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Latin American voices: Leny Olivera

category bolivia / peru / ecuador / chile | anarchist movement | interview author Tuesday September 18, 2007 17:40author by Leny Olivera - Tinku Juvenil (Bolivia) Report this post to the editors

Leny Olivera, a young anarchist militant who said she had lost 15 comrades to state repression, was speaking to Michael Schmidt of South Africa's Bikisha Media Collective during the Anarchist Days 2 meeting at Porto Alegre, Brazil, 27 January 2003. Her words were carried in the June 2003 edition of the South African anarchist journal Zabalaza (Struggle).

LATIN AMERICAN VOICES: LENY OLIVERA
(Tinku Youth, Network of Autonomous Groups, Cochabamba, Bolivia)

I identify as Quechua because my father speaks Quechua [one of Bolivia's three major indigenous languages]. I work in a cultural group, but it's not just cultural: we also work with social topics. I like to work there because in our group we do a variety of things: we work in ecology; problems in our society; the music that revitalises our culture. I continue working there because I think it should be very integral, because at school I never learned why poverty exists in all the world, why some people don't have anything to eat, and many things about our culture. I think I learned more things on the streets in my group than at school or worse, the university. Now I'm studying through a university but don't think that the things that I learn - it's simple, technical things - it's useful, but it's just technical things. It was disappointing for me because there is no social consciousness to help our society according to our career.

I study computer science and it's just like a tool for me. And other aspects like social consciousness and other things I learn in the streets, on marches and going to the communities - because we also play music from our communities and we are learning little by little more things to remember. And, well, about anarchism, what I understood about it was that, first in Bolivia this word is like a mess, it's a bad word in some of the countries. But for me it's excellent - but I see also that it's difficult. I couldn't see a person that was anarchist 100%. It's difficult to take out all of the structures that we have in our minds, but it's a good step to recognise that we have to take it out. I think it's an important thing, but the problem is that since we are at school, and they put in our minds a lot of structures, a way of thinking with this global system.

It's very terrible; that's why I say that I'm in the process of destroying those structures. I believe in anarchism, but I am trying to be [anarchist] because I should change more and I'm conscious that I have more structures [to destroy]. I also see that I have changed in some aspects too. We don't have many contacts in Bolivia with groups that are anarchist so we are just like the little ones that speak loud about it because it's about all of us as I told you. The ones that say they are anarchist, they are also for example macho; the men have something that should change more. It's difficult to say I'm anarchist because it should change more. So for me it's like this and that is a good option because we are accustomed to be guided by someone, to just do what someone says and we're not free. For example in Bolivia most of the people think there should just be leaders to change something. I think that all of us can do it; it's more powerful that everyone can act because all of us can do it. So, we are working on that but I think it's a process.

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