To Be In Between: TheCholasas Market Women

Abstract

When I did my first field research in Peru in 1974, I was struck by the forceful, energetic, and at times bawdy market women known as cholas. They stood out because they appeared fearless, astute, different, and unpredictable. I could ot find a counterpart among Peruvian males. The cholas feigned neither humility toward rich white foreigners nor unbridled admiration for their ways. They inhabited a world distinct from that of either the Quechua peasantry or the westernized mestizo but easily interacted with both campesinos and mestizos. They freely insulted whom they pleased; they engaged in wheeling and dealing and stood their ground but could also be surprisingly generous, almost religiously so.

Kinship into the Peruvian Adoption Office: Reproducing Families, Producing the State

“…The existence of mediators like these three women within the world of adoption serves to reify perceived boundaries between the social constructs of ''state'' and ''social'' domains, while simultaneously knitting together aspects of those spheres (see Seligmann 1989 on the role of cholas as mediators). That is, in order to perpetuate their own position and functions, the adoption office staff must at once maintain the separateness of the spheresFconsidering their own biographies as irrelevant to the work that they do, for exampleFwhile also bridging them through their own public, legal, and state-sponsored efforts to create some (and destabilize other) families.…”

Place-Based (In)formalization: A Bolivian Marketplace for Consumer Electronics and Global Brands

“…Research on market exchange since the 1970s (especially in foodstuffs and other goods of daily necessity) has described the dense network of commercial ties, interwoven with kin and godparent relations that stretch between the countryside and the city, across provinces and ecological zones (Buechler 1978;Buechler and Buechler 1996;Tassi et al 2013). Women play a central role as trade intermediaries between the rural-indigenous and urban-mestizo world (Babb 1998;Buechler 1997;Buechler and Buechler 1996;Seligmann 1989;Scarborough 2010). Fewer studies have focused on cross-border trade in manufactured goods and contraband, although recent research has addressed the dynamics of small-scale activities between Peru and Bolivia (Ødegaard 2008), Argentina and Brazil (Grimson 2002), and at the Triple Border of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil (Aguiar 2010;Rabossi 2012).…”

Jeux du corps et jeux identitaires chez les Cholas

“…En 1989, pour la première fois dans l'histoire du pays, une femme chola est élue au poste de députée (Alenda 2000 : 19 (Barragán 1997 : 61) L'ambivalence du positionnement des Cholos dans le complexe ensemble ethnique des Andes, représenterait, encore aujourd'hui, une menace pour les élites politiques de La Paz, leur rappelant quotidiennement la fragilité de leurs privilèges (Lazar 2008 : 16). Par ailleurs, ce serait cet « entre deux » ethnique et politique qui aurait induit les fortes connotations négatives liées à la catégorie cholo/chola (Seligmann 1989). En effet, ce rapide panorama historique montre comment le maintien des termes cholos/cholas a toujours désigné une position sociale marginalisée dans la société urbaine, celle-ci étant occupée par différentes populations au cours du temps.…”