Men and Women Facing Political Violence in Bolivia

In this article, I propose to outline the stories of violence between men and women from the countryside and low-income neighborhoods in the cities, based on 33 interviews conducted in Bolivia in the summers of 2005 and 2006. I don’t consider «violence» as a universal concept, but rather as a combination of representations related to widely distributed practices within society. I will clearly point out the commonalities between men and women, on the one hand, and among inhabitants of the country and the city, on the other. One of the common characteristics of all is the perception of living in a dangerous world. Women place a considerably bigger emphasis on dangers of a supernatural kind, as well as damages cause by symbolic violence, such as «badmouthing.» The inhabitants of poor urban environments place more importance on delinquent violence, and take measures to confront it. Both sexes refer to gender violence within the family, but it is women who cite lived experiences to that respect. In terms of causes for the violence, in the city both sexes seem to be incorporating into their imagination elements of academic discourse about structural violence