This project follows up on Siboné Oroza’s earlier ethnographic study on cholita performers in Bolivia that discussed cholita groups as small family enterprises in the historical context of popular markets and the growing political and cultural influence of the indigenous population during the time of a pro-indigenous government (2005–2019). The backlash of a military-backed deposition of this government in November 2019 and the effects of COVID-19 on the livelihoods of cholita artists is the point of departure for the follow-up study here.
The cholita artists and their urban electronic popular-folkloric dance music are approached from an intersectional feminist viewpoint, pointing to the simultaneous impact of discriminatory treatments based on race/ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality that affect the lives of indigenous women in Bolivia. But, importantly, the artists also use the same social categories as sources of agency and new possibilities of identity. The process in which cholita artists create moments of personal freedom and leading roles on and off stage to resist the entangled social oppressions of sexism, racism and class stratification is named cholita futurism, borrowing from the Afrofuturist art movement that “values the power of creativity and imagination to reinvigorate culture and transcend social limitations” (Womack 2013).
Additionally, this subproject supports these indigenous female musicians in their efforts to build their careers and to reach audiences beyond local communities with the release of a documentary film about the cholita groups and by helping to organize a tour for one or two groups in Europe.