This post is also available in: Spanish
This morning was my day to go shopping, and on the way home a random man I passed on the street stopped me and said, “The only good thing about this virus is that a lot of collas are going to die.”
In Bolivia there is a lot of animosity and racism between collas, indigenous people that come from the highlands, and cambas, people that come from the lowland areas. This has a long and complex history, but obviously continues today. I have heard it from many people, including young taxi drivers as well as this older man.
I was shocked and didn’t know why this man thought he needed to stop a gringo to tell him this. It made me think about what is happening in the US right now. It made me think about how universal the awful truth of racism is in the human experience—including in myself. This in no way is to imply or use some kind of #allsides argument that everyone is racist. That kind of reduction is really just a way to avoid thinking about something that’s difficult, especially looking into our own souls about it.
Patrocinio Garvizu, Rural Programs Coordinator for MCC Bolivia, told me a little more about racism in Bolivia:
“Personally, in my 55 years of life I have lived through this type of discrimination since the beginning in my hometown. I have noticed that people are more excluded in cities, by the color of their skin, origin, and clothing. I remember an experience of an MCC volunteer who worked with the Yapacani Women’s Associations. She took Quechua women to a training in the city of Cochabamba. When they arrived at the hotel that had been booked in advance, the owner of the hotel did not want to accommodate the indigenous women wearing their traditional skirts. Today this racism towards women who wear skirts is very obvious when you are using public transport. I remember the aggression toward women wearing traditional clothing in different departments of Bolivia during the social convulsion of the national shutdown in 2019. During these conflicts, many women traders in Santa Cruz had to stop dressing in traditional skirts and change for skirts or trousers so as not to be identified and attacked as collas.”
In Bolivia, indigenous peoples have been exploited, abused, and mistreated since the Spanish first arrived and used their labor to extract the natural resources and wealth of this country to benefit the European powers. Bolivia recently had 14 years of an indigenous president and his MAS party in control. So of course the reality is always more complicated. Nevertheless, the blatant and grotesque racism of the man in the street was a reminder that many people do not see a certain group of other people as human beings, so much so that they laugh at the thought of them dying because of the current pandemic.
These are just my thoughts as a foreigner who has barely scratched the surface of this beautiful country. Sometimes it can help us see ourselves and our own culture more clearly when we can see similar dynamics in other cultures. It’s like the story the prophet Nathan tells King David in 2 Samuel 12, of the rich man who slaughters his poor neighbor’s cherished lamb rather than one of his own. David, struggling to believe how awful other people can be, was shocked when the prophet stuck his finger in the chest of the King and said, “That man is you!” (2 Samuel 12)
May we repent, like David, of our sin and complicity in racism and oppression. May there be prophets like Nathan that can help us see more clearly our own sin. May we, like Nathan, lift up those who are crying out and prophesy the uncomfortable and difficult truth in the streets. May we also, like Nathan, have the strength and courage to speak difficult truths to those in power, including our friends and our family.
Lucas Land is the manager of Centro Menno in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.