Urbanization: Class and Ethnic Distinctions

According to the census of 1950, 74 percent of the Bolivian population lived in rural areas and 26 percent lived in urban areas. According to the census of 1992, 43 percent live in rural areas and 57 percent in urban areas. Bolivian cities were designed during the colonial period according to a grid system, with central plazas for criollo and mestizo classes. Indians lived on the periphery. The cities were designed for populations under 50,000 people. Within recent years, these colonial enclaves have expanded to include satellite cities with larger populations and resultant crowding. The result is a center of quaint colonial buildings on narrow streets that are packed with cars, people, and pollution, with a periphery of houses that are constructed piecemeal‑beginning with shacks and progressing to adobe and walled enclosures, and finally to adequate housing, as finances and time permit. Although Bolivia does not have huge cities comparable to Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, the cities of La Paz, El Alto, Santa Cruz, and Cochabamba are large urban centers with similar problems. The rapid expansion of urban centers has been a major influence in the spread of Chagas’ disease within the cities in Bolivia.

For migrants moving to cities, several strategies of shelter have been pointed out by Van Lindert and Van Westen (1991), who studied low‑income housing in La Paz, Bolivia, and Bamako, Mali. The first strategy involves gaining access to shelter in the city for the first time and starts with a nonowned shelter that is shared with friends or relatives, for which something may be paid or given in exchange, often produce from the peasant’s farm (Vaughan and Feindt 1973). The various households usually do not live under the same roof, if possible, but houses are expanded horizontally, and new rooms are built away from the core unit. This is especially true in the settlements on the city’s periphery. A gate in the fence which encloses the plot is the common entrance for the various domestic units, which are located in separate structures. Thus some protection is provided to all the families, as is more privacy and less crowding than is often the case in more centrally located districts. Settlement in the city’s periphery has been common; the satellite city of El Alto, outside of La Paz, is the fastest‑growing city in Bolivia, with a population of 350,000 in 1997, up from 25,000 in 1969. El Alto has ample land to expand on the extensive Altiplano, whereas La Paz with over 500,000 people is limited to a large crater. One observation in regard to Chagas’ prevention is that housing improvement needs to focus on the core unit and all domestic units at the same time, rather than isolating certain domestic units.

^{Figure 20.}

^{Housing in the cities is frequently unavailable for the poor, who sleep in the streets, where they are particularly vulnerable to vinchucas and Chagas’ disease. Urban transients are also the primary sources of blood transfusions, thus providing another source for spreading T. cruzi. (Photograph by Joseph W. Bastien)}

After migrants have found housing in the city, they try to improve the household’s position by moving the household and gaining home ownership (Van Lindert and Van Westen 1991). This greatly enhances their control over their living conditions. Because self‑help construction is commonly engaged in Bolivia, this time is recommended to educate migrants about constructing houses that prevent triatomine infestation. Relocation decisions are greatly influenced by kinship networks. A fairly universal rule of intracity mobility of low‑income households is that households will not move into a new urban space unless the conditions and (actual or potential) housing standards compare favorably with those of the vacated buildings.

Another strategy employed by the urban poor in their quest for adequate shelter is the in situ enlargement and improvement of the shelter they presently occupy. Security of tenure is the most important factor leading to this, which does not imply having a legal title as much as the assessment that their tenure is secure (see Turner 1963, 1968, 1969; Brett 1974). Low‑income households may buy a house or plot to build on from the very start–provided they have some surplus income (Köster 1995). Having land is very important to Andeans, whether they live in the country or city. Land is also important to grow vegetables and raise animals, even if the plot is small.

The wealthy and middle‑class mestizo people generally have uninfested houses; some have campesina or chola maids to keep them clean, but these maids could also carry vinchucas back and forth from rural and urban areas. The mestizo, or mestiza, class are the dominant upper‑class Bolivians who speak Spanish and have adopted Western European ways. The cholo, or chola, class refers to peasants who have moved to the city, still speak Aymara or Quechua, and whose women wear traditional skirts, pullera, and hats. Processes of “cholification” are active in Bolivia, as cholos have taken over much of Bolivian commerce and control the work force and certain political parties; one has even become president. Chola marketwomen have formed guilds with high solidarity that exert effective political pressure. Bolivia had its first native Aymara vice‑president, Victor Hugo Cárdenas, from 1994 to 1997. Campesino (peasant) class refers to Aymara, Quechua, and Tupi‑Guarani Indians who speak their native languages, wear distinctive clothing, and farm in rural areas.

The cholo class of Aymara and Quechua peoples is considerably better off in a material sense than the campesino class. Cholos have adapted sufficient Western ways to enable them to do business with the powerful mestizo class of Bolivians. Cholos are distinguished from mestizos in that the former still recognize their links with their Andean heritage, whereas the latter try to identify exclusively with the Western European tradition, although they may give some token acknowledgment to their Indian heritage. Certain cholos have accumulated great wealth as truckers, cocainistas (cocaine traffickers), contrabandistas (contraband traders), chifleras (herbalists), and mercantilistas (merchants).

Cholos have been able to link the peasant economy with the national economy. Peasants refer to them not as cholos but as residentes (residents), which implies residents of the city. Economists might initially infer that residentes exploit the campesinos; however, their gains as middle‑men are leveled off by the need to pay for elaborate fiestas within the community where they trade. Residentes are also required to provide housing, hospitality, and legal assistance for peasants when they come to the city. The economic relationship between cholos and campesinos also depends upon kinship relationshipsboth real and ritualAndean reciprocal exchange patterns, and capitalistic economics.

These relationships have affected housing patterns in interesting ways. Within the market area of Buenos Aires Street in La Paz live a group of related cholo truckers with kinship and origin ties to Aymara campesinos of Iquiqui who import electronic products from Japan. The goods arrive in containers and are transported by means of a new large truck across Bolivia, into Brazil, and over again into Bolivia on the border with Brazil, where they are put on a launch and transported upriver to a settlement within a swamp which is set upon stilts. Houses are constructed on three levels within the swampy area, so that if one area floods, the inhabitants move to the next floor, illustrating the ingenuity of the Aymaras. The goods are then sold to the tropical lowlanders, and the truck is also sold. One can estimate the dollar value of this exchange as close to $150,000.

Cholo housing also reflects their social class. Cholos have moved into neighborhoods of all classes in the cities of Bolivia. The size, shape, and exterior of their houses appears the same as other houses, but the interior often differs little from that of peasant housing, with unfinished walls, supplies stored in sacks throughout the rooms, walls covered with pictures, clothing hanging on pegs, newspapers used for wallpaper, and one or two rooms set aside for sleeping quarters. Even though many cholos have sufficient money to improve their houses inside, they perceive their living quarters from a different perspective. Poverty cannot be the only explanation for cluttered houses.

Cholo housing provides an insight into how Aymara and Quechua peoples use their housing: as depositories, for the processing of resources, to house cottage industries, for social gatherings, as symbols of ethnicity and class, and for dormitories, kitchens, and eating places. Their multifunctional housing appears cluttered to many Europeans and Americans. It also provides triatomines places to hide and people and animals to prey upon.

Upper socioeconomic classes of mestizos and cholos constitute only a small minority in Bolivia, and the vast majority of campesinos and cholos live in inadequate and unhygienic housing. Such is the case of impoverished urban migrants and dislocated peasants throughout Bolivia. Widespread poverty in Bolivia has created deterioration and crowding of domiciles to such a degree that urban settings have become optimal environments for triatomines and T. cruzi. The number of chagasic patients is increasing in the cities of La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro, Sucre, Potosí, and Santa Cruz.

Chagas’ disease is related to underdevelopment, overpopulation, poverty, inadequate housing, and the inequitable distribution of resources. The occurrence of Chagas’ disease in Latin America corresponds to those rural areas most deprived of sanitation and primary health care and to the poorest rural regions. Moreover, victims of Chagas’ disease are also being ostracized in certain areas, where being seropositive for the disease has a social stigma impeding employment.

Perhaps the most significant result of this is that it exacerbates the impoverishment and resulting lack of development in rural parts of Latin America. Modes of production on haciendas are semi‑feudal; there is both difficulty in marketing products and a lack of technology in the subsistence economy. Communities are isolated, poor, and spread apart. The urban slum dwellers in cities, the landless workers, and those with tiny holdings in rural areas are at high risk for Chagas’ disease, which in turn contributes to their plight.