Maize-beer, gossip, and slander: female tavern proprietors and urban, ethnic cultural elaboration in Bolivia, 1870-1930.

In 1887 a young mother, Manuela Serrano, migrated with her family to Bolivia's capital city, Sucre, from Padilla, a small village a few days' ride away. Like many women who lived in the countryside, Manuela was a spinner. (1) She spun wool by hand to weave into indigenous clothing. But she, like many other young women from small towns in the region around Sucre during this period, moved to the city to change her life. Many of Manuela's relatives already resided in Sucre, which made the move easier.

Manuela became one of many young women who, when they migrated, began to identify themselves as cholas: neither India, nor Hispanic-American, as the categories were understood at the time. (2) Women who chose to wear the many layered skirt, called a pollera, and clearly identifiable ornate jewelry and hats became cholas. Their move into the city could mean a move from an identity as an Indian to an identity as a chola, if they so chose. (3) The pollera, jewelry, and hat were definitive social markers for cholas in Bolivia. (4)

We do not know why Manuela and her family chose to move to Sucre in 1887, but it could have been because she had heard the news that her relatives Valentina Serrano and her daughters were doing exceptionally well in their business as owners of corn beer, or chicha taverns. As chicheras they had made many valuable connections with elite men and were reaping the benefits of such relations. But Manuela might not have known that her relatives were also incurring the jealousy of other women in their ethnically chola neighborhood in Sucre. The Serranos had been publicly slandered for sleeping with the son of one of the wealthiest families in the region, the Argondonas. (5) If, indeed, they did have any connections with the Argondonas, they would have been some of the most privileged chicheras in the city. The Argondonas lived outside of Sucre in an ostentatious mansion, but socialized in town much like the sons and fathers of most of Sucre's elite. These men mingled late at night in Sucre's chicha taverns after the lesser customers were shooed out. Sucre's wealthy men of the time spent lavishly on the entertainment found in chicherias, as it was the only night life of its sort available in a town that had yet to be reached by the railroad.

Regardless of whether Manuela believed the Serranos were making pocketfuls of money, she, her husband, and her daughter and son moved to Sucre. By 1900 they were all living in the chola neighborhood near the cemetery where several other family members including Manuela's great-aunt Ann Siles, her brother, and her brother's children lived. (6) Manuela began her urban acculturation by moving into an ethnically segregated neighborhood. Sucre was a de facto divided city. (7) Hispanic-Americans lived near the center of the city while four cholo neighborhoods acted as a ring around the central, elite neighborhoods. And, finally, in makeshift and transitional housing Indios lived on the outskirts of town.

Manuela continued her urban adaptation by changing her occupation from a spinner to a butcher. She probably did not have enough money when she moved to Sucre to buy the necessary equipment to follow her relatives into business and start a chicheria. But her time as a butcher did not last long. She saved her money and as soon as she was able, she opened up a small, home-front chicheria, much like every other chicheria in the chola neighborhoods where they were all located. Perhaps she spent her first few years in Sucre both saving money and making the kinds of connections she needed to be a successful chichera. And she did, indeed, become quite successful. By the early 1910s, Manuela had not only set herself up in business, she had also opened chicherias for her daughter Maria and her son Pastor, who were, by that time, also well known chicha sellers.

Manuela's story gives us a glimpse of the life of a chola who was also a chichera in Sucre at the turn of the century. She provides only one example of the history of chicheras during this period, yet she shared many of the same experiences as did other chicheras. Producing chicha was a gender-specific occupation. With rare exceptions only women brewed and sold the beverage. Similar to many other indigenous societies, the Andean tradition of women's production of alcohol for ritual was common. (8) Yet, in the case of Bolivia, in contract to other cases, chicheras were able to successfully continue the female cottage industry monopoly as chicha sellers migrated into urban centers and chicha solidly ensconced itself as an urban commodity. (9)

This article utilizes one of the only sources available where one can find the actual words of early twentieth-century cholas and chicheras. Employing over three hundred slander suits, (10) this article seeks to understand the ways in which chicheras, or sellers of maize beer, integrated themselves into urban chola neighborhoods in Sucre, Bolivia in the years 1870-1930, the years in which Bolivia urbanized, modernized, and formed a national identity. They integrated themselves into chola neighborhoods, moving from women who were scorned to women who were accepted.

The story of the integration of chicheras into urban chola neighborhoods is a fascinating one. Yet it is more than an intriguing tale of drinking, sexual insults, and barroom brawls. Chicheras provide the best example of cultural miscegenation in Bolivian society. Their occupation made them important purveyors of one of the most significant pieces of indigenous material culture, and their role as petty marketers made them crucial to regional economies. Chicheras were better off economically than most cholas and certainly than Indians, and their cultural connection to chicha gave them social advantages within the chola community. Providing chicha for community celebrations helped chicheras cement their position in the community. (11) Chicheras found a permanent place in one of the many emerging urban chola cultures in Bolivia; cultures which have become central to Bolivian national identity in the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries.

To pursue this argument I analyze the participation of chicheras in court cases to emphasize the frequency and kinds of insults leveled against chicheras, and the varied behaviors of chicheras that resulted in lawsuits. The evidence in the slander cases shows that between 1870-1930 chicheras' roles within their neighborhoods, and indeed in the city of Sucre, changed substantially.

Our lens into the largely illiterate, oral society of chola neighborhoods during this period is through court cases, and through a careful periodization of the nature and incidence of these cases. Chicheras, more than any other cholas, became involved in the numerous slander suits that took place in the local courts in Sucre. Significantly, ninety-three percent of these slander cases ended without verdict because they were dropped. It was common for cholas to use the lower courts to bring suits against each other for slander and petty violence. In fact, Table 5.1 reveals that shopkeepers and artisans in Sucre, the category to which chicheras belonged, used the court system far more than Hispanic-Americans or manual laboring classes to resolve personal disagreements that rose to the level of petty slander or violence.

Economic stratification in Sucre can be divided roughly into three categories for the purposes of this analysis. In a society based on mining and agriculture, elites were the class with property, the professions, and international traders. The next group included small artisans and shop keepers. This group included tailors, cobblers, carpenters, and owners and renters of and stalls who sold meat, cheese, vegetables, fruit, and dry goods in Sucre's central market. Owners of the small stores overflowing with goods onto the street, the women called pulperas, fit into this category as well. Finally, chicheras, women who owned small corn beer taverns, not much more than extensions of their homes, finished out the list of some of the most important members of the artisan class in Sucre.

The largest and poorest group within the city was the laboring classes. It is almost a misnomer to categorize this group as living within the city. The nature of the work of many of the men in this group was very fluid between the countryside and Sucre. They worked as teamsters, moving from place to place, or they worked as miners in Potosi and came home to Sucre whenever possible. Women in this group worked as domestics in the homes of the well off and walked back to their own neighborhoods, or even back to the countryside on their days off. Sometimes women worked as cooks or as itinerant peddlers of small goods on the street.

Focusing on participation in the court cases, Table 5.1 reveals that artisans and shopkeepers, cholos and cholas, accounted for thirty percent of the population in the 1900 census, yet they made up sixty-four percent of the plaintiffs and defendants, and fifty-two percent of the witnesses in the sample of slander cases available in the archives for the period 1870-1930.

In stark contrast, professionals and property owners, who were mostly elite Creoles, accounted for only twelve percent of the plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses, even though they made up twenty-one percent of the population in the 1900 census.

Showing yet another twist, lower-class cholos and Indians in the manual labor category were only twenty-six percent of the plaintiffs or defendants and only thirty-three percent of the witnesses, while they made up almost fifty percent of the adult population. Even the small court fees may have prevented them from using the courts. Or they may have had less to lose than the cholos and cholas who made up the small business classes. (12)

Table 5.1 demonstrates that one segment of Sucre's population, its small marketers, used the court system as an integral part of their socio-political process to solve disputes. Yet it shows only part of the picture. Not only were the majority of the participants in the slander cases ethnically cholo, but the majority of those litigants were chola Women. Even though roughly forty-seven percent of the population in Sucre was male, men represented fewer than twenty-six percent of the plaintiffs and defendants in the slander cases for the entire period. Chola women instigated and defended most of the slander cases; and of those chola women, chicheras--the women who owned maize beer taverns--fought in court most frequently.

Chicheras, more than any other cholas, went to court. Even though in the 1900 census chicheras represented only four percent of the population, in the years between 1870 and 1930, chicheras comprised over twenty-one percent of the plaintiffs and defendants, and nine percent of the witnesses. (13) Chicheras' ambivalent social positions put them into the court system more often than any other group of cholas. By 1930 chicheras wielded a good deal of power in the neighborhoods as monitors of public and sometimes private behavior, but this had not always been tree.

1870-1890

Between 1870 and 1889, even though chicheras were sixteen percent of the plaintiffs and defendants, they received nineteen percent of the insults. (14)

Ethnic politics in Bolivia, unfortunately, played into the kinds of insults received by chicheras. Urban, socially integrated cholos and cholas became the focal point for the increasing tide of racism. Racism translated into a de facto quasi caste system of Hispanic-Americans who considered themselves white, and who dictated to the other two "races", which were called cholo, a pejorative name for what was considered a mixed race, and Indio, which in most cases meant campesino. Racism toward cholos reflected elites' straggle with national identity in post-colonial Bolivia; many powerful Bolivians believed that the immoral, base, and corrupt characteristics of the cholo population dragged down Bolivia's potential as a nation. (15)

Part of the racism from Hispanic-Americans included an assumption that chola women were available and willing sexual partners for cursory or extended affairs. The women who were the most available, because they came into contact with elite men more often, were chicheras, since elite men frequented their chicha taverns. As was the case with Manuela's relatives, however, far from being passive victims, many chicheras reaped financial benefits from such arrangements, even though the boundaries set by structural racism precluded chola women from moving up the social hierarchy or from having legitimate relationships with elite men.

Just as elite or white racism and neighborhood gender politics intersected in the story of Manuela's family, chicheras found themselves at the center of a very complicated web of racism, poverty, sexism, and intra-gender politics. Their role as chicheras, their connection to the alcohol chicha, and the stereotypes that resulted, put them on the fringes of licit behavior and at the same time gave them a certain kind of power.

Manuela's relatives provide an excellent example of women who earned financial benefits from the sexual exploitation of elite men, and as a result, also earned the jealousies of other women in the neighborhood. Chicheras were particularly susceptible to accusations regarding their honesty as businesswomen and their sexual propriety, especially with elite men, because their businesses brought them into contact with alcohol and its effects. Many Bolivian women and men of all social classes believed that chicheras were thieves and whores, out to make money by robbing their drunk customers and even worse by selling their bodies to the highest bidder and stealing money from those men with whom they had sex. The slander cases in the years between 1870 and 1890 bear out this assertion.

During the years between 1870 and 1890 chicheras faced more public insults than other cholas. They received insults in two areas: improprieties in their businesses and sexual improprieties, and many times the two were linked. Other cholos and cholas believed that the occupation of chicha seller inherently meant untrustworthiness when it came to money. For example, in one case, Manuela Gutierrez, a chichera, got into a very public fight with her sister who was also a chichera. Manuela charged her with swindling, whoring, and cheating, and of "being with" a married man in order to bilk him of his money for her business. (16)

Their very public fight was not one-sided, however. Maria accused Manuela of selling stolen wood, and also of thieving and whoring, and possibly worst of all she said, "you are outcast by the community [because you are] cheating economically, morally, and sexually." (17) These types of insults were the worst kind to receive in the neighborhoods in Sucre. Public fights like this one between the two sisters took place among chola women of all occupations, yet most often it was the chicheras who were the women on the receiving end of the insults of these sorts during the period 1870-1890.

In another case, Apolinar Morales, a carpenter, and his son Damaso, burst into the rooms of Maria Chavarria, a widow and a chichera, and her daughter Rosario Sanchez, also a chichera. The two men brandished a gun and a dagger. Three days prior to this attack, Policarpo's wife, Elenteria Chavarria, a slaughterer, had slandered Rosario in public, calling her a thief and telling her that she was "accustomed to robbing the tenants in your house causing scandals in the rooms." (18) This kind of accusation represented an all-too-prevalent stereotype; that unscrupulous chicheras robbed their customers or their tenants if they also had rooms to rent. This stereotype may not have precluded neighbors from borrowing money from chicheras, but the insults seemed to show that chicheras were thought of as women who would take advantage of the unsuspecting and the vulnerable. And in their businesses they came in contact with the vulnerable drunkard every day. The typical presentation of chicheras as clever pilferers set them apart from bartenders in many other cultures in this period. In the late nineteenth-century U.S. for example, saloon owners' stereotypes included flashy dressers, gamblers, and sometimes unscrupulous men. Saloon keepers did have the reputation of being wealthy because of the amount of money that people spent on alcohol, but stealing from customers was not how they became wealthy in the eyes of the public. (19)

In addition to their susceptibility to insults surrounding money, chicheras were particularly suspect in the realm of sexual offenses. Most chicheras were not prostitutes, although it was commonly suspected that some chicheria taverns housed brothels. Working so closely with intoxicated men readily brought on gossip of a sexual nature; especially when chicheras sported new jewelry or finer clothing than usual. Such suspicions solidified chicheras' reputations, reputations which already rested on the edge of respectability. In a case in 1882, Manuela and Petrona Martinez, two chicheras, were accused of being "chichera whores," and told that they "rob and assault people like all chicheras." (20)

The majority of the serious sexual insults linked chicheras and elite men. Because elite men drank in chicherias, chicheras, their daughters, and their other female relatives had more opportunities to fraternize with elites than did other chola women. For this reason, in particular during the early period of national identity building, chicheras were both marginalized, yet powerful. Alcohol allowed elite men to mix with lower-class women, freeing the men to break cultural rules. (21) As noted earlier, Manuela Serrano's young, female relatives received in-suits because of their alleged connection to the Argondonas. In another case two chicheras, Isabel Estivares and Carmen Careaga were victimized by Ysidora Duran who burst into their chicherfa one night after midnight and turned over tables, broke bottles and glasses. Ysidora was furious with the two chicheras became they were serving chicha privately to Drs. Federico Orellana and Cesar Vides. Ysidora was the concubine of Dr. Orellana and the she suspected Isabel and Carmen of moving in on her territory. (22) This kind of violence reveals that the alliances with elite men could be very lucrative, and these alliances appeared to be more available to chicheras.

Sex, money, and alcohol mixed in the eyes of many people in late nineteenth-century "modern" cultures. For example, Ysabel Miranda accused Ysabel Paredes of giving chicha to men in order to win their favor. (23) And Manuela Gutierrez insisted that Maria Josefa Gutierrez took on an elite lover in order to have him set her up in her bminess. (24) Bolivia was not the only culture where the stereotype existed that women serving alcohol were loose. In Australia in the late nineteenth century, where barmaids were common, and women also owned tavern/hotels, temperance advocates commonly pointed out the licentious nature of any woman connected with alcohol. One such advocate pointed out that women who ran bars were even worse than barmaids. He believed that the women who owned the bars could not pay the high rents and therefore, obviously, supplemented their incomes with prostitution. (25)

1890-1910

Because of their proximity to alcohol and elite men, chicheras received more than their share of insults, especially those of theft and sexual improprieties, yet this pattern began to change. In the years between 1890 and 1910, chicheras continued to be more involved in legal cases than other chola women in the working-class neighborhoods, and the legal cases in which they participated were longer and involved more witnesses. Indeed, the cases must have struck fear into the hearts of those women who might consider having an affair with another woman's man, stealing money, cheating a customer, or otherwise breaking neighborhood taboos.

Yet around 1890 chicheras' roles in the neighborhood began to shrift. They received fewer than their share of insults during the years between 1890 and 1909. (26) The language in the court cases began to change during the middle two decades of the period. As tavern owners chicheras had become central to neighborhood politics. Just as in the case of turn-of-the-century urban ethnic neighborhoods in the United States where corner bars served as public social space where gossip, news, and politics merged, so, too, was the case for the chicherias in Sucre. In urban chola neighborhoods the chicheria occupied a central place in the neighborhood, both physically and symbolically. Chicheras knew all of the gossip and news and they used that to their advantage. They told the tales in public places about the people who were in their chicherias: stories of wayward wives and cheating husbands, and stories of pilfering clerks and aborting adulteresses.

Moreover, chicheras began to use their monopoly over the distribution of the indigenous alcohol they brewed. In Andean society chicha has been a customary drink during festivals and holidays since pre-colonial times. Cholos and cholas in early twentieth-century Bolivia drank chicha during baptism, vacations, and funeral ceremonies. In some areas chicha was believed to cure bronchitis, colds, and other chest ills as well as to accelerate the birth process--it was the Bolivian equivalent of chicken soup. Some people believed that chicha had the power to bewitch. Given the right additives, it brought back errant lovers, or caused the chosen recipient to be smitten. (27) Therefore, a white flag outside the door of a chicheria that marked that the chichera had chicha to sell was a welcome sign for many. In stark contrast, for one to be denied entry or service in a chicheria must have been humiliating, because the chicheria was central to neighborhood activity.

As the balance began to tip toward greater recognition of essential service, insults to chicheras declined after 1890. In the period between 1890 and 1909, chicheras rose to thirty percent of the plaintiffs and defendants, but they received only twenty-three percent of the insults. (28) Now, instead of being the subject of complaints, they took on the roles of "public watchdogs" of others' behavior in the neighborhood, and they let everyone else know about it--loudly, and seemingly without fear of loss of business because numbers of chicherias were proliferating during these years in Sucre. (29) As a result of the shift in Chuquisaca's economic focus from an international silver market to a regional agriculture market. (30) Sucre's market women, who included small store owners, butchers, and especially maize beer tavern owners, fared better in the economy. In fact, in the years between 1900 and 1925, taxes from agricultural imports made up between seventy-five and ninety percent of Sucre's municipal budget. (31)

Now, chicheras used their privileged knowledge about the affairs of others to aggressively launch insults of their own. In one such case, Julia and Genoveva Gonzales and Andrea Flores and Benita Rojas, all chicheras, ganged up on Florencia Echeverria, calling her a "whore who had illicit relations with any and all married men [in order to] rob them of large amounts of money." (32) They called her these names in a crowded chicheria where she had entered to retrieve her son who was drinking with the group. This case took up over 119 pages of testimony with accusations flying back and forth between plaintiff and defendants. In another example where chicheras publicly slandered other women, at the end of August in 1900, before the fiesta of Guadalupe began, an entire family of chicheras ganged up on a couple, accusing the wife of filicide of the babies that she had as a result of her adulterous affairs. Moreover, the chicheras argued, the couple were thieves and bandits--referring to the fact that they had no permanence in a place. (33) Publicly telling someone that they did not belong in a neighborhood could be a very slanderous insult.

In another brash act, chichera Concepcion Gomez, who was at a party with her daughter and son-in-law, told a group of people that Manuel Lascano, a military cadet, who was also in attendance at the party, had robbed money from his patron, Don Aniceto Arce, one of the richest men in Bolivia. Manuel argued that these accusations "made him suspect before all the people at the military school and St. Arce, and could get him dismissed from the military." (34)

Not only did insults from chicheras appear more often in the slander suits during the years 1890-1910, but it also became dear for the first time that they were rejecting customers when they viewed them as unsuitable. In a case brought by a chichera in 1900, a rejected customer insulted the chichera's entire family because she would not serve him. When Doffa Luisa Bullion said that she would not sell chicha to the defendant, she was rewarded with insults to her granddaughter. He called her a whore, his whore in fact, and threatened to kill the whole family if Luisa continued to refuse to sell him chicha. The various members of Luisa's extended family, who were present, all told him there was no chicha. But, as Luisa explained, she would not sell chicha to the likes of him anyway, for whenever she did he started fights and generally disrupted her store. He clearly was not a part of the social circle to which Luisa wanted to serve chicha and with which she wished to socialize.

Salvador, the defendant, argued that, yes, indeed he did go into the chicheria of Luisa Bullion, where she was with her daughters, nieces, and granddaughter among others. The reason he entered was that she had the flag outside the door, so he knew she had chicha. His position here relied on the commercial aspect of the chicheria. When a flag flew, it generally indicated that chicha was for sale to the public. But, in reality, the flag actually meant that chicha was for sale to selected members of the community.

Salvador argued that when he asked for chicha, the women in the chicheria, and a man he did not know, chased him out, threw rocks at him, and beat him with sticks. The granddaughter then picked up a stick and started whacking him with it, at which point he finally ran out of the Bullion's chicherfa and into another for cover. The women, along with some other customers, tailed him into the other chicherfa and continued beating him. The other chichera sided with the Bullions, arguing that they did what they must do to rid themselves of a foul-mouthed and generally unsavory customer. (35)

1910-1930

During the last two decades of the period chicheras seemed to became even bolder in their actions. They continued to reveal the secrets of certain townsfolk and to refuse service to a few customers, yet now some of the people at the mercy of chicheras were Hispanic-Americans.

Chicheras saw events and overheard gossip, and they were not afraid to come forward and support or condemn others in the court system as witnesses. In the final two decades of the period, chicheras' participation dropped to seventeen percent of the plaintiffs and defendants and the insults they received to fourteen percent. But their participation appeared more damaging to their enemies when it did occur. In one such case, Antonia Baldivieso, a chichera, accused Dona Constantina Jajardo de Anivarro of living with another man while her husband was away, and a married man at that. in addition, Antonia accused Dona Constantina of having an affair with the Dona's own cousin. She did this on a busy street, San Francisco, near the market, where many, many people could hear. It was in the afternoon when hundreds of people were marketing. A little more information about Antonia the chichera shows us how she could have been in on the gossip of the Hispanic-American elite of Sucre. She was in the middle of her birthday party. It was a several day affair called a corcoba, in which several people drank continually during those days. Indeed the witnesses in the ensuing slander case came from all classes of Sucre's society, including the working classes, the upper crust of the chola classes, and from the Hispanic-American class as well: street vendors, field laborers, tailors, carpenters, small store owners, cobbler, jewelers, and finally a property owner, as elites were vaguely identified at the time. (36) Antonia had enough friends and customers for her to be able to hear gossip about a good slice of Sucre's population. Crossing her was not a smart move.

In yet another similar case of gossip in a chicheria, a chichera became angry with one of her male customers who entered the chicheria with a woman. So she told everyone that he was actually married to a different woman, Cornelia Sandi, who was still living in the city of Uncia. He became angry and threw a glass of chicha in her face. Her response was to became very angry and to call him a quencha, (37) or one of the worst kinds of Quechua insults to be leveled against another person. Quencha has several meanings depending upon the context, but as part of these insults it meant bad luck or being damned. In other words, not someone whom one would want in the neighborhood.

Chicheras even began to meddle in the lives of elite couples. It came out in the testimony of another case that one afternoon three chicheras had seen a certain Dr. Ricardo Gambarte, a Hispanic-American, drinking in the chicheria of Margarita Gutierrez, and had promptly scurried off to tell his wife where he could be found. Needless to say, a fight ensued between the Margarita and the three women. (38)

And chicheras also began to exclude customers from their chicherias in very public displays of control, extending the trend that had begun in the previous two decades. In a case that exemplifies how chicheras might choose not to serve a customer, Pastor and Maria Machaca, actually the children of Manuela Serrano, the woman whose vignette began this essay, were dancing and drinking with their mother and others in one of their chicherias. Manuel Gorenti and Andrea Villegas came in to try to get some chicha. The Machacas chased them from the chicheria throwing rocks and dirt at them. (39)

Manuela Pacheco, an elite woman, experienced the same kind of rejection when Valeriana and Eleuteria Manjon, two chicheras, lost their tempers with her. Valeriana, one of the chicheras, testified that, "[i]n spite of living in distinct neighborhoods, we have been friends with and drank at least a cup with Manuela Pacheco. But in spite of this, she came to our neighborhood in the late hours of the night, drunk, and demanded chicha. When we did not serve her because she does not know how to pay well--she insulted us and our guests in our own house." (40) This case was drawn out because of Manuela's anger at the two chicheras' affront to her social superiority.

Not all of the cases in this period feature chicheras parceling out the insults, and for their part chicheras still received fourteen percent of all slanderous insults. But by this time they were firmly ensconced in the neighborhoods as powerful network members. They no longer engaged in so many disputes, yet in the disputes they did have they gave more insults than they received.

Conclusion

By 1930 chicheras had become more dominant in the chola neighborhoods in Sucre. In the legal cases it became particularly evident that chicheras controlled important social aspects of the neighborhoods because of the kinds of vocabulary that they used in their interactions not only with other cholos, but with elites as well. Chicheras guarded the content of the social intercourse through their control over much of the gossip in the neighborhoods, and they guarded access to that intercourse by controlling the most important public social spaces in the neighborhoods.

The role of chicheras changed from that of women who had sexual connections with elite men, and who made more money because of them, to that of women who were central to neighborhood social, economic, and cultural networks. They aggressively excluded unwanted people from the circles of support so crucial to survival in the neighborhoods. They were the people most frequently involved in legal suits because in their roles as proprietors of chicherias they were central to neighborhood gossip and politics, and they wielded that centrality into a kind of power that integrated them into the neighborhoods and cemented their positions as leaders. Their story provides one of the best examples of cultural miscegenation available for the national period in Bolivian history.

Table 5.1

Occupational Distribution Represented in the 1900 Census and in Slander
Cases Between 1870 and 1935

                                         Slander Cases:
                                         Plaintiffs and   Slander Cases
Occupation                 1900 Census     Defendents        Witnesses

Shopkeepers/Artisans:
Chicheras                  621 (  5%)       67 ( 21%)         59 ( 9 %)
Shopkeepers (a)            974 (  7%)       38 ( 12%)         68 (11 %)
Tailors                    450 (  3%)        9 (  3%)         25 ( 4 %)
Cobblers                   460 (  3%)        6 (  2%)         44 ( 7 %)
Butchers                   298 (  2%)       28 (  9%)         16 ( 3 %)
Carpenters                 303 (  2%)        5 (  2%)         24 ( 4 %)
Peddlers (b)                  n/a           17 (  5%)         27 ( 4 %)
Others                   1,107 (  8%)       30 ( 10%)         70 (11 %)
Subtotal                 4,213 ( 30%)      200 ( 64%)        333 (52 %)

Elites:
Housewives                    n/a            8 (  3%)         28 ( 4 %)
Lawyers                    216 (  2%)        8 (  3%)          5 ( .7%)
Property Owners            778 (  6%)        8 (  3%)         14 ( 2 %)
Students                 1,127 (  8%)        0 (  0%)         10 ( 2 %)
Others                     639 (  5%)        8 (  3%)         17 ( 3 %)
Subtotal                 2,760 ( 21%)       32 ( 12%)         74 (12 %)

Manual Labor:
Seamstresses             1,767 ( 13%)       44 ( 14%)         79 (12 %)
Servants (c)             2,309 ( 17%)        5 (  2%)         47 ( 7 %)
Laundresses                554 (  4%)        5 (  2%)         35 ( 5 %)
Others                   2,091 ( 15%)       27 (  8%)         43 ( 7 %)
Subtotal                 6,721 ( 49%)       81 ( 26%)        214 (33 %)

TOTALS                  13,694 (100%)      313 (102%)        621 (97 %)

Source: 181 legal cases between 1857-1933 from Injurias y Agresiones,
Corte Superior Departamental, Archivo National de Bolivia, Sucre,
Bolivia.

(a) Includes comerciantes (31) and pulperas (19).

(b) Includes regatonas (14), vendedoras (1), and revendedoras (1).

(c) Includes cooks (2), domestics (2), and servants (1).

ENDNOTES

(1.) Margarita E. de Fernandez vs. Rita Peredo, June 12, 1887, Injurias y Agresiones, Corte Superior Departamental, Archivo Nacional de Bolivia, Sucre, Bolivia, p. 4.

(2.) Censo National de Bolivia de 1900, vol. 1 (Cochabamba, 1973).

(3.) See Peter Scholliers, ed. Food, Drink and Identity, (Oxford, 2001), p. 6, who discusses how people use identity strategies or tactics ... to adopt a new identity while discarding an older one."

(4.) Antonio Paredes-Candia, "El traje de la chola," cap. 2, "Manufacturas de algunas prendas de la chola," cap. 3, "Las "oyas de la chola," cap. 4 in La Chola Boliviana (La Paz, 1993).

(5.) Valentina Serrano vs. Atanacia N. y Eugenia Daza, May 29, 1891, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1.

(6.) Ana Siles y Ceverino Marquez vs. Manuela Serrano, October 29,1900, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 6.

(7.) Wolfgang Schoop, Desarrollo Urbano y Organismo Actual de la Ciudad de La Plata Sucre (La Paz, 1974), 18.

(8.) John Kennedy, "The Role of Beer in Tarahumara Cukure" American Anthropologist 60: 620-640.

(9.) Alan Hayworth. "Zambia." International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture. ed. Dwight B. Heath. Westport, C'F, 1995, p. 318-319. In Zambia the Colonial state granted itself a monopoly on alcohol. Zambian women, despite vehement street protests, could not reclaim their right to brew beer.

(10.) In Sucre's National Archives is located an ever-growing sample of legal cases from Bolivian national period. The number of slander and petty violence cases, meaning neither murder nor rape cases, available to me during my initial research were approximately 300. These cases are also some of the first court records available in the national period, and I hope to be telling the story of how urban chola neighborhoods, and chicheras, fit into a larger picture of the creation of a nation--in a longer work. The period between 1880 and 1930 in particular was a period when Bolivia was wrestling with a post-Independence sense of national identity. The years between Independence and 1880 were politically chaotic. Coincidentally at this time, legal records from that time period are scarce also.

(11.) Gina L. Hames, "Honor, Alcohol, and Sexuality: Women and the Creation of Ethnic Identity in Bolivia, 1870-1930," (Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 1996).

(12.) The one exception was seamstresses who actually participated at the same level as their percentage of the population, but this likely resulted from their skewed self-perception. Some cholas, or non-elite women, defined themselves as mistresses of their households in their legal statements, only to reveal later that indeed they also worked as artisans or shopkeepers.

(13.) Next to chicheras, shopkeepers participated the most in the legal disputes.

(14.) 181 legal cases between 1857-1933 from Injurias y Agresiones, Corte Superior Departamental, Archivo Nacional de Bolivia, Sucre, Bolivia.

(15.) See Juan Albarracin Millan, Alcides Arguedas: la conciencia critica de una epoca (La Paz, 1979), Racism was reflected in the writings of Bolivia s leading literati, such as Gabriel Rene Moreno, and Alcides Arguedas and Origenes del pensamiento social contemporaneo de Bolivia (La Paz, 1976), and Murdo MacLeod, "Bolivia and its Social Literature Before and After the Chaco War: A Historical Study of Social and Literary Revolution." Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1962, still an important work.

(16.) Maria Josefa Gutierrez v. Manuela Gutierrez, May 29, 1874, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1.

(17.) Maria Josefa Gutierrez v. Manuela Gutierrez, May 29, 1874, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 4.

(18.) Maria Chavarria y Rosario Sanches, vs. Policarpo Morales, Damaso Morales, y Elenteria Chavarria, May 7, 1878, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1.

(19.) Perry R. Duis. The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston, 1880-1920 (Urbana, 1983), 15, 25, 58.

(20.) Manuela Martinez, Petrona Martinez, y Ysabel Pemintel vs. Zenon Michel, Jose Michel, Melchora Cosio, y Domiana Michel, August 14, 1882, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1.

(21.) Maryon McDonald, ed. Gender, Drink and Drugs. (Oxford, 1994) 13.

(22.) Valentina Serrano vs. Atanacia N. y Eugenia Daza, May 29, 1891, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1, and Isabel Estivares y Carmen Careaga vs. Guadalupe Mendoza, September 9, 1893,I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1.

(23.) Ysabel Paredes vs. Ysabel Miranda, August 4, 1888, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1.

(24.) Maria Josefa Gutierrez vs. Manuela Gutierrez, May 29, 1874, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1

(25.) Diane Kirkby, Barmaids: A History of Women's Work in Pubs (New York, 1998), 98.

(26.) 181 legal cases between 1857-1933 from Injurias y Agresiones, Corte Superior Departamental, Archivo Nacional de Bolivia, Sucre, Bolivia.

(27.) Lupe Camino, Chicha de maiz: bebida y vida del pueblo Catacaos (Piura, Peru, 1987), 69-70.

(28.) I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B.

(29.) Hames, "Honor, Alcohol, and Sexuality," 209-222.

(30.) By the latter part of the nineteenth century Bolivia had become integrated into the world market through the silver trade. The profits of this trade fueled the aspirations of Bolivia's silver elite. These silver barons, many of whom resided in Sucre, also hoped to propel Bolivia to international prominence. By 1900, however, rock-bottom silver prices, an increased world-wide demand for tin, and an increase in rail transportation links in Bolivia, changed the economy in that country. The region around Sucre felt the economic decline. Already having lost political power to the rapidly growing city of La Paz through a civil war in 1899, Sucre lost for good its role as the power center of the country. Consequently, these changes meant a slow economic stagnation for the city Sucre and its surrounding region, Chuquisaca, even as its elite struggled to exploit other commercial avenues anti maintain regional importance for Sucre. One of the avenues of commerce became agricultural production. The region around Sucre produced cattle, corn, and other goods which moved through Sucre as the regional market center. Klein, 150-163.

(31.) Gaceta Municipal de Sucre, 1900, 1910, 1920, Archivo Nacional de Bolivia.

(32.) Florencia Echeverria vs. Manuel Maria, Julia y Genoveva Gonzales, Andrea Flores y Benita Rojas, October 22, 1894, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 3.

(33.) Toribio Cardoso y Facunda Miranda v. Ygnacio Mayan, Serapio Romero, Euselvia Marquez, Justa Romero y Pascuala Romero, August 27, 1900, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1.

(34.) Manuel Maria Lascano Fernanda Altamir ano v. Emiliano Flores, Ignacia Velasquez y Consepcion de Velasquez, September 13, 1901, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1.

(35.) Luisa Bullion y Mariano Arcienega versus Salvador Bulucua, November 20, 1900, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., pp. 3, 23.

(36.) Constantina Jajardo de Anivarro v. Gabino Murillo y Antonia Baldivieso, June 15, 1910, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 1-84.

(37.) Rafaela Mancilla y Manuel Serrudo v. Matilde y Bernardo Barrios, August 13, 1912, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 2.

(38.) Ricardo Gambarte y Pastor Humeres v. Virginia Arce, Francisca Arce, y Marcela Arancibia, March 22, 1920, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 2.

(39.) Manuela Gorenti y Andrea Villegas v. Pastor y Maria Machaca, May 11, 1913, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 3.

(40.) Manuela P. de Higueras vs. Eleuteria Manjon y Valeriana Manjon, May 20, 1924, 1924, I.A., C.S.D., A.N.B., p. 6.

Gina Hames

Pacific Lutheran University

Department of History

Tacoma, WA 98447