Supermadre: Women in Politics in Latin America and We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us should become required reading for those interested in contemporary Latin America. The first work asks more questions about the nature of female political participation than it can possibly answer; the latter is an impressive example of historical, anthropological, and political analysis of modernization that should serve as a model for future research.
In Supermadre, Elsa Chaney explores not only why women have been largely excluded from political participation in the past, but also why those who do participate view their role as so limited. Reflecting the title of the book, Chaney posits that women who secure public office legitimize their positions by equating public service to an extension of household management—hence the word supermadre—and that women who have had experience in the political world stay there for shorter duration than men, only to retreat to their homes and family concerns.
Using Chile and Peru for comparative purposes, Chaney delves into nineteenth- and twentieth-century political, educational, and literary traditions that might have helped to create important values and beliefs about women and their role in the political world. The extent and nature of the educational system, ethnic composition, and timing of literary and feminist movements all emerge as significant factors. In contrast, the traditional political role of women derived from kinship with politicians becomes less important, particularly after the political system is opened. Then party platforms and political socialization within the family play key roles.
Once female suffrage is achieved, the important questions are why women vote the way they do, whether they become candidates for office, and what kinds of jobs they seek in the public bureaucracies. Here we find, for example, that voting women tend to be influenced more by class than by sex. In both countries, few women campaign for office except at the municipal level, and when they do work for the government, their lack of interest in and understanding of developmental issues remove them from the most dynamic and influential sections of government. The author concludes by trying to explain why women have these attitudes and values and how their beliefs might be appropriate given the political and social values of the countries under consideration.
Chaney has made great strides, but vast amounts of work remain. For example, despite the historical discussion, there is no way to link past conditions with the supermadre idea that comes forth so strongly after 1950. Second, the explanation of the difference in attitudes of women toward voting compared to running for public office may not be related to sex. Third, service in government bureaucracy is quite different from that of elective office, yet such distinctions are unclear in the discussion. Finally, the small number of people interviewed makes generalizations about female attitudes toward government service in general questionable. Nevertheless, the groundwork has been laid for the next stage of research and it is hoped that others will take up the challenge.
June Nash’s We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us is a mature response to many questions that have been posed before. Controversies surrounding cholo identity and its impact on Andean cultures, Catholicism among Bolivian Indians, class consciousness and worker alienation in Third World countries, and the impact of the 1952 Bolivian revolution on tin miners are all directly addressed and answered in this complex, but rewarding, study. The conclusions are based upon analysis of two distinct sources of information: conversations with miners and their wives, and economic, political, and social data culled from a variety of public and private sources. It is astonishing to see how miners have a sense of history and mythology that explains for them events deemed complex by more sophisticated forms of record keeping.
The miners and their families emerge from this work as a proud and perceptive group struggling to provide a future for their families while coping with the present. They rely on their Indian and cholo heritage to provide them with symbolic mechanisms to deal with the uncertainty of life in the mines. They realize that conditions in the mines have deteriorated since 1964 (the year the MNR fell from power) and that they have lost status since nationals have replaced the foreign technical administrators with whom they used to work. They are also aware that the value of the peso has declined in relation to the United States dollar. They accept all of this until the question of hunger is raised, and at that point, if conditions are appropriate, they organize to defend their interests.
Besides analyzing the miners and their work, this book also sensitively treats the effects on women of the process of modernization and change in the mines. Work for women in the slag piles declines with the advance of mechanization, along with the limited security widows had in the past when means of adequate support disappeared. Equally important, the willingness of women to improve their economic conditions through trading, and their political rights through support of their husbands’ strikes, makes it obvious that women are not at all marginal to the impact of the mining economy.
The arguments presented and the evidence offered in the various chapters are convincing, but somewhat difficult to follow because of the organizational structure of the book. Further, those unfamiliar with Quechua phrases and jargon of the mines would have been aided by the inclusion of a glossary. Despite these caveats, the richness of the miners’ observations, added to the beautiful photographs and sound socioeconomic and political analysis, make We Eat the Mines an anthropological study that will serve many disciplines and intrigue many readers.
