Photo courtesy of Bolivian wrestler, Mr. Atlas
​

Lucha libre, or freestyle/exhibition wrestling in Bolivia is similar to "exhibition-style" or professional in much of Latin America, including Mexico. 

As part of this increased visibility of Mexican wrestling in the 1950s, luchadores began traveling throughout Latin America putting on events. Huracán Ramirez and Rayo de Jalisco were among those who spent time in Bolivia. They also trained new wrestlers in the cities they visited. Some early Bolivian wrestlers included: Mr. Atlas, Principe [The Prince], SI Montes, Medico Loco [Crazy Doctor], and Diablo Rojo [Red Devil].

During the 1960s lucha libre events took place in the Perez Velasco, a commercial area just outside of central La Paz, popular among working class and middle class people. Luchadores usually wrestled in a makeshift ring and set up seating in a fútbol field. The costumes during this time were not particularly flashy and almost everything was improvised. But by the mid-1970s, the Coliseo Olimpico [Olympic Coliseum], a 7500 seat sports arena, was built in the central neighborhood of San Pedro, leading to more visibility.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, interest in lucha libre waned in La Paz. But in the late 1990s, a major shift occurred when Bolivian lucha libre first appeared on television. In 1998, a group of luchadores calling themselves Furia de Titanes [Fury of Titans], who were regularly putting on shows at the Coliseo Olimpico, noticed TV personality Adolfo Paco in the audience. They approached him about beginning a lucha libre program on Asociación Televisión Boliviana (ATB) channel 9, and he agreed. The program was filmed in the Coloseo de Villa Victoria, in a more peripheral neighborhood of La Paz, and was an immediate success. In addition to large television audiences, the group began attracting long lines of people hoping to see the shows taped live. Luchadores gained notoriety and were featured in local newspapers and magazines. With the addition of several corporate sponsors, luchadores earned about $200 per event.

But this success was fleeting, because not all were highly skilled, and Paco was undiscerning. This caused bitter arguments among the wrestlers. By 1999, Furia de Titanes had split in two. Those who kept the name Furia de Titanes remained on ATB, while others adopted the name Lucha de Campeones [Champions’ Wrestling] and began wrestling on the Uno network, channel 11. The rupture ultimately resulted in smaller audiences, in response to which sponsors terminated their support and thus luchadores in both groups took home significantly less pay. Lucha de Campeones, for example, offered free entrance to their live shows to encourage larger audiences, but as a result luchadores made only 250 to 350 Bolivianos ($35-50 US) per event. In the year 2000, several luchadores complained to Paco that they had never received the health insurance he had promised them. Paco ignored their requests and in retaliation, the luchadores refused to put on their event the next Sunday. They never appeared on television again. However, the end of lucha libre on Bolivian television was quickly followed by the beginning of what might be considered the current era of Bolivian lucha libre, which includes a number of groups in La Paz: Titanes del Ring, LIDER, and Super Catch, among them. Each of these groups also include "cholitas luchadoras," otherwise known as "cholitas luchadoras" [fighting cholitas].
​

​The social media sphere is all abuzz with the hashtag #justaddzebras this week, after John Oliver featured Bolivia’s traffic directing Cebras on his Sunday evening show. I have been a big fan of the Cebras, and even tried to join the “Cebra por un día” program, though research obligations foiled my attempt. I’ve also known a few young people who have worked as Cebras, who think of it, not as a job, but as a personal commitment. Needless to say, I immediately let out a gasp of pleasure, when I saw where John was going with his monologue, then retroactively tagged all my Instagram photos with Cebras.

​After a show on Trump’s budget, Oliver used the Cebras to lighten the air, which to be clear I not only support, but was thrilled by. ​But what I want to talk about is the lead up Oliver provided to the bit on the Cebras—he began by introducing Bolivia with an inset map in which Colombia was highlighted. Then pointed out that the highlighted country was not Bolivia, but Venezuela, Then switched the highlighting to Venezuela saying it was Colombia. And after a short bit switching highlighting around to different countries, claiming them as Bolivia, he finally showed the right country, and moved on. He pulled the same stunt on February 23, 2015, in which he showed Ecuador and Paraguay highlighted instead of the correct country, introducing a segment in which he notes that the only country that elects judges in a process similar to the United States is Bolivia. After showing the confusing map images, John comments, “This gag is never not going to be fun.”

And I’m sure it is fun for him. But I find it annoying. Perhaps it does have some educational value, but it also makes fun of and in doing so validates U.S. Americans’ utter lack of geographic knowledge about most of the world. Rather than viewers feeling as if they should know where Bolivia is, they laugh along at how silly it would be for them to know where this country is, that apparently has nothing to offer but examples of poorly designed judge selection and dancing animal-costumed traffic directors. This joins the unfortunate media portrayals of Bolivia in Sandra Bullock’s remake of the documentary Our Brand Is Crisis, in which the campaign of former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is highlighted without any reference to the despicable human rights violations he oversaw the following year (See Linda Farthing’s review of the film here). It also joins the portrayls of Bolivia I highlighted in my Ph.D. Dissertation, including the film Horrible Bosses in which a character suggests chemical waste should be sent to Bolivia, and Woody Allen’s Manhattan which references “those barefoot kids from Bolivia who need foster parents” (p 190, find the full document here).
 
All together these portrayals highlight the incommensurability, exoticism, and Otherness of Bolivia as compared to the United States. It is a place of strange customs, a third world wasteland, and proof that U.S. politics are screwy, indicated by their similarity to this obviously (implicitly indexed) Banana Republic-esque underdeveloped nation. On one hand, John Oliver’s most recent #justaddzebras bit at least extends us beyond the political and “inequal” to focus on the lively culture of my favorite country. But his framing did the bit a disservice. Only by taking seriously the context of Bolivia as a complex nation with more to offer than “barefoot children” and shady politics, will the humor of the Cebras really work in productive ways. 

​I am not indigenous. I am a middle class child of parents of English, German, and Polish heritage. I’m third generation US by grandparent with the most recent arrival. I’m also a descendent of Mayflower passengers. For all intents and purposes I am white. I’ve been mistaken for being Brazilian on occasion, but that’s about as non-white as I get. And those mistaken moments were in South American nations in which Brazilian might be imagined as “more white” than the general population, so even considering those moments to indicate a level of non-white-appearing-ness, is doubtful.
 
I am not indigenous. At times I say I do research with indigenous people, but even that is only partially true. Mostly I study the meanings and significance of the concept of indigeneity. But I do know a fair number of people who consider themselves indigenous Americans, from Cherokee, Ojibwe, and Navajo to Aymara, Quechua, and Mapuche, and I value learning about their experiences. There is no doubt that I come from a world of privilege and they and their ancestors have been subject to extreme forms of structural and physical violence for centuries.
 
I say all this in order to make very clear that I do not know what it is like to be indigenous. But on this international day of the indigenous woman, I can’t help but think of the experiences I have had that help me access a small level of understanding of what it might be like for some indigenous women in the world today.
 
I grew up in a small town. It was the kind of place where your parents knew what kind of trouble you got into even before you got home from school in the afternoon. Inevitably, Mom or Dad knew someone who worked in the school, and news would travel fast, even before the days of social media. There are no traffic lights in town. There used to be one red blinking light at the biggest intersection, but when the state told the municipality they’d no longer pay for it’s upkeep we took it down. There’s no question you’ll run into someone you know, even walking to the post office or village hall. People can be insular in my small town. We don’t trust outsiders. We don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have at least 4 cousins (extended cousins count, of course) to vouch for them. It’s a conservative place. And sometimes we feel a little disenfranchised.
 
We are white and we are middle class. But politicians don’t seem to care whether we vote for them or not. We don’t get many state-sponsored works projects. Businesses don’t seem to think they’ll make much money in our town, though a Subway franchise and Dollar General store took a chance on us a few years ago, and they seem to be doing well.
 
Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve lived on the Navajo reservation. I’ve lived in an auto-constructed house in Alto Hospicio. We’ve still got it good. But I remember showing up to my first days of University classes at a prestigious private university, and feeling so embarrassed that I hadn’t taken any AP classes. I didn’t even know what AP stood for. And all this talk of 3s and 4s and 5s meant nothing to me. And GPAs that went beyond 4.0. It was all new. Suddenly, all the hard work I had done in my little public high school of 150 students seemed inadequate. I felt like I was out of my league.
 
But here is where my experience departs from that of many indigenous women who even make it to university classes. I didn’t look out of place (unlike Lara in Bolivia). My subtle Midwestern rural accent and idiolect were easy enough to shift (no more ‘may-sure’, I now say ‘meh-sure’, no more ‘pop,’ it’s ‘soda’ now). And I may have had a few bizarre customs like cow chip bingo, but these were easy to turn into a funny anecdote. My assimilation was quick and easy.
 
I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished in life, and I’m proud of the town I came from. But I recognize the incongruence of my urban life with my rural upbringing. I never truly feel ‘in my place’. In London, I long to hear a midwestern drawl, all while being secretly happy that I can pull off a ‘sorry’ without alerting anyone to my country of origin. In New York, I feel at once at home and reviled by hipsters in Carhartts. In Santiago, I try to explain why they Chilean campo feels so oppressive but in the US being in the country makes me feel so free. I can only imagine the ways that indigenous women feel between two worlds in their own ways if and when they move to the city or pursue higher education.
 
So, today, on this international day of the indigenous woman, I salute all indigenous women. Those who work in their natal communities, and those who have left them to make themselves better in the world or make the world a better place. I cannot imagine the challenges they face, but my own experiences make it quite clear that their feats are not easy ones. I so admire the strength I see in native women fighting back against oppression in the forms of colonialism, patriarchy, environmental racism, and other struggles. Viva la mujer indígena! 

​I don’t recall exactly how it began, but I was “la gringa.” Somewhere during my first year in Iquique, Chile, my two best friends began calling me as such, and soon hearing my given name from them just sounded wrong. They were a gay couple, both trained in derechos (law). Guillermo worked for the national Consulario—the institution that oversees government finances, and Cristian for la Defensoria del Pueblo—something like a public defense organization. Cristian had lived in the United States during a few different stints, and both had plans to pursue graduate education abroad.
 
When I left Iquique after two years to relocate to Santiago, I was particularly sad about leaving them behind. Not only had they been dear friends, confidants, Chilean history lesson providers, and cooking instructors, but they had also opened their home to me several times when I either physically needed a place to stay, or was so emotionally wraught from fieldwork that I needed an escape. But within a few months, Guillermo, originally from Santiago, had secured a position in the central office of the Consulario, and Cristian was interviewing for jobs in the metropolitan region as well. By summer we were reunited.
 
And while I had been indeed the gringa in Iquique—even more-so in the marginal satellite city of Alto Hospicio where I had lived and done my research, suddenly in Santiago I easily passed as someone who “belonged.” Perhaps at first glance it was clear I was not Chilean, and certainly confirmed when I began to speak with my muddled accent, and overly forced slang. But there were so many of us foreigners around that I was finally breathing sighs of relief that I was unremarkable. Here, gringa made less sense, but the nickname persisted. While I had always taken it as a term of endearment, it was questioned more in Santiago. “Aren’t you offended?” my Colombian apartment-mate would ask. But slowly he began calling me “gringa” as well. As did my boss, who had also become something of a friend. I heard “oye, Gringa” dozens of times each day, and received social media messages and emails addressed as such in addition.
 
And then my time in Chile ended. Before taking that long flight back to Chicago, I went to visit Bolivia, the place of my Ph.D. fieldwork, and suddenly I went back to being Nelly, or “la doctora.” My friend Gustavo and I went from La Paz to visit Cochabamba for a weekend, and we met up with a large group of friends, most of whom I had known several years earlier in La Paz. But there were some newcomers, a group of young people from Santiago who were visiting as well. As we all paraded around a Cochabamba supermarket contemplating what to grill that Saturday afternoon, I heard a Chilean accented voice shout, “Oye, Gringa!” I instinctively looked up, only seconds later wondering how this man knew I would respond to that name. Is it just that Chileans all call people gringos? Am I so very obviously Estadounidense that calling me anything else doesn’t seem to be an option, at least to someone who does not remember my name? And as I looked around for the voice’s owner, contemplating these possibilities, I realized he was not speaking to me, but to the Argentine women who was traveling with them.
 
Over the course of the weekend I never learned the Argentine’s given name, because she was exclusively referred to as Gringa. She was tall and had half of her hair died blonde. The other half of her head was shaven to buzz cut. She had a deep laugh and bright colored Adidas high top shoes that complimented her day-glow t shirt. I could easily imagine her as the stereotypical Argentine traveler juggling small balls or doing gymnastics at a traffic light in another South American country. And the name that had for so long felt so singularly mine, suddenly felt cheapened. If any foreigner could be a gringa, just because her skin was light, maybe it wasn’t a term of endearment. I never questioned Guillermo and Cristian’s motives, but somehow that word no longer felt like home.
 
Mary Weismantel writes, “Foreigners—a category that includes Latin American visitors as well—are gringos, but they are members of the same race as local whites.” Gringa will always be special to me, even as I write about the politics of whiteness in places like Iquique, La Paz, and Santiago. But I also must remember, it is not just a name, but a positionality, and its meaning…like chola, indian, indigenous person, black, person of color, or any other racialized naming form…is always historically, contextually, and politically dependent. 

“I joined a protest group!” Andres proclaimed proudly, knowing that I tend to be a loud proponent of the right of individuals to shake things up with collective action.

“What are you protesting?” I asked, and he pulled out his cracked Samsung Galaxy to show me. He opened Whatsapp and handed me the phone, where I read a brief manifesto in opposition to the construction of a parking lot for Bolivian trucks in Arica. “They’re going to spend 3.2 million dollars on a parking lot! And not for Chileans. For Bolivians. Do you think Bolivia has parking lots for Chilean vehicles? Or are there parking lots for us in Argentina and Colombia? No! With that money they could build homes, they could feed how many families for a year, they could fix the roads.”

Though a parking lot for Bolivian trucks may seem like a silly issue (and a strange one to those unfamiliar with Bolivian/Chilean politics), it cuts to the heart of much deeper issues of nationalism. The two countries are currently waiting for International Court of Justice at The Hague to decide if they will consider Bolivia’s claim to renegotiate coastal access, which was lost in the War of the Pacific in the late 1800s (see my Primer on the Bolivian-Chilean Maritime Conflict). Bolivia claims that, through they ceded the coastline in a 1904 treaty, Chile is obligated to negotiate coastal access based on Chile’s offers to sea access long after the treaty was enforced (see article in The Economist). 

While on the surface this is a dispute about trade and more than a century’s worth of lost GDP (not to mention the copper fields Bolivia lost in the war, which currently make up more than 30% of Chile’s export market). There are deeply nationalistic emotions that arise in these debates as well. Even for lower middle class Bolivians and Chileans—the type of people who would see little to no change in economic terms—are deeply invested in these issues. Many Bolivians see Chileans as arrogant local imperialists, publishing books such as Chile Depredador [Chile, the Predator]. Many Chileans, particularly in the northern region near the border with Bolivia, see Bolivians as backwards and uneducated, looking to get ahead by taking advantage of Chile’s resources, either by immigrating to work or trying to take a coastline that is rightfully Chilean. While for a few, solidarity across borders relies on class (see my blog on The Border: A view from Facebook), the grand majority of these national citizens have internalized their nationalism to the extent that their own lack of benefits from the arrangement and the similarities between lower middle class citizens on both sides of the border are simply overlooked.

This is particularly perplexing, given that northerners’ relationship with nationalism is rarely straightforward. Regional affiliation is usually much more important than national, as many feel disenfranchised from national politics and overlooked by the national government who simply extracts resources and money from the northern region’s copper mines, while leaving the people without social services. Yet there is strong identification with Chileanness when related to cultural forms such as food, sport, and heritage. This may be largly thanks to the process of “Chileanization” enacted in the territory when it was transferred to Chilean control in 1883. To mitigate resentment towards the military and new nation as a whole, the Chilean government launched a projects aimed at incorporating the northern population into the nation-state through religion and education for both children and adults, with mestizaje and modernization at the core of the country’s nationalist discourse. 

Even today, discourses of modernity undergird the tensions between Chilean and Bolivian citizens. The conflation of nation, modernity, and race means that for northern Chileans, they represent modern mestizo subjects, while Bolivians are poor, traditional, and indigenous (which is particularly amplified by Bolivia’s recent symbolic valorization of indigeneity under Evo Morales and the MAS government).

The border dispute, for these citizens that stand little chance of material benefit or loss from a renegotiation, is important because it cuts to the root of self-understanding. To cede a border to Bolivia would mean defeat by a country and people who not only are behind in terms of modernization, but use that as an excuse to extract resources that rightfully belong to Chileans (there are certainly parallels here with discourses about Mexican and Central American immigrants to the United States). For Bolivians, Chile’s unwillingness to open negotiations is simply evidence that the nation and its residents remain unrepentant (and at times racist) thieves.

So then, why is a parking lot so important? Not only, as Andres pointed out could that money, taken from Chilean taxes (and thus rightfully belonging to Chileans), be used for something to benefit Chileans, but ceding something to Bolivians admits that perhaps there is a need for negotiation. And those negotiations are not only about access to maritime trade, but are about what it means to be a modern mestizo citizen.

This belonging was closely associated with conceptions of social and economic class, which were almost always highlighted, claiming solidarity with working class and non-cosmopolitan lifestyle. At times this even led to cross-border identifications in which perceptions of common class and proletariat ideals superseded national identification. Similarly, differences in race and particularly indigeneity were often erased in service of highlighting a broader sense of marginality, in which most Hospiceños could claim a part, rather than compartmentalizing or hierarchizing forms of disadvantage.

Further Reading

A Primer on the Bolivian-Chilean Maritime Conflict
The Peruvian-Chilean Maritime Border: A View from Facebook

The Economist - Bolivia's Access to the Sea
The Economist - The Economics of Landlocked Countries

Lessie Jo Frazier, Salt in the Sand: Memory, Violence, and the Nation-State in Chile, 1890 to the Present (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).

Cástulo Martínez, Chile Depredador (La Paz: Librería Editorial G.U.M., 2010, 3er ed).

To be clear, I was always treated with kindness and respect by the luchadores while training and performing. Of course there was always an element of tension around issues of gender and sexuality. I was a white woman, highly educated, from a middle-class background in the United States. I wrestled with working-class mestizo men from La Paz and El Alto, of varying ages. Our relationships were always professional. Occasionally one would invite me to dinner at his house, and I would have to weigh several factors—our interactions up to that point, the time he had suggested, whether other people would be present, and what I might know about his current familial and romantic situation—before deciding whether to accept or reject. 

I rejected a request from a 50 year old luchador to accompany his family to a festival that would go late in the night, but agreed to meet him for tea later in a public restaurant in El Alto, trying not to alienate him to the detriment of my research. I accepted an invitation to a 27th birthday party for another luchador, which took place in a bar, and to which several of the other luchadoras were invited. I hoped this would allow us to be friends more than just wrestlers who train together. He tried to kiss me goodnight, but I quickly slipped away, and neither of us ever mentioned it again.

These experiences were in part because I was doing research in a male-dominated social setting. Indeed, in many ways, they served to inform my analyses of what Bolivian women might experience in their own involvement in wrestling. Of course my gringa-ness, foreignness, and lack of familial ties to anyone in the group make my situation slightly different. But these instances still tell us something about gender relations within the context.

But these experiences are not related just to my subject matter. In my current research, I have to be wary, not only of walking alone at night in Alto Hospicio, but also of the advances of police officers and public city officials when they send me non-work related Whatsapp messages. I have spoken with countless women about their similar experiences, one of whom was even evicted from her apartment in her fieldsite in a small conservative Middle Eastern  area after refusing the advances of her landlord.

To say that these experiences are frustrating is an understatement. They are not just an annoyance of daily life, but they profoundly impact one’s ability to do research, and maintain community ties. In just three short days it will be the two-year anniversary of the day I finished fieldwork. Yet I still feel the effects of these types of gendered relations.

Today I received a facebook message from one of the more senior and well respected luchadores in La Paz. At first I was flattered to receive a message because he asked when I will be wrestling again. “Quiero venir a verte” [I want to come watch you]. But the conversation quickly turned

*Pseudonym

And with that I most likely lost an important contact. Of course, I’m in a better position now, because my fieldwork is finished, some of it is published, and I’ve moved on to a new project. But I’m stuck now in a position of whether I even mention this to Jorge*, my former wrestling partner, and a fairly good friend. Do I continue as a friend always wondering if he is telling others that I am something of a significant other or sexual plaything to him? Do I mention it to him and confront the problem head on, most likely with little benefit either personally or professionally? Or do I assume what this older luchador said to be correct and silently stop being his friend.

I realize this is the type of problem many anthropologists face, regardless of gender, regardless of region, and regardless of topic. But as I recently wrote about the perception of women anthropologists flirting, extroverted actions of men are interpreted differently than those by women. This is something that will not be “solved” easily, particularly when we consider that many times this happens in places where there is less awareness of “rape culture,” less ability for women to participate in social life, and more complicated relationships between race, class, cosmopolitanism, and locality. I do intend to keep up a conversation about it though. 

A lot of my friends in North America were rooting for Brazil in the World Cup. As a newly adopted Chilena, it annoyed me a bit. But I also never had anything against Brazil, except that they are far from an underdog, and I generally root for teams like Ghana and Costa Rica. I think for anthropologists in particular Brazil is the land of Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s Death Without Weeping, and Donna Goldstein’s “Interracial” Sex and Racial Democracy: Twin Concepts? Though we know a true post-racial state doesn’t exist, Brazil captures our imaginations: beautiful beaches, beautiful people who at least marginally have attempted to overcome the institutionalized forms of racism we in the northern half of America are still struggling with. It is developed enough to be enticing, yet still retains a sense of chaotic charms that makes it seem like a place that is ethnographically enticing. For non-anthropologists from North America, it’s all about beaches, brothels, carnival, samba, and futball*.

An anthropologist friend commented on the Brazil v The Netherlands game for third place via Facebook: “Why is everybody hating on Brazil so bad? A colonizing nation kicked a neo-colonized nation's ass. And got most of Latin America, aka the neo-colonized neighbors, to cheer about this. Helloooo, false consciousness????”

This confusion I think is reasonable and common for people in North America. And I am no expert on futball fandom in South America, but I’ve now seen two separate World Cup cycles from this half of America (one from Lima, Peru and one from here in Northern Chile) Being an anthropologist, I’ve noted certain things. Also, I’m going on three years around these parts and I know some things about international relations. So here goes…

First, at least in the Andes, Brazil retains it’s “far away paradise” image. People with money go to Rio for vacation, spend their time on the beach, eating tasty things, staring at hot people, dancing Samba, possibly partying at Carnival, and maybe even going to a brothel. For others who are not as well off, it is a mystical land that is close enough to dream about but not quite reach (at least for now).

Yet, part of that partially obtainable dream is Brazil’s economy. Brazil’s economy ranks seventh in the world by both Gross Domestic Product and by Purchasing Power Parity. They fall behind the United States, China, Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. The next Latin American country on the (GDP) list is Mexico, which ranks 14th, and the next South American country is Argentina which ranks 26 (and then Chile at 36). In essence, for my friends in Northen Chile, Brazil might as well be Miami—in fact Chileans don’t even need a visa to enter the US). For others, like Bolivians, Brazil may technically be far easier to enter than the United States, but exchange rates are so unfavorable to the boliviano that it would be difficult for a middle class family to afford vacationing there. Essentially, Brazil is closer, but their economic position is much closer to North America and Europe than their South American neighbors. 

But even if we believe Lukács that all relations are structured by the condition of capitalism (and I’ll leave that up to you to decide), these relations run much deeper than simple exchange rates. Brazil for reasons economic and otherwise often has an excellent national team. This is partially why North Americans even notice that they exist. When’s the last time any North American tuned into a Bolivian game? Or can even find Bolivia on a map for that matter? But the fact that Brazil consistently fields a good team means they get international attention. These economic and futball success factors are indeed a large part of why Brazil was chosen to host the World Cup.

But this futball success also means that they usually beat their neighbors at the game that is most important to most fans. Chile, in particular, has been eliminated from the World Cup by Brazil in 2014, 2010, 1998, and 1962. That is every single time they have ever made it out of the group stage. Just (literally) bringing the Brazilian team to it’s knees this time around was a source of national pride. Brazil has also won 4 of the last 6 Copa America championships. In high school sports, they would be the fancy private school that hires university coaches and always makes it to the State Final.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that this phenomenon extends to Argentina as well. Though unstable, their economy (currently ranked 26th in GDP) is still above Chile’s and Peru’s, and certainly Bolivia’s. Two Chilean friends who recently traveled to Buenos Aires for vacation recounted to me how their expectations of destitution and poverty were entirely blown away. “The people are still partying. And the drinks weren’t that cheap!” they told me.

Again, similar to Brazil, Argentina is a futball powerhouse. They have qualified in every World Cup for the last 40 years, and only once have not made it out of the group stage. They have played in the final game in four of the last 10 Copa America tournaments. They are also home to the most visible and recognizable South American futball club, the Boca Jrs. And they have Messi (who is often considered arrogant and dismissive of fans). In fact, one Bolivian fan told me “The Argentinos are individualistic. They don’t work as a team, but try to be the star like Messi, the worst arrogant one.” Again, we’re talking private school here.

But possibly more importantly, Argentina is a “natural rival” of Chile (and Brazil too). They have had territory disputes. And according to at least one Chilean, “they laughed at our loss [to Brazil].” A Bolivian woman reflected general South American stereotypes of the country: “Argentines are snooty. They think they’re gods. Go ahead and cry Argentinos!” These feelings are obviously not homogenous. One miner who watched the game while at work told me that bets among coworkers were even for Germany and for Argentina. And there are plenty of fans who think that “If you’re from South America you should always support our neighboring country, just as Europeans support Germany. It’s a shame.” But the point here is that while people may have personal reasons to support Argentina or Brazil, or may feel a sense of South American unity, there are also many structural reasons South Americans do not support these teams. 

In relation to my friend’s Facebook question, I think it’s important to realize that while colonialism certainly shaped the form of today’s nation-states and alliances to a great extent, this is not the full story. Just as assumptions that South Americans were less civilized than their European colonizers, it would be incredibly Eurocentric to believe that some sense of historical unity against Europe would trump the present day tensions between South American citizens. History is important to them, but so are their  present relationships to their material conditions of existence. From a global perspective, South America might not be the most sought after school district, but there are still a few kids who always have the latest Air Jordans.

 *Yes, I know this is more commonly spelled football, fútbol, or soccer. But a Spanish-speaking friend recently misspelled the word this way, and I think it's useful for North American Spanglish speakers like myself, who need to avoid confusion with "American Football" and not alienate non-North-Americans (or Aussies or Kiwis) who might not be keen on the word soccer. So there you have it. Spread the word!

See my other blogs on the World Cup:
The World Cup on Social Media Worldwide
Seeing Red: Watching the World Cup in Northern Chile
Part of the Red Sea: Watching the World Cup in Northern Chile
Tears for the Red Sea: Watching Chile Lose in the World Cup

Goldstein, Donna
1999  “Interracial” Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil: Twin Concepts? American Anthropologist 101(3):563-578.

 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy1992  Death Without Weeping : the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chile gained independence from Spain in 1810, and it's northern border was defined near the city of Taltal. When Peru gained independence 1821 it's southern border was near the present city of Tocopilla (meaning that Arica and Iquique were also within Peru's boundaries). Further to the South, the territory of Antofagasta gained independence with Bolivia in 1825.

The border between Bolivia and Chile ran through the Atacama Desert, and was somewhat undefined, because neither country had much vested interest there. However, the natural fertilizer, sodium nitrate (salitre), was discovered in the desert in the 1830s, and attracted many foreign investors to the area. Nearby, Iquique-still a part of Peru-grew as a cultural and financial center because of increased mining business. The city was one of the first in the region to have electricity in homes and businesses. The Teatro Municiapal (Municipal Theater) of Iquique was built to showcase plays and musical acts. A railway station was built by John Thomas North, and Englishman known as the “King of Nitrate." 

But this attention and growth caused some diplomatic tensions. With the nitrate boom, both Chile and Bolivia took an interest in the wealth they could acquire from this area and attempted to re-negotiate the border. In 1874 President Tomás Frías Ametller of Bolivia and Frederico Errázuriz Zañartu of Chile agreed that the border would be set at 24° S. Bolivia would retain the area around Antofagasta, but would not tax the Chilean company that was already operating in the area. This arrangement worked for a short time, but when the Hilarión Daza became president of Bolivia in 1876, he began heavily taxing the Chilean company. 

Angry over the breached agreement, the media and popular sectors called for the newly elected Chilean president Aníbal Pinto to take the territory. He ordered the army to seize Antofagasta in February 1879. Bolivians suggest this was successful because most of their armed forces were celebrating Carnaval at the time. After two weeks of Chilean occupation of Antofagasta, Bolivia declared war. Because of a “secret” treaty signed in 1873 (meaning it was not publicized, but most politicians in the region knew of it), Peru was obligated to come to Bolivia’s aid. At first, Peruvian president Manuel Prado tried to mediate, but the general population of Chile protested, calling for further action and persuaded the president to declare was on both Bolivia and Peru in April 1879. 

Hoping to create a buffer zone so that Bolivia would not be able to inch into Chilean territory again, the Chilean Navy set out to control maritime access further north. They blockaded Iquique then continued further North to Callao. By 1880, Chilean forces were trying to capture Arica, another strategic port north of Iquique and eventually were successful. Eventually, the Chilean Navy made it all the way north to Lima in January 1881, where they demanded the cession of the Peruvian regions Tarapacá, Arica, and Tacna, but Peruvian president Nicolás Piérola did not cede. Peru was still occupied in July 1882 when they won the battle of La Concepción, causing public sentiment in Chile to change. Finally, Chilean government proposed to occupy Tacna and Arica for ten years and retain Tarapacá indefinitely. In 1884 Chile signed an “indefinite truce” with Bolivia, granting them only temporary occupation of the Bolivian coastline. Yet, this area still remains under Chilean control, as do Arica, and Iquique (despite current Bolivian president Evo Morales’s appeals to the United Nations).  

Further Reading
The Peruvian-Chilean Maritime Border: A View from Facebook
They Paved (Nationalist) Paradise to put up a Parking Lot: Cultural Dimensions of the Bolivian-Chilean Maritime Conflict

for a primer on the maritime conflicts between Bolivia, Chile, and Peru that exist as a legacy of The War of the Pacific at the end of the 19th century, see my post here. 

I often get the sense here in Northern Chile that politically people are very polarized. Not in the sense that they are either quite liberal or quite conservative, but rather in the sense that they are either very politically active, or have entirely written off politics as something that doesn’t not pertain to their lives.

One night while gathering to hang up posters for Raquel’s Regional Representative campaign, Juan told me that Chile has a “lost generation” when it comes to politics. Those that came of age during the Pinochet regime were often too afraid or too disorganized to see themselves as a political force in any way. “We are still rebuilding” he told me.

Juan, Raquel, and some of their other friends are certainly making an effort to rebuild political participation among Chile’s young adults. They run for city office, they organize protests, art exhibits, performances, and observances to promote things like indigenous rights, and stand in opposition to things like neoliberal multinational capitalism.

But then there are the others like my neighbor Sarita who told me before the recent election that she wouldn’t vote because it doesn’t really matter who wins. “No one pay attention to us in the North, anyway.” Similarly, when I asked my friend Alex if he’d like to watch the movie NO with me, he declined. The film is the tale of a 1988 referendum to decide Pinochet’s permanence in power. It follows the opposition—the “No” vote, and their advertising campaign that wins the election. Alex said he had no interest because he didn’t really understand politics. “People of my parents’ and grandparents’ age, they lived through it. But I don’t really know the history, so movies like this…well, I’d rather watch The Walking Dead or something.”

And yet, today, people from both sides of this (a)political divide seemed to have something in common. At least they did as viewed from Facebook activity.

Today was historic for maritime relations between Chile and Peru (and to an extent, Bolivia). The area in which Alto Hospicio lies was Peruvian at the time of independence. However, during the War of the Pacific between 1879 and 1884, Peru lost the land to Chile. The final borders drawn during the peace accords at the end of the war are still somewhat disputed, particularly by Bolivia which lost all of their coastline. Today, the Hague decided upon a dispute between Chile and Peru, not over coastline or cities, but over sea territory. Granting Peru more sea territory, but keeping rich fishing areas in Chilean control, the international court redrew the maritime border (BBC's coverage).

I am not one to assess or even speculate on the consequences of this decision politically or in terms of economics and trade. However, as an ethnographer, when I got on the bus from Alto Hospicio to Iquique this morning there was no doubt everyone was listening to the radio report live from the Netherlands that played over the vehicle’s sound system. Facebook was also abuzz with references to the trial. Both politically active and somewhat apolitical Chilean users asserted a similar view, but in different ways. Both groups seemed to be communicating that though perhaps the Chilean and Peruvian governments were in a dispute, the people were not.

Some friends did admit to me that they felt the decision to cede some water area to Peru was unfair. But they also felt that avoiding conflict was important. Many said that the decision was irrelevant because economic gain from the sea territory only ends up in the hands of seven families of the oligarchy. But these nuanced opinions were not published on Facebook either through original writing or links to online sources. Instead, solidarity between Peruvians and Chileans overwhelming dominated the Facebook posts from my friends.

On the political side, Raquel and her friend Marcelo both shared a piece of text essentially thanking Peruvians and Bolivians for standing with Chileans during the Santa Maria School Massacre in Iquique in 1907.

A band known for promoting indigenous rights and political content in their songs posted a long piece of text from which I will draw out some relevant parts:

Patriots, fellow Chileans…Why do we not go to war against Monsanto? Why not fight to recover copper from your country? Why do you not wage war on Spanish companies that rob us when we pay for light and water? Why were you not in solidarity with artisanal fishermen when the Chilean government perpetually delivered the sea to the seven richest families?...Chileans and Peruvians stop being so easily swayed by media sensationalism of the bourgeois press. We should continue fighting together against those that make our lives impossible!

Most people who usually stay away from political discussion stuck to humor. Many memes declared something along the lines of “The sea is neither Chilean nor Peruvian, it belongs to the fish!”

My friend Jaime asserts, “It’s so hipster to say that people shouldn’t complain about the decision of the Hague. I bet if you take the issue of sushi those assholes will start a revolution.” About those who feel an end to conflict is more important than specific borders, he implicitly suggests they stand in a privileged position (‘hipster’ being aligned with the northern hemisphere, urban culture, and detachment from the material consequences of everyday life), yet continues to make light of the situation sarcastically suggesting that what they would really care about is sushi. 

Peruvian friends shared the link to an article in the online magazine The Clinic, which listed "Ten Things That Perú Has Won That Hurt More Than the Decision of The Hague." Among the 10 were #2 Rich Chilean chicks prefer to summer in Mancora [Peru], and #8 Pisco-In 2013 the European Union recognized Peru's rights over the marvellous liquor."

Even the Bolivians had their say through sarcasm and parody:

So much bullshit with this. The half to the right for Chile. The half to the left for Peru. And the path in the middle for Bolivia!!!

So if my friends are representative of Northern Chileans, or at least those between the ages of 20 and 40, it seems that though everyone was paying attention, no one really cared. Perhaps because this border only affects the oligarchy, or perhaps because they believe an end to dispute is more important than the ways the sea area is divided, these people express their interest by enthusiastically posting and commenting. Yet what they assert is that the outcome does not really matter. I am curious to see if in coming days more serious, nuanced, and critical discussions will take place on Facebook or on the street. But for now, people seem to be avowing “Yes, I am paying attention!” without taking sides on a matter that to most is “supposed” to be important, but in their daily lives simply doesn’t matter.   

Further Reading
A Primer on the Bolivian-Chilean Maritime Conflict
They Paved (Nationalist) Paradise: Cultural Dimensions of the Bolivian-Chilean Maritime Conflict

I had a few days that were emotionally rough last week, and on Saturday afternoon I decided the best thing to do was go to the beach for a head-clearing walk. As I hopped off the bus at Playa Cavancha, I felt a buzz in my pocket. I sat down on a bench and looked at my phone.

Edgar, my former lucha libre trainer had sent me a message using his usual method-facebook. In all caps (which I will not replicate here, to save your eyes), he wrote:

     Nell, el evento grande es el 28 de octubre. Puedes estar aqui para esa fecha? Entraras conmigo.

     Nell, the big event is October 28. Can you be here for that day? You’ll wrestle with me.

As it happens, 28 October is my birthday and I had been trying to come up with an excuse to go to La Paz around then anyway. So I replied with an immediate yes. Edgar and I then set about making plans in terms of training, publicity, costumes, and the event, which will be a benefit show to raise funds for children in La Paz with cancer. 

But none of that really mattered. I couldn’t sit still. I started walking along the beach while continuing to send facebook messages with my phone. In the midst of the conversation with Edgar I was sending messages to my best friends in La Paz and New York. I sent messages to colleagues in Washington, DC and Chicago. I sent messages to my parents and sister. I sent a message to my favorite bartender who is a huge WWE fan.

I tried to sit again. Edgar had taken his leave from the internet café where he had been writing me. I needed to talk to someone. I needed to gush. I pulled out a book to distract myself, but I couldn’t pay attention to the words. My legs were shaking. My fingers couldn’t stop tapping. I wanted to be in the ring. RIGHT NOW!

I suppose, in a way, I see this as evidence of the success of my dissertation fieldwork. Not in an academic sense. Not even that the people I learned from like me enough to want me to come back for a visit. But it was successful because it’s in my body. Every time I return to La Paz a sudden wave of excitement comes over me. On the June day that I woke up in Lima, ready for a two hour flight to Bolivia, I couldn’t stop smiling. Arriving in La Paz makes my body feel different. A certain hard to attain comfort. It feels like going home.

Wrestling, in a way, is the opposite of that comfort. Wrestling hurts. Muscles are sore, joints feel out of place. Necks are stiff, and just walking down stairs is nearly impossible the day after. Not to mention the dehydration and oxygen deprivation that go along with physical activity in the altiplano. But wrestling also does something else. It gives a jolt of adrenaline. It hurts, but it’s playful. It’s fun. But the kinda of fun that can’t be replicated alone. You need a partner. One you can trust. And for all the tension that may exist outside the ring, I trust Edgar 100% when I’m about to do tijeras.

But then I started to worry. I won’t be able to arrive until the day before. It’s been almost a year since I even trained in the ring. Will my body remember how to do it? Will twists feel awkward or come naturally. Is this like riding a bike or speaking a language? I can only hope the muscle memory remains.