Work, Reproduction, and Health in Two Andean Communities

By Anne Larme, 1993.

Chapter 7 - Gender, Health, and Economic Transformation

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non-Puneños and lowland peoples may serve to allay fears about entering an alien environment, and justify Cuyo Cuyeños' invasion of the lowlands to extract gold. In addition, it reinforces Cuyo Cuyeños' desired vision of themselves as full participants in the economy and society of modern Peru. It also adds to the power Cuyo Cuyo miners exhibit to other comuneros, especially women, upon their return to Cuyo Cuyo.

The Anchanchu and Tío Juaniquillo

The Anchanchu in Ancoccala, and Tío Juaniquillo or Tío Q'ewiy in Maldonado, are the spirits associated with gold mining. These two representations of the same spirit are similar in several respects: Like all Andean spirits, they are both alternately benevolent and evil; both help Cuyo Cuyeños find gold, if proper reciprocal relations are maintained through offerings of coca, cigarettes, and alcohol; and both look like gringos, men of European descent. Beyond these basic similarities, however, the Ancoccala and Maldonado versions of the spirit diverge. A comparison suggests the different meanings gold mining has for Ura Ayllinos and Puna Ayllinos in the two respective locations.

The Anchanchu is basically benign and helpful to Puna Ayllinos. He comes with his workers -- little men a meter tall who have brown skin like the Cuyo Cuyeños -- to work in miners' cañus at night, rewarding Puna Ayllu miners who have left them the appropriate offerings. Even P1, a staunch Adventist, recounted how the Anchanchu had helped his cañu to produce abundant gold, which suggests that the belief in the Anchanchu is widespread in Puna Ayllu. Puna Ayllinos do not fear the Anchanchu; rather, they encourage his presence by chewing coca, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol in the cañus, and leaving these as offerings.

Tío Juaniquillo, in contrast, is cast as a devil. He looks like a friendly gringo, except that his nose is twisted to the left. He befriends miners who are down on their luck, making a pact with them to help them find gold in exchange for gifts of coca, cigarettes, alcohol, and black goats. Miners become wealthy, but this is only temporary, for soon they die. They then become devils themselves, doomed for eternity to work for the Tío, using their horns to break soil from the cliffs, and their pointed tails to shovel the dirt into the sluice.

Nash (1979) and Taussig (1980a) have analyzed the Tío in association with commercial mining operations in the Andes. They suggest that the transformation of an indigenous spirit into the Tío has helped Andeans to adapt to the unequal power and economic relations characteristic of capitalism. Cuyo Cuyo miners appear to have made a similar transformation of an indigenous concept -- from the Anchanchu of the Ancoccala mine to Tío Juaniquillo of Maldonado -- to help them adapt to capitalist relations outside of Cuyo Cuyo.

It is dangerous for Ura Ayllinos to deal with the "devil" of capitalism. In Maldonado, miners are thrust into an alien mestizo world where it is hard to hold onto the gold they earn. The trip to and from Cuyo Cuyo costs considerable sums of money, and while in Maldonado miners are dependent upon expensive commercial foods. Furthermore, they are drawn to spend their hard earned gold on consumer goods, beer, and women, and they sometimes lose their gold to thieves in Maldonado or on the way

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home.⁹ Cuyo Cuyo miners thus walk a fine line between being economically successful and improving their lives in Cuyo Cuyo -- or destroying their lives through economic excess, or, simply, bad luck. The risk Cuyo Cuyo men take in dealing with the devil further enhances the power Ura Ayllu men obtain through Maldonado mining.

Female Exclusion from Maldonado: The Politics of Women's Bodies

There are elements of truth to these "myths" about the ch'unchus and the Tío in Maldonado. Ura Ayllu miners do expose themselves to social and economic risks in the lowlands, in addition to risking their health. But the embellishment of these, and more importantly, why they are embellished seems significant in light of female exclusion from Maldonado.

Married women are strongly discouraged from migrating to Madre de Dios. Although there are some exceptions, in effect women are excluded from this male domain. In practical terms, Ura Ayllinos explained that women need to stay home in order to tend the chakras and take care of the children. More commonly, however, men and women stated that women should not travel to Maldonado because they are much more susceptible to tropical maladies than men. Stories expressing these fears about women's bodies and health in Maldonado are told, embellished, and retold by men and women in Ura Ayllu, as the story of Clemencia, in Chapter 1, represents. They serve to frighten most women out of any desire they might have to migrate. Here are some additional examples, quoted from interviews with Ura Ayllu women.

B2
I don't want to go [to Maldonado] because I am too afraid of the illnesses in Huaypetue, above all, of the illnesses that women get. Women who have gone to Maldonado have told me that they always feel sleepy; at whatever hour of the day they feel like sleeping and sleeping. They say this is because it's very hot and that makes them sleepy... Also, because it's very hot, they say that the body itself stinks a lot. Women, especially, feel very hot between their legs. This heat makes their vaginas begin to sweat and stink a lot. The bad odor attracts gusanos (Sp., worms)¹⁰ and they enter a woman's body through the vagina. For all these reasons I don't want to go to Maldonado.

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D2
Women get sick more in Maldonado because they sleep during the day, which makes them débil. They get anemia from this, with symptoms of a swollen face and thin body. This is also caused by eating leftover food or dirty food. For example, if it falls on the ground and they pick it up and eat it, it makes them sick.

E2
Women get sick in Maldonado because they don't work and sweat, and sweating is necessary to cleanse the body of illness. Sleeping during the day makes women sick with anemia. This is partly caused by lizards that come into the house while they are sleeping, bringing illness. There are a lot of lizards in Maldonado.

F2
It seems to me that those women who go to Maldonado all get sick a lot...because it is very hot there. It is not a good temperature for women, because women are too débil. Those women who have gone to Maldonado are no longer any good for working in the chakra and no longer any good for having children (Sp., ya no sirven para trabajar en la chakra y tampoco sirven par tener otros hijos) because the children they have [after going to Maldonado] will all be born with the same sickness. All the illnesses [in Maldonado] are caused principally by the heat; they are calor onqoykuna (Qu., "heat" sicknesses).

H2
Women get sick more in Maldonado because they menstruate. They smell and attract flies, and illness enters the body with the flies.

According to these Ura Ayllinas, women's "weak" bodies and menstruation, combined with environmental forces ("heat") and supernatural forces (saqra in the form of snakes, lizards, and gusanos), cause them to get ill in Maldonado. The illnesses are considered to be permanent and life-threatening. They will affect unborn children and damage a woman's future work capacity. Other ethnomedical concepts evident in these examples illuminate the interrelationship of gender, work, and illness. Laziness and sleeping during the day make one weak and susceptible to illness: Since women are more likely to sleep in Maldonado due to the heat and the sedentary nature of wasi ruwana, they get sick more than men. Women, girls, and children are also more prone to illness in Maldonado than men because they do not perform llank'ay and sweat out the illnesses. Bad odors such as from menstrual blood, and leftover or dirty foods also cause illness in the hot climate.

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Another problem related to women's presence in Maldonado is menstrual pollution. Women will put their husbands' health at risk when they migrate to Maldonado.

D2
Women don't go much to Maldonado because when they menstruate they smell a lot, and this makes the men sick. The smell makes the men's bodies débil and they get chikimachu, with symptoms of yellow skin, big eyes, and big feet. It is very bad for the men's health if the women go.

The concept of menstrual pollution seems to apply only to the hot, lowland climate. Women did not discuss it as a problem in either Cuyo Cuyo or Ancoccala. Menstrual pollution has become another reason to bar women from migration to Maldonado.

Most women and their husbands in the sample thought that the risk of traveling to Maldonado was not worth it for married women.¹¹ However, it was acceptable for unmarried daughters and sisters -- females who had not yet become débil like married women, and who were relatively unburdened by household and agricultural responsibilities -- to go and work as cooks.

Beliefs about health risks for women in Maldonado do protect women from the real and exaggerated health risks of travel to Maldonado. But they also serve to glorify the risks and separate Maldonado off as a male domain, out of reach for females. Women find these beliefs difficult to contradict or ignore, and act accordingly.

Foucault's concept of bio-power (1978: 141-147) -- a type of power that comes from within the social body, rather than from above -- helps to understand the process of control of women in Cuyo Cuyo. They are controlled through a "capillary" form of power that "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives" (Foucault 1980: 39). In Cuyo Cuyo, cultural concepts of women's bodies, "enforced" by men and women alike, in effect bar women from sharing in the world of Maldonado, with its economic and social benefits. The glorification of male migration, and exclusion of females from Maldonado, I argue, have become important elements in the subordination of women in Ura Ayllu. A similar process of subordination occurs with all Cuyo Cuyo women through their exclusion from most cash-earning activities and from travel to urban/mestizo Peru.

The Paradoxical Position of Women in Cuyo Cuyo

Indigenous concepts of gender relations in the Andes, which stressed complementarity and cooperation between men and women, are still evident in Cuyo Cuyo (Chapter 3). Women are appreciated for their roles in reproducing Cuyo Cuyo culture, not

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only through child-bearing and -rearing, but through food production, weaving and local dress, and the speaking of Quechua. In some respects, this role has been reinforced by the present social and economic transformation. With men engaged in the cash economy, women are all the more essential in keeping the household and community running, and in providing a home and community for men to come back to.

Gender relations based upon the complementary ideal, while still important in Cuyo Cuyo, appear to be changing. Men, who are more educated and well-traveled than women, have incorporated Western values towards women learned from the dominant Peruvian society. These values, introduced in colonial times and reinforced in the present by the dominant society and Peruvian national policies, give women lower status than men socially, politically, and economically. Cuyo Cuyo women are placed in a paradoxical position. They are needed and encouraged to reproduce Cuyo Cuyo society, particularly in Ura Ayllu where the men are gone for a major portion of the year. However, these same roles make women subordinate to men, who have incorporated values from the dominant society. Both Puna Ayllu and Ura Ayllu women are affected by these processes to varying degrees.

The example of women's clothing illustrates women's paradoxical position in present day Cuyo Cuyo. Local dress promotes and maintains local culture, gives women a social identity in the community, and conserves their health. By wearing local dress, notably after childbirth, women reproduce Cuyo Cuyo culture just as they reproduce its population. Some husbands encourage this role by providing their wives with weaving supplies and fabrics, and displaying pride in their wives' appearance. Other men, especially younger men, and those who migrate, pressure their wives to "modernize" and wear urban-style dress. Women resist by claiming health problems. What they may really be resisting, however, are the "unhealthy" effects of social and economic change. The decision to wear local or urban-style dress -- and the power women gain or lose by deciding whether or not to wear it -- exemplify the paradoxical position of women in present-day Cuyo Cuyo.

More important and insidious, however, are subtle changes in gender relations that occur when men promote the beliefs and practices of the mestizo world over local ones. For example, women's important role in agriculture is represented by fertility symbolism, the nutritional and cultural value placed on chakra foods, and the recognition of the importance of agriculture in maintaining the agrarian way of life -- and thus Andean culture -- in Cuyo Cuyo. Paradoxically, misti foods are often accorded higher status than local foods. Store-bought misti foods are offered in sirvisqa rituals to the Pachamama and the apus, and are served to other comuneros during fiestas to enhance the status of fiesta sponsors; miners request their wives to cook misti foods, such as rice and noodles, and they train their children to value bread and other misti foods above local foods. Cuyo Cuyeños thus receive double messages about the importance of women and the fruits of women's labors.

Another paradox for women is that their other "products" -- children -- while wanted and needed for social and economic reasons, are not wanted or needed in large numbers in present day Cuyo Cuyo. In a predominantly agropastoral economy, large numbers of children might be important. In the present combined economy, however, too many children are considered to be an economic liability. Yet women have no way to control the numbers of children being born. In the present, women produce too many babies and not enough food.

There are also some not-so-subtle changes in gender relations demonstrating that men, reinforced by the power of the dominant culture, control and subordinate women in

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present-day Cuyo Cuyo. Agricultural products are now insufficient to feed families, and cash, earned and controlled by men, is a necessity. Women lack access to cash; they suffer domestic violence; their behaviors are restricted with the rationale of their "weak" bodies. Cuyo Cuyo society as a whole has incorporated these values. It is considered normal for men to control the cash they earn; normal that men beat their wives; normal to restrict women's activities.

Girls Are Only Born to Suffer...

The differential treatment of males and females, by and large, is accepted and condoned by both women and men in Cuyo Cuyo. On another level, however, women are acutely aware of their difficult position. To protect themselves, they pressure their husbands to buy land; they defend their rights to the ownership of weavings;¹² they fight to avoid abandonment when they discover marital infidelity; and they enlist the support of male relatives, padrinos, and anthropologists to control their husbands' abusive behavior, among other examples. As these examples represent, however, women's sources of economic and social power are limited.

Women's awareness of their difficult position is reflected in the way they treat their children. Preference for male children is demonstrated in many ways in Cuyo Cuyo, especially in terms of education and ability to travel (Chapter 3). The differential treatment of children is most dramatically illustrated by higher female infant and child mortality rates (Chapter 4).

Women themselves -- having learned from their own mothers, and because it is reinforced everywhere in their society -- promote the differential treatment of boys. As demonstrated by the example of the Machicado family in the beginning of Chapter 1, women openly verbalize these attitudes, which initially surprised me. Here are some other examples of these attitudes, collected during illness follow-up visits.

B2
Family B's oldest child was a son, aged six. According to his mother, he was strong and rarely got sick. In contrast, his three year old sister (B4) was constantly sick. Diarrhea was reported for B4 nearly every visit from March through August of 1987. Following that, she suffered from colds and gripe for several months. Finally in February of 1988, B2 discovered that she was full of intestinal parasites.

Her mother and grandmother, who were her primary caretakers, seemed nonchalant about B4's ill health. In July of 1987, for example, just after borrowing 200 intis to buy dung to fertilize her chakras and to cure her

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mother of madre onqoy, B2 stated that she had no money to buy remedios for B4's diarrhea and gripe. Her grandmother, weary of B4's constant complaints, said, "Of what use are girls? So what if she dies!"

In March of 1987, a new baby girl was born to B2. As most infants in Cuyo Cuyo, B5 was plagued by both respiratory and digestive illnesses during her first year. She had only one healthy month, in July. The rest of the year she suffered from periodic respiratory and digestive ailments, occasionally explained as uraña. B2, exasperated, echoed her mother's sentiments: "It doesn't matter if she dies, because she is a girl, and girls are only born to suffer. They have to work too much, cook -- so what's the point of living?"

I2
Family I had five children, one boy and four girls, the last one born in February of 1987. During her first year, this daughter, I7, suffered constantly from typical illnesses of infants -- diarrhea, intestinal parasites, fevers, and respiratory ailments. She cried constantly, much to her mother's consternation. Although in April I2 had taken the infant to a hampikuq for treatment, a particularly bad episode of illness lasting from August through September went untreated because the family was preparing for her uncle's wedding. Between November of 1987 and January of 1988, bouts with diarrhea and intestinal parasites persisted, and were treated with herbal remedies.

In February of 1988, I7 suffered from vomiting and constipation. This time her mother was alone, and under intense pressure to take care of her small children and to weave for a fiesta sponsorship. She did not treat I7's illness, saying, "It's alright if she dies; I have too many daughters anyway." In the previous November, I2 and her husband had attempted to give up their eight year old daughter for "adoption," to work as a servant for a family in Juliaca, although she cried so much the family had returned her within a short period of time. Clearly, the addition of a fourth girl to the family had challenged the I's conception of "ideal" family size and gender ratio.

J2
In April of 1987, J2's two year old son was again sick with diarrhea and fever. J2 explained that he had probably gotten sick from uraña, or from the "cold" when he accompanied her to the chakra, or when he was outside after the sun had gone down in the late afternoon. But the ultimate cause, she stated, was because he was so khaña (Aym.?, spoiled). Because he was the youngest son, he was spoiled by his parents and older sisters. He took advantage of all the affection by demanding things like meat and bread, but when they didn't give him these things, he cried, and as a result, got sick. His many illnesses were a physical response to his anger, she explained, and anger had probably caused the uraña. Spoiling children is bad; a child can even die from being spoiled too much.

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In contrast, his four year old sister had been healthy all of her life. J2 explained this by saying that because girls are "hated" (Sp., odiadas) and not spoiled, they do not get sick as often as boys.

Through these statements women acknowledge the preferential treatment accorded to males and the suffering of women in Cuyo Cuyo society. They are not necessarily devaluing their daughters. They are making a realistic appraisal of the lives into which their daughters have been born. Women are aware that their daughters will work harder than men, will be socially and economically subordinate, will be sexually vulnerable, will be beaten by husbands, and will pay the high price of childbearing. They have experienced all of these themselves. By wishing their daughters to die, they show their resignation to the condition of women's lives in Cuyo Cuyo. In the short term, Cuyo Cuyo mothers appear to be making their daughters suffer. When seen in context, however, their comments and behaviors can be interpreted as an attempt to prepare their daughters for -- or perhaps protect them from -- future pain and suffering.

Within the context of social and economic transformation in Cuyo Cuyo, it is clear that women's social and economic powers are limited. Thus, they must resort to subtle means of resisting their subordination. As we will see in Chapter 8, one of the ways Cuyo Cuyo women resist is through the domain in which they have the most power -- the domain of reproduction.