Bolivia's Rural Women Are Remaking Cities, Lives

"He cooks," Mitta said, and behind the frame of her glasses her eyebrow arched playfully. "He also washes clothes. We do things together because we both have to work so much."

Times have changed since Mitta became one of El Alto's urban pioneers, seeking opportunity after the mine where Celadonio worked closed in the mid-1980s. Her evolution -- replicated thousands of times over by the multitudes who follow the same route -- started as soon as she reached El Alto's point of entry and main commercial drag, La Ceja.

Then, as now, it was a sensory riot: Minibuses loaded beyond capacity nudge bumpers while jockeying for space. Street vendors hawk tea, watches, T-shirts, chickens and just about everything else. At night, men and women spill out of dance halls, the dark mud underfoot sucking at their heels. Witnessing a spontaneous street fight is the norm, not the exception.

It's a heady gateway for newcomers from mines or subsistence farms who never carried a coin in their pocket. The transition into a monetary society -- which usually occurred over generations in most developed nations -- happens immediately here.

"When a woman moves here, she can't be a housewife and take care of her family like she used to -- she has to work to survive," Mitta said.

Celadonio couldn't find a job at first after they arrived. But Mitta agreed to clean the offices of a nongovernmental organization, in exchange for a room where the couple and their four children could sleep and a little bit of food. She worked from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week for three years. Eventually, Celadonio found work at a minibus station, and Mitta landed her housecleaning job in La Paz.

"The men at first don't want the women to work," Mitta said. "There's a lot of chauvinism, and they often treat the women badly. I have seen so many separations. I almost split with my husband -- twice. The kids always suffer, because they are alone so much. This isn't just my family that I'm talking about -- the majority of families go through this."

Her women's group meets about once a week. The variety of topics is wide: nutrition, cooking with the different types of foods available in the city, the challenges of raising children in an urban environment. Delinquency is a problem, they say. Some blame it on the hours they have to work away from home.

Conversations like theirs could probably be overheard in any city, because the women here increasingly conform to universal urban prototypes. Their personal transformations -- particularly the shift in emphasis away from complete dedication to family -- have become visible in national statistics. The Bolivian fertility rate, for example, has dropped from about 6.5 children for each woman to about 3.9 over the past 30 years. In the same period, the country's population has gone from mostly rural to about 65 percent urban.

Mitta said one of the most visible barometers of change in her neighborhood is the appearance of day-care centers.

About six blocks from her house, two men struggled with a heavy wooden pole at the side of a dirt road. They were helping a woman install electricity in a day-care center -- all on their own, with no help from city or utility officials.

A Growing Influence

The dean of Mitta's group is Bertha Vargas, who has lived in the neighborhood for nearly 30 years and claims to know everyone in it. Ask her, and she'll guess that the ratio of women to men in El Alto is 5 to 1. Ask Mitta, and she'll guess 3 to 1. Ask Mitta's husband, and he'll guess 6 to 1.