http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 07 Apr 2011 IP address: 169.229.119.3 Chachawarmi : Silence and Rival Voices on Decolonisation and Gender Politics in Andean Bolivia ANDERS BURMAN* Abstract. This article addresses the ‘ coloniality of gender ’ in relation to rearticulated indigenous Aymara gender notions in contemporary Bolivia. While female indigenous activists tend to relate the subordination of women to colonialism and to see an emancipatory potential in the current process of decolonisation, there are middle-class advocates for gender equality and feminist activists who seem to fear that the ‘ decolonising politics ’ of the Evo Morales administration would abandon indigenous women to their ‘traditional’ silenced subordination within male- dominated structures. From the dynamics of indigenous decolonial projections, feminist critiques, middle-class misgivings and state politics, the article explores the implications of these different discourses on colonialism, decolonisation and women’s subordination. Keywords : coloniality of gender, female subordination, colonialism, decolonisation, chachawarmi, Aymara, Bolivia Introduction Seated in a row with local male Aymara authorities and specially invited male indigenous intellectuals, Teresa, a young, ethnopolitically engaged cholita, has prepared a presentation on the topic ‘ Decolonisation and Aymara Identity ’. 1 For the first time in her life, she is going to speak in public at a rural communal assembly. She is there by the side of her fiance ´, a renowned young Anders Burman is a postdoctoral scholar at the Department of Ethnic Studies of the University of California, Berkeley, and an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Latin American Studies, Stockholm University, and at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg. Email : anders.burman@globalstudies.gu.se. * My thanks go to those women and men of the Bolivian Andes who participated in this research, to Charlotta Widmark for inviting me to do the research, and to Silje Lundgren, Sylva Frisk, Mikael Johansson and four anonymous reviewers whose comments improved earlier drafts of this article. The research on which this article is based was supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. 1 A cholita is a young Aymara or Quechua woman wearing the ‘ traditional ’ outfit consisting of pollera (wide gathered skirt), bowler hat, manta (shawl) and two long braids connected by tullmas (long, braided hair bands). J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 43, 65–91 f Cambridge University Press 2011 65 doi:10.1017/S0022216X10001793