Clare Sammells
Miguel Centellas
Maria Bruno
Sara Simon
Chris Exner
Kate McGurn Centellas
Claudine Vallières
Jonathan
Andres Vaughan
Donna YatesWhen I was starting my fieldwork, a woman asked me if I washed my clothes. I admitted I paid someone to do it. But what about in the United States? she pressed. Of course, I answered, there I wash my clothes myself. She then told me that many Bolivians believe that Americans do not wash their clothes at all — they simply wear them and then throw them out, and then they are brought to El Alto and sold in its sprawling street market. While not (usually) literally true, I take this as a serious commentary on how American consumerism looks from the outside.
I am fascinated by two stories about Bolivia that have recently captured the attention of the American press. Both have been republished in a number of newspapers. The first concerned the young lady who lost the Miss Cholita title for wearing fake braids. The other was about how Evo wants to end the Bolivian trade in used American clothing which is undercutting the Bolivian manufacture of clothing.
It seems to me that these stories are related. Both concern whether identity is produced through interactions with material culture. Can one be a “real” Cholita without braids? Young Bolivian women do dress up as cholitas for entradas and festivals. And some young women also move back and forth between fashions, sometimes spending time “de vestido” before returning to dressing “de pollera,” or switching between the two depending on social context.
Dress — and hair — are not permanent. And yet both are part of larger networks of cultural practices, material goods, and economic networks. Both these articles point to the fact that in Bolivia this is recognized to be the case. What surprises me is that seems to interest the U.S. media more than other important issues in Bolivia today.
Filed under: Class and Ethnicity, Gender, International Connections, Media, Press, and Internet, Nationalism
Clare,
You’ve mentioned the impermanence of dress and hair among young indigenous women moving back and forth between fashions of traditional clothing and Modern second hand clothing from the western world. This suggests that young indigenous women are conscious of the imagined and discursive dimensions of the modern world. If one is to succeed and survive economically as well as advance socially in the context of an industrial society, perhaps what is most important is to yield images and language that is persuasive to the specific audience. I would note that this is also especially prominent in urban contexts where there is a multiplicity of stimuli (Western) and a technical division of labor. All the same, we can see why young indigenous women might be motivated to the “corruption” of such discursive fashions such as fake braids or non-traditional clothing. The deceptive manipulation of symbolic forms of representation is common among peasant classes in new, modern settings and suggests a “subaltern politic” or “consciousness”, that moves horizontal. Their own “true” consciousness then truly remains hidden within the many layers of contradicting cultural stimuli they are faced with when modernity encounters the traditional way of life. This can be a recipe for disaster, it is almost as if material entities that are rooted in culture no longer have any meaning.
It does not just stop at clothing. There is a big problem in La Paz with the so called black market: loads and loads of electronics that are sold as if they were the original manufacturer when it is in fact a copy. Case in point, my friend bought a camera in the barrio known as “Eloy Salmon”. It broke 2 days later for no apparent reason. When we took it back, guess what there was no refund or warranty. He simply said “This is Sony Latin America” and that there are no refunds. Many businesses in the southern district of La Paz struggle to survive by selling the “real” product at a more expensive price, but in the end are also undercut by all the “trucha” out there.
The thing that most amazes to me is that these two stories were widely circulated in U.S. newspapers, while there was little mention in the U.S. press of the massive political protest on Friday, or the possibility that the capital of the nation might move.
I think there is a distinction between economic networks of material culture, and the meanings that are associated with those materials. Of course these are interwoven issues, and cannot be fully separated. But arguing against imported clothing, sold at cut-rate prices that undercuts the livelihood of domestic manufacturers, is a very different than debates about what fashions one “should” wear. It seems that Evo’s move is the former, while the beauty pageant judges are the latter. These debates are structured very differently.