Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp.

316, 2013

Translocality and Gender Dynamics:

The Pareja and the Thakhi System
in Bolivia
ANDREA BLUMTRITT
Berlin, Germany
Technische Universitat

The article focuses on the transformation of gender roles and concepts

of the Bolivian Aymara. It analyses gender-specific participation in a
rural institution, the so-called thakhi or path of duties, which manifests
the cosmological structure that provides the cultural context of gender
relations in Aymara society. It guides and reflects human behaviour based
on cultural norms. However, ongoing mobility in the context of migration has led to translocally organised lives that are shaped by different
horizons of local experience. The example of an evangelical preacher
illustrates how established concepts may change in this context.
Keywords: gender, transformation, Aymara, Bolivia, translocality,
institutions.

In the Andes, gender relations are oriented towards a classic ideal of complementary
dualism that emanates from a rural culture based on the principles of a binary and
complementary cosmology. Political, social and religious institutions of rural indigenous
communities in the Andes rely on these specific concepts regarding the gender roles,
responsibilities and normative behaviours that have shaped gender relationships within
communities and households throughout the dynamic history of Andean societies (see,
for example, Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA), 1986; Silverblatt, 1990; van den
Berg, 1992; Golte, 1996). Even today, Andean communities are shaped by but not
limited to these rural life forms with a typical gendered division of labour.
However, the current context of migration, which leads to new types of mobile
biographies, has challenged such elements of longue duree (Bloch et al., 1977). Thus
we need to acknowledge that social dynamics are determined by the proliferation of
mobility and a therefore broadened spatial context of experience. In this context, gender
concepts and role models are negotiated, and cannot be understood as being exclusively
defined by either the rural or the urban sphere (Canessa, 1997: 233). Ongoing mobility
as a result of migration leads, as I will demonstrate using the example of the Bolivian
Aymara, to translocally organised lives shaped by different horizons of local experience.
Spatial dichotomies (rural/urban), a structural element of the worldview recited by my
Aymara interviewees, are challenged and dissolved in this context, integrating enlarged
spaces of knowledge. This spatial element also has an impact on existing social norms,
which are expressed in an evolving, formalised system of duties. Within this context of
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Andrea Blumtritt
current forms of migration and mobile lives, the gender roles of the Bolivian Aymara
are being redefined.
The Bolivian nation state is defined by the current constitution as multicultural and
pluri-ethnic. It embraces not only Spanish as an official language but also thirteen other
languages spoken by almost 40 ethnic groups. The Aymara, one of the most important
ethnic groups in Bolivia, represent around 2 million people. However, the definition of
ethnic affiliation used for the official census is problematic.
Many Aymara-speaking people migrated from the countryside to the cities of Bolivia
in the 1950s and settled, inter alia, in the Altiplano-region of La Paz, which is now
Ciudad El Alto and currently has around 800,000 inhabitants. Although many people
left their place of origin they kept the rights and obligations regarding their inherited
territory.
Using the example of the Bolivian Aymara, this article focuses on the transformation
of gender relations and concepts in a translocal context, analysing the example of genderspecific participation in a predetermined (but not fixed) path of duties. This thakhi is
a rural manifestation of the cosmological structure that provides the cultural context
of gender relations in Aymara society, and therefore changes to gendered participation
in the thakhi may serve as an indicator of transformation processes accompanying
the dynamics of gender concepts. This rural Aymaran social institution reflects the
renegotiation and transformation of gender roles and concepts from an emic perspective.
The case study illustrates how established roles may change, with regard both to the
pluralisation of public paths of duty and the challenge to the partnership model of
the chachawarmi (Aymara word for manwoman/husbandwife) posed by more
individualised concepts. The notion of chachawarmi is a highly politically exploited
concept with a rather static view of gender relationships. In this article I prefer to use
the Spanish word pareja (couple), even though Spanish does not allow the unification
of opposites as the Aymara does. This alternative conceptual notion to describe the
partnership ideal was also legitimised by the Aymara-speaking research participants,
who used the notion of pareja to translate the Aymara partnership concept into Spanish.

Ethnological Field of Research

Up to the second half of the twentieth century, ethnological research focused mainly on
closed, non-complex societies at the periphery and claimed to be able to produce holistic
analyses of these societies. The often narrow spatial scope of the field was accompanied
by the idea of cultural homogeneity: culture was interpreted as a structured and
integrated/integrating organic ensemble. As a result of the development of social science
theories such as the influence of network theory (Lomnitz, 1976), and with increasing
migration in the second half of the twentieth century, anthropologists have directed
more of their attention towards the urban space and have begun to reassess their
theoretical and methodological frameworks.
First, anthropologists (e.g. the Chicago School in the first half of the twentieth
century) tried to apply existing theories directly to the urban space, and the idea of the
city as an area of action for traditional groups was born (Nippa, 1987). With the evidence of so-called primary relations in the urban context, the object of research could
be relocated to the city. In the 1980s, network analysis represented a new approach
towards research that acknowledges the intense entanglement of urban and rural areas
visible first and foremost as peasant reinterpretation and appropriation of the urban

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space. Today, we are one step further on and understand processes of transformation as
reciprocal dynamics of space expanded by different forms of mobility. We characterise
this space as translocal (see below). Following this idea, cultural dynamics of a rural
society emanate from an experience that points far beyond the limitations of rural
realities (as a result of the artificially constructed ethnographic field of research) and
necessitates a different perception of space as ethnographic field of research.
Following this proposition, we need to work with a concept of culture that accommodates the dynamics of cultural development. Concepts of culture have to be able to
explain the permeability of cultural boundaries and the dynamics of reciprocal cultural
penetration in processes of entanglement and reciprocal influences. Such a contemporary understanding of culture applies to societies confronted with crossing boundaries,
multiple affiliations and processes of interaction indeed, it is a universal aspect of
cultural development.
Based on these considerations, I carried out ethnographic fieldwork from April 2001
to March 2002 with the objective of analysing changes in gender relations in the context
of migration. The investigation took place in the three important migration centers of
Bolivia: the cities of La Paz, El Alto and Santa Cruz de la Sierra. The case study presented
in this article only refers to the city of El Alto and its hinterland.
Unlike the multi-sited ethnography applied to migration research, which involves
following migrants back to their places of origin, reconstructing the routes and urban
neighbourhoods and carrying out research on site, this investigation took the form of a
strategically situated ethnography (Marcus, 1995: 110) in the migration centres, which
attempts to understand something broadly about the system in ethnographic terms as
much as it does its local subjects: it is only local circumstantially, thus situating itself
in a context of field quite differently than does other single-site ethnography (Marcus,
1995: 110111).
This corresponds on the one hand to ideas of sites in a translocal space, interconnected
through mobility. On the other hand, it evokes a definition of space, imagined by
men and women, not only consisting of several sites connected by mobility but also
constructed by the extended knowledge of mobile individuals.
During the fieldwork, 36 semi-structured interviews were conducted, combined with
participant observation (see Blumtritt, 2009). Participant observation was reduced to
moments that I, as the researcher, or the research participant classified as relevant,
with the research setting shaping the research design. From a classical point of view,
participant observation means to put aside camera, note book and pencil, and to
join [. . .] in what is going on (Malinowski, 1922: 21). The predetermined moments
of participation and observation in my fieldwork alternated the context of experience
and limited the possibility of additional, chance experience, because all my visits were
announced and could only be selective. As a result, the Aymara research participants
were given the chance to exercise more control of their self-portrayal and to manipulate
my impressions a situation that subsequently structured the analysis of the data.
The research focused on just one (although heterogeneous) ethnic group the Bolivian Aymara as a point of reference in cultural change. This made it difficult to avoid
the construction of essentialist categories while at the same time accepting the construction and operationalisation of cultural differences in the light of migration processes. To
express this balancing act theoretically, I refer to the concept of transdifference, which
represents the process-related character of culture and the interdependence of cultural
dynamics expressed in permanent redefinitions, reinterpretations and reorganisations of
social/cultural aspects. Transdifference arises through continuing interactions that are
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Andrea Blumtritt
subject to a power imbalance and do not lead to a homogenisation of cultural manifestations, but instead result in permanently renewed constructions of difference. Breinig

and Losch
(2002: 23) highlight the importance of binary constructs in transcultural
dynamics:
Transdifference, as we define it, denotes all that which resists the construction of meaning based on an exclusionary and conclusional binary
model. [. . .] the term refers to whatever runs through the line of demarcation drawn by binary difference. It does not do away with the originary
binary inscription of difference, but rather causes it to oscillate. Thus,
the concept of transdifference interrogates the validity of binary constructions of difference without completely deconstructing them. This means
that difference is simultaneously bracketed and yet retained as a point of
reference.
The polymorphic nature of transcultural dynamics leads to new conceptual constructions
that define culture as a flexible frame of communication and coherence (Breinig and

Losch,
2002: 19). From this perspective, culture becomes a confusing and nevercompleted mosaic, but nevertheless it coagulates into apparently clear and identifiable
descriptions. A good example is the cultural neo-traditionalisms that may emerge from
the counterpoint relation of asymmetric power levels of a colonial modernity (Conrad
and Randeria, 2002). A comparable reaffirmation of ethnic identities takes place in
Bolivia both at a symbolic and discursive level and as social practice.
The interviews I collected during my field studies contain essentialising statements.
The research participants defined themselves as Aymara, emphasising markers such
as language and place of family origin. On the one hand their statements reflect the
ongoing political debate in the national context of Bolivia, and on the other they are
shaped by the interview situation in the field. Identity constructs that frame the content
of a conversation as the locus of enunciation (Mignolo, 2000) relate to different points
of cultural reference. At a local level, this may be the community. In the international
context of migration, wider references are made to the nation or more generalised ethnic
affiliations such as the Aymara. In addition, my position as a foreign researcher as
well as the research approach may have increased such essentialising testimonies. The
design of the field study, because of its integration of several local points of reference,
provokes the use of superior markers of identity. When I refer to the Aymara below,
this should be interpreted as an emic construct of difference and not as scientific
essentialism.

Translocal Spaces
Mobility is as an established subject of research in the Andes. Murra (1972), for example,
uses the notion of vertical control to link colonial processes relating to the exchange of
goods and the use of varying ecological zones with different forms of mobility. As the
colonial influence changed existing forms of mobility, the contemporary development
of infrastructure shapes paradigms of mobility and shifts the focus to horizontal routes
of exchange. An example is the twentieth-century campaigns to make the Bolivian
lowlands accessible, which promoted not only the construction of roads but also intranational colonisation projects. Since the 1950s the Andean highlands and the colonised
regions of Bolivia have been shaped more intensely by a highly mobile Aymara society,

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The Pareja and the Thakhi System in Bolivia

changing the existing spatial context of multiple positioning and manifold loyalties
within the wider context of cultural and social heterogeneity, and which I characterise
here as translocal.
The translocal space is not only created through the imagination and information
technology innovations, but, crucially, it is also shaped by physical mobility. Continuous
travels lead to the formation and development of translocal spaces and, accordingly,
to the transformation of these spaces. One of the contributions of postmodern theory
is that it releases space from concrete geographic place and from subordination to
time. This epistemic shift initiated the spatial turn in the social sciences. The emerging
valorisation of space as an influential category of analysis promoted an increasing
interest in researching spaces (Bachmann-Medick, 2006). Following the post-territorial
perspective of the spatial turn, translocality is defined as a relational conceptualisation
of site and space (Berndt, 2004: 15) and as a result of circulation and transfer
[. . .], which emerges from particular movements of people, commodities, ideas and
symbols, as far as these overcome spatial distances and borders with a certain regularity
(Freitag, 2005: 2, my translation).
The idea of a translocal space provides a theoretical and conceptual frame to
analyse cultural dynamics. While not denying the existence of established categories
and regulating mechanisms that structure life at the place of origin, it enables us to
conceive of changes and rearrangements as they occur in the following example of a
partnership model. It is the Aymara characteristic of enormous mobility reflected in the
biographies of the research participants, who travelled between the migration centres,
their places of origin and/or colonisation areas, which relocates the development and
transformation of gender roles to a wider space where different cultural concepts of
gender relationships and roles interact.
This mobility is combined with an intense relationship with particular sites/places.
People have to fulfil responsibilities that are associated with a certain place, perpetuating
the direct link with rural realities. The presence of the actual geographic site in the life
of many residents (in contrast to the imagined place) is a central characteristic of a
widened space governed by mobility.
This spatial concept corresponds to a translocal pattern of residence that does not
represent a universal scheme but rather one possibility arising out of migration contexts
in the Bolivian Andes. This study paid closer attention to translocal residency than to
other patterns such as neo-local residence. As most Bolivian Aymara travel frequently
between several sites, it is difficult to define clearly whether and where they centre
their life between different local points of reference. For this reason I prefer to refer
to mobility between different local points of reference or to comprehend this scenario
as multi-local positioning regarding translocal patterns of residence as a correlate of
this particular experience of migration. While translocal patterns of residence are generally investigated in the context of international migration (Glick Schiller et al., 1992),
migration within Bolivia as a pluri-ethnic, racially hierarchical society shows similar
dynamics. The multiple interactions with very different socio-cultural contexts as part of
international migration are comparable to the cultural (lifeworld) heterogeneity and the
transgression of (geographic, linguistic, social, etc.) frontiers that characterise Bolivian
society.
Translocal forms of life influence the development of cultural norms and penetrate
the Aymaras everyday life, based on a cosmological construction in the form of a complementary dualism (Golte, 1996) that dominates the gender relationship represented
by the (married) couple, the pareja.
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The Pareja
The pareja without family or children is the smallest but most important unit of
Aymara society. Economic and social organisation are based on the concept of this
complementary-dualistic partnership model, which is expressed in every aspect of life:
it structures access to public spaces, dominates all forms of ritual practice and representation, and shapes the gendered division of labour (agriculture, herding) without
establishing equality between men and women. Thus the pareja guarantees the production and reproduction of Aymara rural society (Taller de Historia Oral Andina
(THOA), 1986; Silverblatt, 1990).
Consequently, only as part of a couple are human beings fully accepted socially,
and meant to fulfil official duties in the rural community (Bonilla Mayta and Fonseca
1991, 1998,
Martel, 1967; Carter and Mamani, 1982; Albo and Carter, 1988; Albo,
2002). These responsibilities are organised according to the thakhi, the path of
duties established and adjusted over generations. At the same time, the couple enters
relationships of reciprocity at both a profane and a sacred level (which also form part
of the cosmological pattern).
This model, as a construction of anthropologists, fixed on closed rural communities
and thus not reflecting the complex reality of (ex)change and mobility, may rightly
be criticised. Furthermore, this idealistic representation of the thakhi does not seem
to correspond with the reality of female-headed households in Andean communities.
While this study does not document a fundamental break from the ideal of the
pareja, it identifies replacement strategies, as explained below, that enable individuals
to participate in official duties.
Even though the majority of the Aymara population have migrated from the
hinterland to the migration centres of Bolivia and maintain contact with their place of
origin and other local points of reference through permanent travels, this development
is not seen here as a new urban Aymara subculture but as a changing relevance of the
urban experience in Aymara culture. The increasing mobility between different places
of reference, the result of an improved infrastructure, creates a new quality of space:
the current significance of metropolitan centres shifts the permanent movement and the
experience of supra-regional action that has characterised Aymara culture for centuries
from a formerly vertical to a nowadays more horizontally oriented mobility documented
by the growing migration centres. This has changed the participation of women and
men in experiencing a space via their mobility and designing new spatial compounds,
as I show later. The creative manipulation of the pareja concept will demonstrate how
specific responses to new challenges linked to the translocal space can be realised.

The Thakhi as a Rural Institution

Cultural representations of rural partnership models have to be approached as idealised
constructs that nevertheless allow us to perceive ongoing changes to the ideal model.
The Aymara path of duties, the thakhi, is a rural institution that manifests the
cosmological structure that provides the cultural context of gender relations in Aymara
society. Institutions such as the thakhi guide and reflect human behaviour based on
cultural norms, including socially accepted gender roles.
The thakhi permits only couples (parejas) to accumulate prestige via a pre-structured
progression of duties, because only matrimony and the decision to live jointly in

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The Pareja and the Thakhi System in Bolivia

partnership makes men and women full members of rural society. The partnership
of man and woman expresses the gender relationship as based on a mythologically
founded duality with gender complementarity in all aspects of everyday life (van den
Berg, 1992). The nuclear household constitutes the economic base of the subsistence
economy. Couples enter the path of religious and civil duty, which nowadays mainly
involves organisational responsibilities and financial duties for community festivals,
together. This path aims to provide every pareja of the peasant community with social
and cultural positioning and to generate social cohesion.
A rotating hierarchy of duties organises, represents and maintains the socio-political
and religious order concerning the system of production, and these duties ideally accompany the lives of couples with cumulative obligations and increasing responsibilities.
using the example of the Machaca region (in the
The thakhi has been defined by Albo,
twentieth century), as follows:
Thakhi significa camino y aqu se refiere a la secuencia de cargos y responsabilidades por los que un determinado comunario va caminando en correr
hasta llegar a su plenitud, con el maximo

de los anos
reconocimiento y
1991: 51)
prestigio. (Albo,
(Thakhi means path, and in this case refers to the sequence of duties
and responsibilities that a certain member of the rural community passes
through over a period of several years to achieve completeness and
maximum appreciation and prestige [My translation])
However, this definition lacks an important detail, because the path cannot be walked
alone by a comunario (member of a rural community) but only together with the
(marital) partner. The thakhi is open only to comunarios who have become appreciated
and full members of society by founding a household with a conjugal partner, jointly
cultivating their fields and participating in all duties of the rural community.
To illustrate the thakhi principle of ascending responsibility, Xavier Albo and the
y Promocion
del Campesinado (CIPCA)
members of staff of the Centro de Investigacion
designed schematic representations with different three-tiered models. Given that these
schemes were constructed in relation to individual biographies, they could imply the
idea of generally specialised paths, which is not the case. However, there are now
particular forms of the thakhi, for example the path of Jesus, a Protestant adaptation
of the path (Abercrombie, 1998: 320).
The religious and administrative models of the thakhi outlined by Ticona and
Albo (1997) symbolically represent the variety and flexibility of the system of duties,
which is constantly being translated into new contexts and producing new regional
variations. Religious and administrative duties are inextricably linked in the thakhi (see,

for example, Strobele-Gregor,

1994): both are fundamental aspects of the reproduction
of a socio-cultural community. The integrating power of the thakhi is guaranteed by
the abundance of its forms and the diversity of its contents. On the one hand, the path
of duties connects the dynamic ideal of the Aymara gender regime with the sacred; on
the other, it is adjusted to the exigencies of everyday life.
However, it should be mentioned that classical descriptions of the thakhi (see Carter
1991) as well as more current analyses (Ticona, 2000) are
and Mamani, 1982; Albo,
subject to an openly androcentrist bias: women are hardly ever mentioned, and the case
studies used generally relate the experiences of men who occupy particular posts. Possibly this is a result of male researchers difficulties accessing female informants, because
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Andrea Blumtritt
women do not like to communicate face-to-face with men. This may explain why many
studies concentrate on function and procedures to describe the activities of the thakhi
and do not pay attention to gender issues. The systematic neglect of female roles as an
effect of the male bias towards gender issues in the thakhi now makes it very difficult
to reconstruct changes in the system of duties and their continuous effects on gender
relationships. Changes taking place in the history of the Bolivian nation, such as the
imposition of the republican hacienda system, the Chaco War (19321935), the revolution, the land reform and new laws such as the Ley de la Participacion
Popular (Popular
Participation Law), have all led to transformations of the thakhi and shaped gender
relations, the gendered division of labour and the socio-cultural construction of gender.
This understanding of the system of duties is clearly derived from a rural context.
Until now, this has affected anthropological research in the Andes, and its consistency
across different spatial contexts and beyond the rural community has not been scrutinised. Astvaldson, however, states from a diachronic point of view that former cultural
contacts:
[. . .] illustrate the ways in which the meaning of different systems has
changed through time and reveal how a system can be transformed at
certain levels while remaining largely intact at others. They also indicate
that more than one system can coexist and suggest that central aspects of
an earlier and suppressed order may survive and become part of a new and
intruding system. (Astvaldsson, 2000: 147)
As a result of the increased migration of the last decades, we can observe changes in the
design of the partnership model as a crucial element of Aymara society in the territorial
bond and reciprocal obligations as well in the gendered division of labour. Last, but not
least, there is an increasing hierarchisation of gender differences between all members
of the rural community. This serves to erode the integrative notion of equality of the
thakhi. The new spatial coherences, a result of the mobility of the last 60 years, modify
this rural institution, and translocal settings of interaction promote new concepts of
gender roles and changes in gender relations.

A Case Study of Ciudad El Alto

The following example focuses on the transformation of gender roles and concepts
in a translocal context, analysing gender-specific participation in the pre-structured
path of duties. To analyse gender role transformations, a case study from fieldwork
in the Bolivian Andes is used: the biography of an Aymara pareja, which provides a
gendered vision of the couple from a male perspective. This case study demonstrates the
ongoing reinterpretation of partnership models as a result of exceeding and redefining
the frontiers in this particular cultural space. It demonstrates how married couples, as a
crucial expression of the cosmologically founded ideal of gender relations in the Andes,
are able to adapt to the particular opportunities of a culturally heterogeneous space.

Rolando . . . y Gloria?
Rolando was born in 1948 in the city of La Paz. He is one of two children and
was raised in Compi, the home village of his parents in the Department of La Paz

10

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and the province of Omasuyos. At the age of 17, he started a professional education
at an institute in La Paz to become a teacher. He married and returned to Compi.
The land he and his wife cultivated, however, was too small to sustain the young
family. Furthermore, his conversion to the Lutheran Church made it impossible for
him to stay in the village. So he returned to La Paz, revived contacts from his time
in the army and found a job as promotor de campo (development worker) in a
ministry and later in the Instituto Indigenista de Bolivia. After being given the job
his family moved to the city of El Alto/Villa 16 de Julio, where Rolando still lives
with his wife and his three sons. In the mid-1980s, when inflation affected the whole
Alianza de Noruega (Norwegian Mission
country, he started a career in the Mision
Alliance).
Meanwhile, his wife Gloria continued to cultivate their land in Compi and sold their
agricultural produce at the markets of El Alto. Unlike her husband, she remained closely
tied to the Aymara world and hardly speaks any Spanish.
Rolando succeeded in the formalised urban world. He knows both the Creole and
the Aymara worlds and is vice-director of the Mission in the city of El Alto, a respected
man with an imposing house in a prestigious location. His success was accompanied by
the religious beliefs and the networks of the Lutheran Church of Bolivia, over which
Rolando presided for several years. As representative of the church he travelled around
the world, visiting Europe and especially Finland, where he met the Sami and became
familiar with their struggle for indigenous peoples rights. His networks are global
and, by emancipating himself from the ideological narrowness that characterised the
initial years following his conversion, he discovered a new ethnic consciousness as an
Aymara. Rolando stated that there was a change in the hermeneutic of their religion.
His breaking away from the village community is now a thing of the past, and he has
supported Compi by making several contributions. Today he sees himself as a candidate
for the most prestigious positions in his village community. His wife Gloria made his
success possible by taking over all their partnership duties in Compi while he pursued
his individual career in the city.
This short glance at Rolandos biography shows a completely changed division of
labour in the translocal space, which leads, in this case study, to a new valuation of male
and female spheres of everyday life with a strong and modernised position for men
and a visible, but reduced and weaker, position for women as a new form of dichotomy
based on a different (argumentative) background. Rolandos self-perception overlooks
these changes in the gender relationship in favour of a euphemistic perspective regarding
a supposed new gender equality promoting the progressive enlightened practice of the
Lutheran Church. Rolando is aware of certain changes and interprets the conversion as
a way of achieving more equality in the partnership, based on the new evangelical ethics
of living together. In reality, there is no particular contradiction between the Lutheran
couple and the gender relationship developed in the village community. Both practice
joint decision-making as husband and wife.
Whereas Rolando avoids the obligations of the local organisation in El Alto, seeing
them as too politicised, he stresses the importance of responsibilities in the rural community. Up to now, Gloria has, by herself, represented the pareja and assumed all the
obligations of the rural system of duties that are actually designed as a joint undertaking
by the pareja. This is accepted by the other comuneros, who approve changes in the
course of migration and the integration of migrants into the urban labour market. In
Compi, Gloria achieves high positions as part of the path of duties, for example that
of Secretary General. However, from Rolandos point of view she is not acting as an
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Andrea Blumtritt
individual but as the representative/substitute of the pareja. He classifies her as his
personal representative: If it is my turn [. . .], she will assume the office [. . .]:
Yes, yes, yes, it is also her who took up some charges in the community.
Because I cant do it and, for example, when it is my turn to be Secretary
General, it will not be I but she who will assume the office. For reasons of
work, which I couldnt leave, I couldnt go. So she had to take the whip
and be with the people.
According to Rolando, Gloria accepts the duties because her husband is indispensable.
The permanent presence of his wife enables Rolando to access the highest-ranking duties
such as the prestigious leadership of the jilaqata (administrative post with responsibility
for areas including jurisdiction, territorial questions and links with the provincial
authorities). After his professional retirement this represented a further step in the
development of his individual career:
Look, once I am a pensioner I will go to the countryside, I will take up
some posts and I [. . .] can go to leadership positions [. . .] like jilaqata, like
[. . .] even more important than jilaqatas. I am not far from all of these
posts. [. . .] I will do it. So, then, this is the progress that a person makes.
How do these changes as represented in the case study interfere with the path of
duties of the rural community?
First, the reorganisation of the division of labour in the translocal space between El
Alto and Compi causes a gender-specific, highly different conjoining and amplification
of competences that affect cash income, social prestige, fluency in Spanish and access to
public spaces.
Second, as substitute for her husband, the wife takes on public duties in the village
community. The function of the representative gender dualism disengages from the
pareja as an actor, thereby giving way to a practice of substitution carried out either by
the wife or by other members of the extended family.
Third, the pareja becomes a resource for the husbands individual career, using on
the one hand the social capital of the pareja in the village community and on the other,
especially in the neighbourhoods of the city, reducing the pareja to the domestic sphere
of the family a reduction that did not formerly exist in Aymara society.
Fourth, this demonstrates a spatial separation in terms of applying and interpreting
different partnership and family models between the translocal reference points. It
further provokes and requires an alteration/diversification of the ideological base that
has shaped the hitherto existing partnership concepts.
In this biographical arrangement, the couples wish to advance together (los dos
hemos sido partcipes en el avance) conflicts with the individuals striving for a career
(el avance de uno).
Rolando does not update or adjust the existing partnership ideal based on the village
cosmology but resorts to the new ideological context of Lutheran family ethics, which
permits a re-evaluation and reduction of the partnership ideal to the inwardness of the
nuclear family. This allows continuation of the institution of the pareja, which is now
subject to new conditions and aspirations such as the withdrawal of the couple from
the urban public sphere the latter being conceived as analogical to Western models of
representation and the idea of citizenship, different from the socially accepted persona
(person) of the Aymara partnership model. It also accommodates the new division of

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The Pareja and the Thakhi System in Bolivia

labour, where complementarity is no longer tied to a joint activity in the same location
but involves coping with translocally organised ways of life. The possibility of individual
careers outside the household depends on the common and shared idea of a core family
life within the household. At the place of origin, which remains an important point of
reference for the identity of migrants, the complementary-dualistic partnership model
continues because it is closely tied to the agrarian cycle and to complex relationships
of reciprocity. However, in the system of duties to the village community, tendencies
of individualisation have become noticeable, as illustrated by the example of Rolando,
who could assist the village community with his personal contacts obtained throughout
his individual career but did not act jointly with his wife Gloria in the community.
The joint economic activities of the pareja are based on a translocally and genderspecifically organised division of labour that privileges the well-linked man who is
integrated into the urban labour market, and who gains importance through his
individual career. Meanwhile, his wife increasingly takes on the role of a substitute,
no longer as part of the couple. She now holds a different position from that in rural
society, although the public representation of the couple still remains relevant. Such
double structures are the challenge that couples are facing today and reflect ongoing
transformations.
This example also illustrates the decline of central aspects of the system of duties,
such as the representative gender dualism where the connection of man and woman is
understood as fundamental to the exercise of public power. The conceptual basis now
lies in the Lutheran ethics promoting the re-evaluation and reduction of the partnership
model to the private part of family life, avoiding political engagement and participation
in the festival culture of the thakhi.
In this case study the thakhi can no longer be seen as a gradually increasing obligation,
an ongoing responsibility to the rural community, but has become a means of taking
on the highest duties. In order for Rolando to be successful in his career, he relies
on Glorias acceptance of some smaller duties. Rolando himself aspires to assume the
more prestigious leadership positions. Glorias permanent and laborious commitment
enables Rolando to pursue his career. The general social responsibility of the thakhi or
the awareness of a common project of the couple in the thakhi is eclipsed. In contrast,
more and more attention is paid to the aspect of individual qualification. In the actual
system of duties, successful residents are favoured, particularly if they have access to
institutional resources such as non-governmental organisation (NGO) contacts. This
refers especially to men, because they have less difficulty entering institutions in the
urban centres. Indirectly, these institutions are also (more distant) catalysts for change.
Rolando achieves public recognition in Compi through giving generous gifts to the rural
community, thereby presenting himself as a qualified authority, a position he could
Alianza de Noruega.
only achieve through his institutional connection to the Mision
Meanwhile, his wife takes a back seat and, unlike her husband, has no institutional
resources. Thus in relation to Rolando, Gloria appears to be publicly marginalised.
The reinterpretation of the dualistic complementarity of wife and husband under
the influence of new forms of the gendered division of labour in the translocal space,
religious conversion and individualised biographies allows for the partnership model
to remain an important bracket of the translocal space. In this complex interplay,
gender roles and gender relationships are adjusted between the ideal of the couple and
that of the individual. However, in spite of the diversity of alternative biographical
designs, which are distinguished by processes of individualisation, the above-mentioned
Aymara ideal of the rural couple remains, in a different way, crucial for my interview
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Andrea Blumtritt
partners because it is still an important resource in the translocal space, as illustrated
by the case study. The evolution of the partnership model in the city and in the
rural community is shaped by different dynamics. The processes of transformation are
framed by the scenario of interaction in the translocal space, providing broader cultural
resources as a base for the construction of gender relations. This provokes and requires
an alteration/diversification of the ideological base, which was the fundament of the
existing partnership concepts. The translocally organised couple is reacting flexibly to
the particular opportunities provided by a culturally heterogeneous space.
The repositioning of gender roles in this scenario affects the social and cultural
institution of the path of duties. The culture-based concept of gender relations, the
chachawarmi, is adapted to the reality of mobile lives in a translocally structured space
that permits such normative changes.

Translocality, Gender Dynamics and a Rural Institution

The example of the Evangelical preacher shows in detail the ways in which partnership
discourses involve a certain pluralisation. Besides the influence of global religious
discourses, a highly mobile, translocally organised family/partnership opens up a space
of negotiation to reorganise its gender-specific division of labour. This reorganisation
and re-signification of responsibilities in family and partnership leads to a new valuation
of the male and female spheres of everyday life, thus constructing gendered spaces based
on a new dichotomy that weakens the complementary base of the former model
institutionalised in the thakhi.
As the example demonstrates, gender relations develop in an extended translocal
space: this space is imagined and constructed through constant travelling and the
concurrent relationships with particular places. In this context, gender concepts and
role models are negotiated and cannot be understood as exclusively rural or urban
outcomes. The development of such gender concepts is characterised by a processual
nature, increasing complexity in the new arrangement of cultural points of reference,
the extension of the horizon of loyalties and the playful use of multiple binarities.
The example chosen from the context of the Lutheran Church is just one of many
possible variations that produce an open space for cultural entanglements. Individual
knowledge corresponding to the needs and abilities of the individual is translated into
this space. Thus cultural practices and knowledge experience a permanent reinterpretation, with new elements being integrated into existing schemes and thus leading to
transformation. Despite the fragmentary shifts that singular cultural sequences may
involve, they seem to be conclusively arranged in individual biographies, as illustrated
by the case of Rolando. A creative response to the new challenges produced by the
translocal space is discussed in this article in relation to the concept of pareja and its
links with the thaki.
By opening up the research perspective to an extended translocal space we can
understand and conceptualise the rationale behind peoples actions: women and men
struggle from different positions, and gender relations, questioned in actual transcultural
processes, can be redefined. As the case study presented in this article has shown,
transformation processes can be reconstructed only from a wider spatial perspective,
pointing to a new construction of gender roles in the translocal sphere.
To conclude, I emphasise my claim that it is important to take into account
the increasing role of extended local influences, although the fields of our research

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The Pareja and the Thakhi System in Bolivia

are often limited to specific places. New theoretical concepts such as the notion of
translocality can help us to broaden our perspectives. Ongoing mobility as a result of
migration leads, as demonstrated by the Bolivian example, to translocally organised
lives shaped by different horizons of local experience. Dichotomies (rural/urban) in
the context of enlarged spaces permit a repositioning of gender roles. In this way the
culture-based concept of gender relations (chachawarmi), visible in the rural institution
of the thakhi, is adapted to the reality of mobile lives in a translocally structured
space.

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