Efforts at Incorporation

Questionably to his credit, Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez also led the passage of Ley de Participación Popular (Law of Popular Participation) as an endeavor to bring ethnic groups and peasants into the political economy of Bolivia. The law decentralized administrative authority and gave political authority to 380 municipalities throughout rural areas of Bolivia, giving peasants more possibility of political power. Sánchez also instituted health and education reform measures in rural areas.

The impact of these changes on Chagas’ disease is mixed. Peasants now have improved access to national revenues through the municipalities for improving roads, schools, and houses. Proyecto Cardenal Maurer in Sucre is using municipal monies to improve houses to help control Chagas’ disease. Peasants also participate in a national health plan that favors women and children and maternal health care, which indirectly helps restrict Chagas’ disease. One of Bolivia’s leading anthropologists, Xavier Albo, sees this as giving the peasantry more political involvement. Because global integration into world markets is a necessary economic trend in Bolivia, traditional Andeans are becoming involved in the political process of the nation.

On the negative side, however, another leading Bolivian anthropologist, Pablo Regalsky, represents Indian federations that violently oppose this new legislation as leading to the demise of autonomous Andean leadership centered in the community (Andean village) as opposed to the municipality (Bolivian village). Municipalities have replaced communities as political nuclei, and vecinos (mestizos) assume leadership roles over the peasants. Even if peasants get elected to power in the municipalities, critics believe it will only be after they are corrupted by the political parties.

These changes have had a less than positive effect on Chagas’ disease. Peasants have lost large tracts of land to private corporations, for which they often work as migrant workers. In Misqui, Bolivia, for example, a large industrial dairy farm owned by investors has displaced fifty Quechua families who had previously held the land in common and through privatization laws were able to sell it to capital investors. Western property rights emphasize the rights of individuals, whereas Andean property rights emphasize ideas of commonality, exchange, and ecology. Whereas peasants traditionally held land in common and the community had a sense of social solidarity, emphasis now is placed on the individual, with few or no ties to the community. Individuals tend to think less of their commitment to the community than they did under Andean traditional patterns of work exchange, reciprocity, and shared land.

For example, if someone leaves the community to migrate elsewhere and leaves his house in disrepair, it will remain unattended and become a source of infestation for others in the community who have repaired their houses. It becomes more difficult to get community involvement in projects. Another concern is that peasants are rapidly becoming jornaleros (wage workers) for landowners after they sell or lose their land. This drastically changes the cultural constructs of how they perceive their homes and land, as discussed above. Finally, because of increased poverty, considerable numbers of peasants now work as migrant workers in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. These and many other factors moved the Bolivian people to elect a new group of political leaders in 1997.