Indigenous Women and Leadership

“Yes, we lost 30 percent of the coffee crop this year,” confirmed Nancy Lopez, when asked about the effect of climate change on the 2012 coffee harvest. A rare, late May rainstorm had washed the ripe cherries from the coffee plants. “No, the government is not helping us, there is no help from anyone,” she calmly explained (Stenn, 2012b). Lopez, elected by a six-vote margin in August 2012, is the new President of Gender at FECAFEB. Operating in an environment of uncertainty and rapid change, reliance on the indigenous ways of Suma Qamana that focuses on the well-being of all, provides a platform of stability and resilience for a country in flux. In the last 20 years, Lopez has seen her family rise from being marginalized, impoverished, migrant farmers to important participants in the global economy; women move from a place of abject discrimination to one of legally protected participation at the highest levels of government; and the climate around her collapse as droughts, floods, and temperature changes sweep across the region with increasing frequency. A poor coffee season does not faze her. Coffee is a commodity that provides important income and the loss of that income is significant, but Bolivia’s models of solidarity economy, food sovereignty, and self-managed communities ensure that there are other ways in which her family can support themselves.