WUNRN
Franz Chávez interviews ZULEMA LEHM, expert on indigenous issues
TRINIDAD,
Bolivia, Aug 20, 2010 (IPS) - In the northeastern Bolivian department
(province) of Beni, a region of wetlands, savannah and jungle where
three-quarters of the population lives in poverty, indigenous women are
building a new kind of leadership to help develop their communities.
The lowlands
region, whose capital is Trinidad, is home to 16 of the country's 36 native
groups, each one of which preserves its own traditions and particular ways of
living in community, researcher Zulema Lehm, one of the foremost experts on
Lehm, the
author of several books on the various native groups that live in the Amazon
rainforest in northeast
In the
projects, she works to make sure that one basic element is the promotion of
gender parity, while taking into account the particular roles played by women
in each group.
The
population of Beni, one of the least populated departments in
The poverty
rate in Beni is 16 percentage points higher than the national average of 60
percent in this country of 10.6 million people,
Q: What role do women
play in collective decision-making in their communities?
A: The
answer is a bit complicated, because we're talking about 16 different
indigenous communities in
One of the
areas that we studied was the division of labour. Among Yuracaré, Sirionó and
Guarayo women, we saw that they took part in hunting expeditions along with the
men, for relatively long periods of time. In fact the entire family would go
along, including the children.
In these
groups, it was important to observe who was in charge of collecting firewood,
tending to the garden plots or harvesting certain products like yucca (a white,
starchy tropical vegetable also known as manioc or cassava) or plantains.
The Mojeño
women, for example, dedicated more time to weaving cotton fabric and
participated less in hunting.
Q: And what form does
the growing female participation take in the closed circles of male leadership?
A: There are
dispersed communities where formal meetings of leaders are not as frequent
anymore as family reunions, where women do participate.
In these new
decision-making gatherings, they are starting to take part to different
degrees, and a process of change has been seen over time.
It ranges
from more passive to more participative and influential forms of participation
in collective decision-making, and is a more or less generalised tendency in
the region.
But although
women are making a large effort to participate in decision-making gatherings,
their traditional cultural roles are undergoing changes at a slower pace.
Q: Are there women
leaders who have stood out in the social movements fighting for collective
demands (like land and other rights)?
A: In the
34-day indigenous march of 1990, the participation of women and children was
quite prominent. I should mention Carmen Pereira, who led the indigenous women
of
Q: Can the power
achieved by a woman in one of the lowlands communities give her more influence
in her own family?
A: The issue
has to be approached from an understanding of the rules of kinship, and each
indigenous group has slightly different rules, although, for example, polygamy
was a privilege enjoyed in the past by male leaders in Amazon native
communities.
One of the
most significant issues has to do with where a couple lives after they get
married -- in the man's home or in the woman's family home?
In the case
of the Sirionó, the new couple goes to live at the woman's home. That means her
family has a degree of control over parental and family relationships, in
contrast with other communities where the rule is that couples go to live with
the man's family.
Q: It is said that some
native peoples practice polyandry. Is this true?
A: There are
some cases of polyandry, in other words, women having more than one male
partner. But they are certainly relatively isolated cases which have to do with
certain adaptations of the cultural system to specific conditions in that
family in particular.
For example,
a woman whose husband had an accident and can no longer provide for his family
in accordance with the division of labour, because he can no longer hunt and
provide the protein that is important to these families.
Q: Does the practice
persist among any specific native group in
A: These are
isolated situations that can occur in different groups. There is an overall
cultural format that comes from the Catholic Church and from the state, without
a doubt, but in all aspects of daily life, there are also more traditional,
older practices in these societies that no one has been able to change.