Written by Raúl Zibechi, Source: Americas Program
If Evo Morales had not awarded him the most important distinction given by the state, the life of Constantino Lima would only be known to his friends and companions, even though his personal life is among those that epitomize the outstanding history of the Aymara people.
One has to make the trip up to El Alto to find the man, a small and fragile body, of medium height, skin the color of earth, clear eyes, and a generous smile. He looks almost carefree in the midst of the hustle and bustle of women hawking their merchandise and the wary young people who glance at the khara (person of European descent) out of the corners of their eyes. He was born in September, 1933 in Rosario, a small village in the province of Pacejas on the [outskirts] of La Paz, where the altiplano is dotted with Aymaran chullpas, the beautiful, thousand-year-old funeral towers.
In 2008, the government of Evo Morales decorated Constantino with the Condor of the Andes, the greatest distinction awarded by the Bolivian state, because he was considered “an important person in the resurgence of indigenous cultures in Bolivia.” In 1960 he helped to create the National Autochthonous Party (PAN, Partido Autóctono Nacional) along with 22 other indigenous people and in 1968, when he entered the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, he created the Julián Apaza University Movement (MUJA, Movi). He was the second indigenous person elected to a deputy position in the Bolivian Congress, in 1985, by the Tupac Kataria Indian Movement which he had helped establish in 1978.
We met him at the entrance to the municipality of El Alto. He was accompanied by a young student who did not hide his admiration for Constantino. We walked a number of blocks through the packed streets of La Ceja, the altiplano center filled with street vendors, and entered one of the noisy bars where you can always hear Andean music. At an altitude of 4,000 meters, if you look down from here, you see the city of La Paz and if you look up, you see the snowy peaks of the Cordillera Real. Constantino asks for a tea and smiles. There is almost no need to ask him questions. He likes to talk.
Constantino Lima (CL): Sometimes people ask me what ideology has inspired me, and I say that it doesn’t come from the right or from the left, that I have always hated both sides because both sides have called us Indians pieces of shit. My answer is the following: [my inspiration comes from] my mother and my father. One’s parents have much to do with one’s formation, and so do the oral histories of grandparents, great grandparents. The birds also speak, the trees speak, the rivers speak, the rocks speak, in short, animals talk to us, and so do the apus (spirits) and the ancestors.
Raúl Zibechi (RZ): Tell me about your first political experiences.
CL: I was eight years old. I went with my mother, holding on to her and we had to walk eight or nine kilometers. My mother loaded firewood on the burros and sold it where there were kharas and then we bought sugar for tea. My mother brought me to keep her company and to take care of the burros. When we arrived to sell wood to the neighbors, some huge dogs came out of a house and attacked us. My mother defended herself as well as she could, and I grabbed on to her skirt. Some kids of about five or six, perhaps older, shouted “Mama, Mama, our dogs want to eat these Indians, they must be really delicious for the dogs.” Their mother wasn’t at all concerned. She wasn’t even worried. The children kicked my mother in the behind and pulled at her bundle and wanted to throw it away. They made fun of us, they called us “little Indians.” My mother complained to the mayor to whom we always brought firewood. The mayor was white and he made us go to the office where the kids were hanging out and called to their white mother. The mayor began to argue with my mother, “Listen, woman, never disrespect this woman ever again. You’re not to complain about this girl ever again. Or is that how you act?” He threatened her, and my mother couldn’t do anything but cry. The kharas were merchants and they lived on the firewood business and they paid us a price that would guarantee them a profit.
RZ: Why do you consider this a political experience?
CL: Because from this experience, a kind of anger grew here (he indicates his heart). I arrived home at seven years old and asked my father why these white men with skin a different color from ours were like that. The following day, he gathered together all of us sons, and had us sit around the table. We were six brothers. He stood in front of the blackboard—my father was the first Indian teacher in Pacajes—and he began his explanation.