Freddy Mamani’s Cholets for Export

Abstract

The Bolivian Aymara architect Freddy Mamani has constructed more than sixty brightly colored cholets in El Alto, a migrant sister city to La Paz, Bolivia. These fantastical constructions are neither pure romantic manifestations of an Aymara cosmovision nor only superficial decorations that symbolize the Aymara Indigenous peoples’ entry into capitalism. Instead, they reflect the complexity and contradictions of dynamic urban Indigenous identity in a globalized world. The article is the first of its kind to consider cholets outside a Bolivian context. The article illustrates how cholets have been constructed out of imported products and, in turn, transformed into exportable objects for global consumption. Via analyzing a range of visual media—photography, documentary, and museum installations—I make the case that in the process of exportation, the cholets are converted into decorative objects that risk obfuscating the long class and racial struggles of the Aymara as they have resisted, and embraced, global capitalism’s imperatives.