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Maggie Mulhern, from Louisville, Colorado and the First Presbyterian Church in Boulder, Colorado, served in Oruro, Bolivia with the Center of Ecology and Andean Peoples (CEPA) as part of the Seed II program with MCC Bolivia.
Ruth Vilches is known in the office of the Centro de Ecología y Pueblos Andinos (CEPA) as someone who can never say “No”. She is always ready to help in any way she can, whenever she is asked. Always armed with a large smile and a warm greeting, she brings energy to any room she walks into. Ruth joined CEPA three years ago bringing with her decades of experience working with indigenous communities. Working on a team of almost all men, Ruth is an example of a strong and respected woman, succeeding despite the machista culture that exists in Bolivia. She is involved with several CEPA projects, but most of her time is committed to the problems of Lake Poopó and the indigenous communities around the lake that are being affected by drought and mining pollution.
Photo: Anna Vogt
Ruth grew up in a small village called Nazareno in the Sud Chichas province of the Department of Potosí with her parents and her four younger siblings. Ruth’s father worked on the railroad and as a result her family moved several times during her childhood. Since she was young, Ruth has been drawn to service. As a child, she had dreams of becoming a teacher or social worker. During her senior year of high school, Ruth and her family moved to Oruro. She attended the Technical University of Oruro where she studied Law and Anthropology.
Environmental pollution has been an issue in Ruth’s life since she was a child. During elementary school, while her family lived in a mining center called Atocha in Potosi, she walked an hour to and from school with her siblings. Every day they passed through the waste rock piles of the local mine. Remembering this, Ruth explains, “we used to climb the piles because they were like hills…we had so much fun! A few months later, our uniforms had turned a burnt yellow color. My mother told us that it was due to the waste rock piles.”
Ruth remembers very clearly the moment she discovered her interest in supporting indigenous communities, what in her words was: “the starting point and the turning point” in her life. During her university studies, she met Luis Rojas Aspiazu, the director of an NGO in Cochabamba. He was in the process of opening a bookstore, and she decided to quit her current job and join him. Through her friendship with Luis, Ruth began to discover a new way of thinking about the inequality, discrimination, and racism that she saw every day. She was inspired to work against the discrimination that exists towards indigenous communities, as she believes that these communities have an ancestral wisdom that deserves respect.
With a new goal of building a career focused on supporting vulnerable communities, Ruth began a difficult journey. Instead of looking for a stable and comfortable job, she was always looking for opportunities and organizations that shared her goals. Sometimes this meant she had to move to other cities and be away from her family. There were times when she was out of work when the projects ended. In the midst of all this, she continued to seek meaningful work and care for her family, providing for her family’s economic livelihood.
After completing her thesis in Law, a four-year process working with two rural communities, Ruth began working with an organization in Potosí called Social Research and Legal Advice – Potosí. At this time she was working to support indigenous communities in order to strengthen the political-administrative structure, and the roles of indigenous authorities. Recalling this time she explains, “In those years there was a lot of financial support for NGOs. It was unbelievable. They gave us a brand new truck, as well as computers. We were given a high budget.”
In 2007, a time of great political change in Bolivia, Ruth received a call from a university colleague saying that there was work to be done in Oruro. Ruth returned to Oruro to help gather information and opinions from the public on the country’s new constitution with the Presidential Representation for the Constituent Assembly (REPAC). After this initial work with REPAC, she continued to be involved in the process of drafting and socializing the new Constitution for some years. This work opened the door to a new job opportunity working as a consultant for UN WOMEN through the NGO Colectivo Cabildeo. Ruth explains that, “the organization’s goal was to encourage municipal governments and women’s organizations to increase money allocated to gender issues in municipal budgets”.
After her time with Colectivo Cabildeo, Ruth worked in the Indigenous Peoples Commission of the Tarija Departmental Legislative Assembly. She smiled, describing this job as “very quiet work because … my main job was to do the minutes.”
Eventually, Ruth moved back to Oruro and started working with CEPA as a consultant. She had met Gilberto Pauwels, the director of CEPA, many years ago. While Ruth was working as a consultant, an opportunity arose to implement a new project focused on Lake Poopó. Ruth was asked to lead the project and officially joined the team, working on the issues of pollution and the drying up of Lake Poopó. In her work with CEPA, she is committed to supporting and assisting the vulnerable groups that depend on Lake Poopó for their economic livelihoods. Ruth is constantly organizing events to bring awareness to the problem of drought and facilitating conversations between authorities of the affected communities.
Ruth’s journey to CEPA is complicated and full of unique experiences and important lessons. At this time, Ruth is not only an expert in supporting and accompanying indigenous communities, she also has a deep knowledge of the Bolivian constitution, gender and political lobbying. What makes Ruth even more impressive is that she has accomplished all of this while caring for her two children, and for some years for her father. She currently lives with her two children in Oruro, taking care of her home and working long days, and often times on weekends, at CEPA.
Ruth has experienced the difficulty of being a woman in a work environment that is dominated by men. Thinking about her co-workers, she explains that “they unconsciously have their machista attitudes.” She strongly believes that there are unequal expectations for women and men. She says that, as a woman, she always has a thousand things on her mind, and at every moment she is thinking, “How are the children doing? What will I make for dinner? I have to pay for the electricity. I have to wash the clothes. I have to write the report.” But, in comparison, “the men are not like that. They will have two little things on their minds: ‘I have to do my report, I have to travel.’ It is so common that it seems normal to us,” she continues, “I sometimes feel that here in the office, when I don’t accomplish a task that I have to do, the men are telling me ‘you are distracted, you are thinking about home.’ And the same thing happens in my house. It’s hard to overcome.”
In early 2018, Ruth and a co-worker decided to facilitate a discussion on gender with all of their CEPA colleagues by leading a workshop addressing the issue of gender inequality. During the workshop, Ruth and her fellow facilitator led discussions on challenges facing women and encouraged the development of proposals for changes that CEPA can take to achieve a more open and healthy environment for women. Reflecting on the workshop, Ruth says, “from what the colleagues have said, I think it provoked a reaction from everyone. Because at least they are already thinking about having women in more leadership positions. Hopefully, the decisions made in the workshop will come true.”
Ruth’s commitment to equality and her infallible positive attitude serve as an example for everyone at CEPA. Her commitment to facilitating difficult discussions and encouragement of her colleagues to think about new challenges is changing CEPA for the better. In addition to her work promoting gender equality, Ruth continues to manage a large project and take care of her two children, showing herself to be an example of a woman who has overcome challenges to dedicated her life to the service of others.
Photo: Anna Vogt