Regarding housing improvement, similar festive and ritual ceremonies could be combined with ayni, extending the labor-exchange process to include construction of a new house or refurbishment of infested houses. In other words, housing projects need to be based on the peasants’ economic and cultural institutions. Foreign aid and outside technicians can assist in this endeavor.
The other economic institution is turqasiña, which refers to bartering produce. Community health workers utilize this practice when patients cannot pay cash for medicine but can provide some produce instead. The health workers get the produce at a discount rate; they then consume, exchange, or sell it at markets, using the money to buy medicine.
Turqasiña can be employed in roof thatching. Participants arrive with supplies to thatch the roof: jichu (bunchgrass) gathered from the surrounding puna, rope woven from llama hide, and poles cut from eucalyptus trees. The implicit understanding is that the recipient can be expected to do the same for his helpful neighbor when that neighbor constructs his house.
Members of the agencies involved in vector-control projects could enter into the community under the terms of aynisiña and turqasiña. Whatever work and resources were provided to one community would be required to be performed by that community for another community, and so on.
Andeans have an interest in helping each other. Their survival is based on a long-standing formal system of replication and correspondence. Once a plan is presented to them that works, they will share it with others. They do this by celebrating a fiesta together, agreeing upon a common task, and cooperatively completing it. If models for triatomine-proofed houses are built that fit into their culture of the house, they will continue to build more of these houses. The culture of Andean housing is embedded within their cosmos and cosmogony. The ability of Andeans to survive at high altitudes has been partially explained by their relation of themselves and their social forms with the land, which is sacred and reproductive.
Global forces of privatization, capitalization, free trade, and individual capitalism have been centrifugal processes away from the communal community toward the world market, as discussed below. In Bolivia, as in the United States, private property and individual wealth are beginning to supplant shared land and cooperative movements. For the majority of Bolivians, this has led to loss of land, increased migration, and the growth of squatter settlements, as well as the loss of Andean traditions such as sayaña, ayni, and turqasiña.
Migration
The migration of infected people and increased domiciliary habits of vinchucas have expanded Chagas’ disease to regions not environmentally considered optimal for this disease, which now is no longer limited to the natural environmental parameters for vinchucas. M. Goldbaum (1982) has shown the impact of migratory movements and Chagas’ disease in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Ciesielski et al. (1993) found 2 percent seropositivity for Chagas’ disease among 138 Hispanic and Haitian migrant farmworkers in labor camps in eastern North Carolina.
Migrants spread Chagas’ disease in a number of ways. Migrants can transport vinchucas in their baggage to nonendemic areas; infected peasants transfer T. cruzi in their blood to uninfected vinchucas in new regions. Peasants sell their blood to unwary buyers, passing the disease through blood transfusions. Residentes (urbanites) visit relatives in rural areas, where they become infected and return as hosts for Chagas’ disease in the cities. Chagas’ disease also has been imported into France and the United States (Brisseu et al. 1988; Kirchhoff, Gam, and Gilliam 1987).
Peasants migrate because their land has been sold, worn out, or expropriated. Some are ignorant of principles of sustainable agriculture; others lack money to improve productivity. Some Bolivians travel from the Altiplano to agricultural zones of Chile to pick fruit during the dry season and to pick coca leaves in the sub-Andean regions of the Yungas during the wet season. Many peasant families have daughters who work as maids for families in Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and La Paz. Others migrate to cities to find employment in construction and domestic labor markets.
When peasants first settle an area they cut the brush and trees to farm the land. Vinchucas are forced out of their nests in bushes and trees where they have fed upon birds and rodents. They move into the corrals and huts of the invading peasants. The Department of Tarija, Bolivia, has suffered especially, with high percentages of vinchuca infestation reported in corrals (61.6 percent) and ovens (60.2 percent). This explains its high infestation rate (78.2 percent), infected vinchucas (50 percent), and people with Chagas’ disease (60.6 percent).
Temporary Housing
Migratory peasants generally do not have the time and money to build a house that adequately protects them from the environment, so they construct temporary housing, which is often nothing more than a shack made from refuse. Cochabamba and Sucre had high numbers of refuse housing (41 and 44 percent, respectively), which are readily infested. Peasants invest little in shacks built on land that they do not own, may be evicted from, and are unable to sell. Outside of Cochabamba, peasants objected to participating in a housing-improvement program because they believed that once their houses were improved they would be confiscated and sold to someone else.
Peasants sometimes sleep in temporary shelters closer to their fields, which are becoming increasingly distant from their homes as traditional farming lands become barren. Peasants in these areas rapidly put together lean-tos of thatch and branches where they spend nights guarding their fields. This presents an additional problem: the peasant’s main house may be vinchuca-proofed, but peasants remain at risk when they sleep in the fields.
The displacement of rural people is a growing social concern throughout Latin America. It has been brought about by overpopulation, depletion of natural resources, growth of corporations, and demand for mobile work forces. Migrating peasants essentially become foragers and gatherers. Frequent dislocation requires that they construct homes with available materials and that they invest little in nonmoveable property.[42]
Colonization
Since the 1953 Bolivian agrarian reform, national policies have encouraged colonization of unpopulated areas in Bolivia. The general movement has been away from the Altiplano and higher altitudes towards settlement in the lower regions of the Alto-Beni and Santa Cruz. Since the closing of mines in the 1980s, there has been an economic shift from Andean mining to tropical agriculture. These changes have brought about an increase in Chagas’ disease.
Aymaras and Quechuas have lived in the higher mountains and valleys for millennia and are referred to as Qollas. Guarani tribes of many ethnic groups at lower altitudes are referred to as Cambas. Qollas and Cambas consider each other as inferior; for example, some Cambas extend their biases, teaching their parrots to cry out every time a Qolla passes, “Phew, what a stink.” Qolla peasants, poor as they may be, consider themselves descendants of the Incas and heirs of that civilization.
There has been a mixing of Qollas and Cambas through colonization, more on the part of Qollas, who have settled in large numbers in the Departments of Santa Cruz and the Alto Beni. One consequence relating to the spread of Chagas’ disease has been that the Qollas have brought their higher-altitude style of housing to these warmer and moist regions: thickly walled adobe construction, small openings for doors and windows, and thatched roofingall of which hold the heat in and the cold out. The results are favorable for vinchucas: hot houses with little light and ventilation. The architectural style of Cambas’ houses is characterized by a series of separated rooms around a central courtyard (oca). Oca housing allows more space between the buildings, which are separated from each other by outside work areas at the sides and within the center. This is different from sayaña housing with its fortress style of buildings tightly fitted together. The sayaña is metaphorically an extension of the earth, a mediator between that which is above and below, whereas the oca is a courtyard in the forest.
Oca houses also have become centers for vinchucas, partially because of colonization, which has b
rought crowding. People have moved their corrals, chicken coops, and storage areas closer together, in part to protect their animals from predators and thieves. However, this has also made it easier for vinchucas to get from the corrals to the dormitories.
National policy encourages peasants to live in clustered settlements to facilitate schooling, political consolidation, and the building of water and sewage systems. This in turn has created some unhygienic conditions, such as increased infestation, contaminated water supplies, and backed-up sewage systems. Health officials favor the development of water and sewage systems, because this is a marker most noted in world health standards, and Bolivian officials want to be recognized for improving their nation’s health, especially now that they want to attract tourism.
Interestingly and fortunately, Chagas’ disease has had little effect on nomadic Indian populations in lowland areas of the Amazon Basin in Bolivia and Brazil, perhaps because they do not live for prolonged periods in the same dwellings (Coimbra 1992). Within the Department of the Beni, Bolivia, there are thirty-five ethnic groups. However, seminomadic and sedentary tribes are being infected with Chagas’ disease at extraordinary rates, in part because their huts are made of thatched roofs and palm walls. For example, one community of Tupi Guarani Indians in Bolivia has a 100 percent rate of infection. Moreover, Tupi Guarani within the Department of Tarija will be seriously affected by the construction of a dam on the Pilcomayo River that will flood much of their land, further forcing them to become sedentary farmers.
Thatched roofs are used extensively throughout the Andean and tropical regions of Bolivia. Thatched roofs provide habitat for triatomines, especially for sylvatic species accustomed to living in trees, such as Rhodnius prolixus, whose preferred forest habitat is the branches of palm trees. When palm trees are cut down, this vector travels with the leaves used to weave roofs, and spaces within the woven palms provide homes for these insects (Gamboa and Pérez Rios 1965).
Urbanization: Class and Ethnic Distinctions
According to the census of 1950, 74 percent of the Bolivian population lived in rural areas and 26 percent lived in urban areas. According to the census of 1992, 43 percent live in rural areas and 57 percent in urban areas. Bolivian cities were designed during the colonial period according to a grid system, with central plazas for criollo and mestizo classes. Indians lived on the periphery. The cities were designed for populations under 50,000 people. Within recent years, these colonial enclaves have expanded to include satellite cities with larger populations and resultant crowding. The result is a center of quaint colonial buildings on narrow streets that are packed with cars, people, and pollution, with a periphery of houses that are constructed piecemeal-beginning with shacks and progressing to adobe and walled enclosures, and finally to adequate housing, as finances and time permit. Although Bolivia does not have huge cities comparable to Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, the cities of La Paz, El Alto, Santa Cruz, and Cochabamba are large urban centers with similar problems. The rapid expansion of urban centers has been a major influence in the spread of Chagas’ disease within the cities in Bolivia.
For migrants moving to cities, several strategies of shelter have been pointed out by Van Lindert and Van Westen (1991), who studied low-income housing in La Paz, Bolivia, and Bamako, Mali. The first strategy involves gaining access to shelter in the city for the first time and starts with a nonowned shelter that is shared with friends or relatives, for which something may be paid or given in exchange, often produce from the peasant’s farm (Vaughan and Feindt 1973). The various households usually do not live under the same roof, if possible, but houses are expanded horizontally, and new rooms are built away from the core unit. This is especially true in the settlements on the city’s periphery. A gate in the fence which encloses the plot is the common entrance for the various domestic units, which are located in separate structures. Thus some protection is provided to all the families, as is more privacy and less crowding than is often the case in more centrally located districts. Settlement in the city’s periphery has been common; the satellite city of El Alto, outside of La Paz, is the fastest-growing city in Bolivia, with a population of 350,000 in 1997, up from 25,000 in 1969. El Alto has ample land to expand on the extensive Altiplano, whereas La Paz with over 500,000 people is limited to a large crater. One observation in regard to Chagas’ prevention is that housing improvement needs to focus on the core unit and all domestic units at the same time, rather than isolating certain domestic units.
Figure 20.
Housing in the cities is frequently unavailable for the poor, who sleep in the streets, where they are particularly vulnerable to vinchucas and Chagas’ disease. Urban transients are also the primary sources of blood transfusions, thus providing another source for spreading T. cruzi. (Photograph by Joseph W. Bastien)
After migrants have found housing in the city, they try to improve the household’s position by moving the household and gaining home ownership (Van Lindert and Van Westen 1991). This greatly enhances their control over their living conditions. Because self-help construction is commonly engaged in Bolivia, this time is recommended to educate migrants about constructing houses that prevent triatomine infestation. Relocation decisions are greatly influenced by kinship networks. A fairly universal rule of intracity mobility of low-income households is that households will not move into a new urban space unless the conditions and (actual or potential) housing standards compare favorably with those of the vacated buildings.
Another strategy employed by the urban poor in their quest for adequate shelter is the in situ enlargement and improvement of the shelter they presently occupy. Security of tenure is the most important factor leading to this, which does not imply having a legal title as much as the assessment that their tenure is secure (see Turner 1963, 1968, 1969; Brett 1974). Low-income households may buy a house or plot to build on from the very start—provided they have some surplus income (Köster 1995). Having land is very important to Andeans, whether they live in the country or city. Land is also important to grow vegetables and raise animals, even if the plot is small.
The wealthy and middle-class mestizo people generally have uninfested houses; some have campesina or chola maids to keep them clean, but these maids could also carry vinchucas back and forth from rural and urban areas. The mestizo, or mestiza, class are the dominant upper-class Bolivians who speak Spanish and have adopted Western European ways. The cholo, or chola, class refers to peasants who have moved to the city, still speak Aymara or Quechua, and whose women wear traditional skirts, pullera, and hats. Processes of “cholification” are active in Bolivia, as cholos have taken over much of Bolivian commerce and control the work force and certain political parties; one has even become president. Chola marketwomen have formed guilds with high solidarity that exert effective political pressure. Bolivia had its first native Aymara vice-president, Victor Hugo Cárdenas, from 1994 to 1997. Campesino (peasant) class refers to Aymara, Quechua, and Tupi-Guarani Indians who speak their native languages, wear distinctive clothing, and farm in rural areas.
The cholo class of Aymara and Quechua peoples is considerably better off in a material sense than the campesino class. Cholos have adapted sufficient Western ways to enable them to do business with the powerful mestizo class of Bolivians. Cholos are distinguished from mestizos in that the former still recognize their links with their Andean heritage, whereas the latter try to identify exclusively with the Western European tradition, although they may give some token acknowledgment to their Indian heritage. Certain cholos have accumulated great wealth as truckers, cocainistas (cocaine traffickers), contrabandistas (contraband traders), chifleras (herbalists), and mercantilistas (merchants).
Cholos have been able to link the peasant economy with the national economy. Peasants refer to them not as cholos but as residentes (residents), which implies residents of the city. Economists might initially infer that residentes exploit the campesinos; however, their gains as middle-men are leveled off by the need t
o pay for elaborate fiestas within the community where they trade. Residentes are also required to provide housing, hospitality, and legal assistance for peasants when they come to the city. The economic relationship between cholos and campesinos also depends upon kinship relationshipsboth real and ritualAndean reciprocal exchange patterns, and capitalistic economics.
These relationships have affected housing patterns in interesting ways. Within the market area of Buenos Aires Street in La Paz live a group of related cholo truckers with kinship and origin ties to Aymara campesinos of Iquiqui who import electronic products from Japan. The goods arrive in containers and are transported by means of a new large truck across Bolivia, into Brazil, and over again into Bolivia on the border with Brazil, where they are put on a launch and transported upriver to a settlement within a swamp which is set upon stilts. Houses are constructed on three levels within the swampy area, so that if one area floods, the inhabitants move to the next floor, illustrating the ingenuity of the Aymaras. The goods are then sold to the tropical lowlanders, and the truck is also sold. One can estimate the dollar value of this exchange as close to $150,000.
Cholo housing also reflects their social class. Cholos have moved into neighborhoods of all classes in the cities of Bolivia. The size, shape, and exterior of their houses appears the same as other houses, but the interior often differs little from that of peasant housing, with unfinished walls, supplies stored in sacks throughout the rooms, walls covered with pictures, clothing hanging on pegs, newspapers used for wallpaper, and one or two rooms set aside for sleeping quarters. Even though many cholos have sufficient money to improve their houses inside, they perceive their living quarters from a different perspective. Poverty cannot be the only explanation for cluttered houses.
The Kiss of Death Page 15
