Chachawarmi: Silence and Rival Voices on Decolonization and Gender

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 maledominated 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.