provided lively entertainment, after which the "couple" went off for "severalhours" to a hotel. The notoriety of their success in currying favor with theparty official created friction within the local party apparatus (in terms of therelative influence of local politicos within the party hierarchy). To EH's mind,this episode embellished the reputation of the town.

14. Although the equation is made problematic by the fact that, strictlyspeaking, it is the mothers of politicos who are advertised as de pollera cholas,while their wives are almost invariably de vestido chotas ("chota" is a disre-spectful term used to refer to a "mestiza de vestido" or a woman who hastaken to wearing Western skirts). This, then, illustrates an aspect of the balanc-ing act of regional politicians, caught between twin desires of both wantingto validate a local participation in Quillacollo's hybrid tradition, and the socialmobility which municipal politics itself often represents.

15. This sort of rhetoric, commonplace in political and developmentcontexts, echoes one of the typical rationalizations for sexual discriminationwithin "indigenous societies," as spelled out by Luykx (this volume): the no-tion that "gender relations are located within the private sphere of the home,"and so should play no part in any public political forum. In terms of thepossibilities for women's political mobilization in Bolivia, there are signs thatthis rationalization is also an axiom accepted by women for the possibleextent of their activities. Lagos (1997), for example, quotes female coca growersas expressing the need for "our own methods of struggle." These methodsapparently depend upon the politicization of women's domestic roles. In heraccount of Bartolina Sisa, Rosario Leon stresses the ways that peasant womenhave "bridged the apparent gap between the private sphere of the family andthe public sphere of politics." As Leon explains, "Their socio-political activityis based on their social condition as women, which is defined by their role asconsumers, administrators of peasant production, as the principal traders inrural markets, as mothers, wives and daughters of peasants" (1990: 135).Alongside the comments of Quillacollo's politicians, these statements seem toequate women's political possibilities with their domestic roles. If this is at allrepresentative, at least in Quillacollo, then, men are appealing to women'sown views about their political participation when engaged in gift-giving.Were it not for the clear condemnations of such activities as hypocritical onthe part of politically active women de pollera, it would be unclear whetheror not this was discriminatory or instead a regional example of gendercomplementarity.

16. An important difference between the prebenda and peoples' exchanges

with the Virgin, however, is the discrete transactional nature of the former

(where parties deliver specific goods for support in a given election), as corn-


pared to establishing a hopefully ongoing and productive commitment withthe latter. Exchanges with the Virgin represent one's embeddedness in a re-gional set of social relations (social intimacy), in that they entail ongoing recip-rocal obligations from both parties.

17. As the local history of the UCS and the token exchanges betweenpolitical leaders and women de pollera make clear, a central dimension ofmen's role in the active distribution of power is their access to official orunofficial local positions of authority, and, therefore, their potential to act asclients to more powerful regional and national politicians. One basic measureof the effectiveness of political leadership is the ability to use this status asclient to broker the delivery of resources by national government or partyofficials to the local arena. The ability, then, to lure resources from interna-tional NGO's, the national government, political parties, or caudillos, so as tobe able to personally distribute them locally, is one basic axis of local leader-ship in Quillacollo and elsewhere in Bolivia. Women are rarely, if ever, in theposition to carry out such explicitly political brokerage, and usually find them-selves cast in the role of "receiver" of such goods.

18. Of course, in so doing, Don Max was solidifying his national status asa political caudillo. Bolivian colonial history is rife with instances of generosityby patrons (itself encoded in the daily politics of the ritual godparenthoodcomplex), as precisely the means by which a relation of social inequality isdramatized. In her work among Bolivian tin miners, Nash (1979), for ex-ample, quotes miners discussing the old days, when tradition was still re-spected, and when the "owners" and "foremen" of the mines used to danceand drink with the miners themselves during celebrations such as Carnaval. InCochabamba (cf. Simmons 1974) the traditions whereby hacendados pro-vided the coca, cigarettes, food, drink, and even music, to accompany theobligatory work of peasants in their fields (as with the saqrahora) is anothercase in point. Even apparent moments of the overturning of the colonialsocial order, such as when Paz Estenssoro signed the Agrarian Reform intolaw in Ucurena, have been treated by the politicians enacting such reforms asacts of personal generosity. The populist dictator Rene Barrientos (1964-1968) transformed such caudillo generosity into a substantial power baseamong cochabambino peasants. Finally, Lagos (1994) has recently exploredsuch instances of "cultural collusion" for Cochabamba as key strategies in theconsolidation of control by a regional economic elite.

19. The working of an "engendered" ethnic cultural politics in the Andesis explored in de la Cadena's (1995: 333) analysis for Chitipampa, Peru, where"indigenous women are the last links in the chain of social subordination: theyare the least ethnically or socially mobile, and their Indian identity approaches


closure." While for Quillacollo this comment should be taken in light of aprovincial milieu of evidently greater hybridity, mobility, etc. [for more exten-sive comments about Quillacollo's "hybridity" see Albro (1997; 1999a, chap-ter three)], women's identities as more "indigenous" still do hold a promiseof cultural identity bedrock. In another regional context with a very differenthistorical set of socioeconomic features, this argument nevertheless exploresfor Quillacollo what de la Cadena calls simply the "indianization of women"(1995: 343), as a major cultural axis of Bolivia's more pervasive populistproject. In Latin America the public lot of women as synecdochic indicatorsof authentic native identities by both local and national leaders, is by no meansunique to the Andes. See Brandes's (1988: 88-109) analysis of tourism inTzintzuntzan, Mexico, as well as Kane's (1994: 177-200) discussion of thestatus of Embera women in Panama's national politics of development for afew corroborating instances.

20. The choice of "root metaphor" here is not accidental and, given thetalk about "cultural roots," not entirely extrinsic to local goings on. Pepper(1942: 38-39) first introduced this concept. In his parlance, root metaphorsare commonsensical facts broken down into their "structural characteristics"and used as a "set of categories" to interpret much or all other areas ofexperience in their terms. I argue that this has happened, in regional terms,with the chola. Others have discussed the status and functioning of rootmetaphors, opting for different terminology. Black (1962) prefers "concep-tual archetype," Turner (1974) opts for "root paradigm," while Fernandez(1986) refers to "primordial" or "organizing metaphors." While all of theseperhaps seek to describe the same essential properties, I prefer "root meta-phor" in this instance because I wish to foreground both the literal and meta-phoric "fertility" of the chola as a particularly "pastoral" type of culturalcapital (something of which "root" readily reminds us), while keeping inview the political urgency of the constant movements within populist "qualityspace" (Fernandez 1986) (hence, "metaphor" over the more static "para-digm" or "archetype").

21. For a comparable discussion of notions of "ideal womanhood" inpre-revolutionary Bolivian identity politics, see Gill (1993), particularly herdetailed characterization of the social role and reputation of the " chola pacena."Miles' discussion for Ecuador of the "chola cuencana" described as "a culturalsymbol of the highest order" (1992: 123), suggests a similar role for the cholain regional folklore. But with respect to the image of Quillacollo's cholas, it isimportant to note that, while often depicted as aggressive, matriarchal, andeven subversive, this is not a feminist image, but rather a case of gender asethnicity. This instance, then, can be compared to that of Paulson and Calla


(this volume), who emphasize the typical separation of "gender" and "ethnicity"in the discourse of development in the region.

22. This said, women—particularly when working within the logic andperceptions prevalent in the regional market economy—are canny strategicmanipulators of the pollera. They might change costume in all sorts of subtleways, say, from "peasant" homemaker to "chola" market woman. This caninvolve fine points of dress etiquette—the presence or absence of tassels inbraided hair, more or fewer gathers, the brightness and variation of colors,and hem line—which are partial indicators of relative wealth, ethnic status,poverty, marital status, or availability. Not so subtle changes might includedonning a pollera (though perhaps an "india" or de vestido "mestiza" athome) when going to sell in the regional markets (cf. Paulson's 1996 excellentdiscussion for Mizque, as well as the opening section of Paulson and Calla'sargument, this volume).

23. In another argument (Albro 1998b) I explore some of the implica-tions of this blurring of gender identities of local cosmic powers, specificallythe relationship between the Pachamama and the Tio, the "Devil" of themines. Yatiris (present for the fiesta of Urkupina) often refer to them ashusband and wife, or even just as intimate incarnations of each other.

24. Of course "complementarity" is a term widely used by Andeanists tocharacterize the specifically "Andean" relation between the genders. Referredto by Harris as the "complementary unity of the conjugal bond" (1978: 21),she goes on to suggest its importance for the Laymi of Norte de Potosi:"Chachaivarmi, man-woman, represents symbolically many of the fundamen-tal relationships of Andean society, but it also has a direct social referent in thepeasant household which is the basic unit of the traditional Andean economy"(1978: 22). A key to the chachawarmi concept is that any predominance (ofmale or female) is ideally "highly relative, and to be understood in the contextof overall mutuality in the relationship" (1978: 27). This Andeanist notion ofgender complementarity has been used as a means to understand women'sparticular sort of political intervention, described as "collective resistance,complementing male action" (Rivera 1990: 165). As summarized by one in-formed author, "Women's participation in situations of violent confrontationconforms to the model of complementarity and hierarchical man/womanunit and reproduces those aspects of daily life in which this model is apparent"(Rivera 1990: 166; italics mine). This same implicit usage of complementarityas typifying women's political interventions in terms of everyday resistance,also informs the current climate of Bolivia's politics of development where"champions of Andean ethnicity are rejecting gender as an imperialist impo-sition" (Paulson and Calla, this volume). Instead, they are holding up the


chachawarmi model as an appropriate alternative. In this argument, "cholas"(as ethnic root metaphors) exhibit both aspects of "classic" Andean gendercomplementarity in their own persons.

25. Talking about the currency of anachronistic notions in developmentdiscourse, these authors define transversalization as "a forceful strategy inwhich preconceived gender or ethnic ideas and considerations are insertedinto every instance of a given government, organization, or project." Myown discussion locates this process in the taking up of readily available re-gional indigenist themes, with specific reference to the chola, as a way tocreate an "allochronic" and "utopian" regional populist object of politicalreference.

26. In Quillacollo, and elsewhere in Bolivia, there are marked differencesbetween "cholas" and "cholitas" (cf. Albo's [1992] comment on Abercrombie's[1992] discussion of the importance of cholas for Oruro's Carnaval). Cholitas,for example, are younger and unmarried. As such, they are much more asso-ciated with the erotic and sexual dimensions of fiesta contexts.

27. While its etymology is unclear, "wisk'atatay" is a Quechua term peopletypically use in provincial Cochabamba to refer to a man (presumably a mes-tizo) romantically or sexually involved with a cholita. "Wisk'ay" the verb,literally means "to close" or "to lock up." The implication might refer to thefiercely jealous or commanding reputation of cholas, who brook no compe-tition. The paramour is thus trapped by his own love; he is a prisoner to thechola's powers, as with the eventual fate of the protagonist in Medinaceli's Lachaskanawi.

28. To clarify, while, strictly speaking, the word "sipas" is used in Quechua(and in the province of Quillacollo) to refer to a young girl, in the Quechuanolmore typical of the town and of the folkloric milieu, "imilla" has come tofunction as a synonym for the "innocence" of the cholita and, therefore, thesubject of much indigenist-type regional literature.

29. While I have been drawing on an eclectic variety of ethnographicevidence to make the case for the cultural productivity of the chola as aregional (and by implication, more pervasively Andean) root metaphor, thereis a deep resonance between the argument advanced here and other com-parative cases where many often seemingly contradictory themes of "pro-ductivity," "fecundity," "eroticism," "motherhood," "lovers," "androgyny,"and the transposition of features between cosmic powers and humans, aresimilarly combined in a powerful female synthetic cultural image. See forexample Freidrich's (1978) discussion of Aphrodite as a primordial Indo-European "lover-mother archetype."

30. The k'alincha unambiguously suggests a sexual intimacy, which, in


turn, gives birth to the hybrid popular male. In her useful discussion, Berlantsuggests that such intimacy "involves an aspiration for a narrative about some-thing shared, a story about both oneself and others that will turn out in aparticular way." Playing on the shared cognate between "intimacy" and "inti-mation," she also suggests that this aspiration is communicated "with thesparest of signs and gestures" (1998:281). In the present analysis, the k'alincha,but also the chola's other folkloric incarnations, publicly intimate an invisibleshared intimacy with a local popular culture, presumably acted out in peoples'private lives.

31. See Albro (n.d.) for a more in depth discussion of the several (oftencontested) ways that "cho/a/e" (as opposed to mestizaje) has recently and moregenerally come to be a point of orientation around which a more positiveregional view of the "popular-Andean" has been elaborated in Quillacollo,and where the historically stigmatized figure of the "cholo" has become amore desirable part of local identities.

32. This Virgin has achieved international prominence and is now offi-cially called the "patron of national integration." As both the Virgin Mariaand mamita Urkupina, this potent figure condenses popular folk Catholicbeliefs about saints with Andean ideas about vital telluric forces. The fiesta'spopularity skyrocketed in the 1970's, just as the ongoing parcelization of ag-ricultural land in the valley was becoming an acute problem and rural familieswere busy finding options other than small hold farming. During the fiestadevotees enter the "mines" of the Virgin built into her Calvario, where they"work," striking the rock veins with a sledgehammer until removing a chunk"Faith" in the Virgin is demonstrated by this productive work, first symboli-cally in the mines, then throughout the coming year. This stone is then madethe basis of a ch'alla, a ritual act of supplication and affinity carried out forthe Virgin (cf. Albro 1998b; Lagos 1993; Peredo 1990).

33. Writing largely about Cochabamba, Irurozqui Victoriano (1995) alsodiscusses the role of a "rural Utopia" in the literary imagination of early andmid-20th century Bolivian writers, and the ways this literary Utopia was takenup in the pre-revolutionary provincial politics. For these writers, the specterof the "cholo" was responsible for "all Bolivia's defects and vices" (1995:359), making a functional "democratic" nation impossible. Their solutionwas to opt for a morally positive alternative to the flawed hybrid present in"the past," by constant reference to "the cult of the legendary and now lostgreatness of the Quechuas and Aymaras" (1995: 360) of yore. This fadedgreatness was yet dimly reflected in "the values of the simple life, full ofsincerity and innocence, in contrast to an urban life characterized by deceit,fraud and insidiousness" (1995: 379). Also important for this Utopia was that


it was typically expressed as a "profound localist sentiment," where consider-ation of the Bolivian nation as a whole, the "patria grande" was excluded infavor of romantic elaborations of the "patria chica" Irurozqui Victoriano'sanalysis suggests the historical depth of this male literary imagination, thetropes of which still regularly find their way into the words and actions ofcontemporary local folklorists and politicos. For an interesting comparativecase of the development of utopic possibilities around the economic activi-ties of "native" Andean women, see Weismantel's (1997) discussion for thecommunity of Zumbagua, Ecuador.

34. Such a ritualized return to "utopic" agricultural time is of course oneway in which the "pastoral" is maintained in the province as other than just adead literary conceit. It is also, in significant degree, a still vital component ofthe publicly "performed" identities of individuals, as with the ch'alla's invoca-tion of the Pachamama. The pastoral is an emotionally textured, culturallycharged, and implicitly vital aspect of the typical human experience in theregion and much more than mere political rhetoric about one's "patrimony."For more on Andean "utopias," see Burga and Flores Galindo (1982), FloresGalindo (1987), Albro (1998a).

35. Throughout this argument, it is easy to lose site of the type of media-tion meant here, as when talking about "brokerage." Elsewhere (1999) I con-sider a range of different kinds of political brokerage (in the widest sense).Each represents different cultural contact points between the national, thelocal, and the popular. But across these several examples, we shouldn't con-fuse the varieties of cultural mediation at work. As a root metaphor, thechola is not, strictly speaking, a "broker" (in the direct "economic" sense,although she does often function thusly). But as cultural capital, the cholapublicly mediates popular discriminations between "indio" and "mestizo,""rural" and "urban," and other historically key differences, while channelingthese discriminations in specific directions. This happens in such a way as tosuggest their coexistence both in specific provincial figures and, more gener-ally, in the provincial milieu as a whole.

36. The Quechua term "llakta" is redolent in local political discourse,where "llaktamasf (literally, "fellow townsfolk") is perhaps the paramountpopulist form of address between a public speaker and assembled crowd.The chola is perhaps the most conspicuous public identity of Quillacollo'sllaktamasis.

37. Berlant writes, intimate lives "personalize the effects of the publicsphere" (1998: 282). She also suggests how such spaces as the coffee house, a"class-mixed semiformal institution" (1998: 283), are central to Habermas'sversion of the emergence of a bourgeois public sphere, with its notion of a


participatory democracy. Comparably, in this case, it is the similarly class-mixed chicheria that is associated with the peculiar "democracy" inherent inregional popular culture (a democracy that regionally underwrites the presentnational era of neoliberal democratization). This notion of democracy, asdeveloped through a regional and largely male literary tradition, has men andwomen participating in different ways. Men drink and interact in chicherias(and write about doing so), but the chola (as the chichera) caters to her clien-tele, while herself rarely drinking with patrons (and never writing about it).

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The Populist Chola: Cultural Mediation and the Political Imagination in Quillacollo, Bolivia

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