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Without question, Bolivia is a colonial society. Andean peoples, colonized since the sixteenth century by a group of Spanish invaders, have not yet gone through a process similar to that experienced by Asians and Africans; as yet, decolonization is a possibility barely visible over the horizon. Under these circumstances, social relationships, especially gender relations, are determined by a system of domination. In this article I will construct, in a preliminary fashion, a theoretical framework for understanding the domination to which indigenous women are subjected: a domination that subordinates them to a power expressed through racism, exclusion, and, at the same time, the sexism practiced by the men in their own society. The aim of this essay is to put forth an approach to the theory of colonial domination. In order to understand the subordination of women in the Aymara culture, I will study two fundamental concepts that reveal the roots of this inequality. Assessing the Aymara concepts of sullka (literally "minority") and mayt'ata (literally "on loan") will serve as a guide to comprehending subordination in the Andes. However, if this study were to analyze the concept of domination only from the point of view of the Aymara culture, it would contribute nothing to understanding or resolving the problem. Therefore, the concept of p'iqi (head), a quality that determines the superiority or independence of a person, will be important to this inquiry. It is vital to consider the problem of domination through the categories of Andean thought that express an individual's situation and status in society.
Colonial Domination and the Subordination of Women
In Bolivia, where multiethnicity is still not viewed in a positive light due to centuries of colonial domination, it is important to study the foundations of intolerance, socioethnic prejudices that the groups in power establish in their relationships with the oppressed, and the perception and attitudes of the latter. This intolerance, which characterizes relationships of dominance and discrimination, originated with the Spanish invasion that imposed upon the Andean society the supremacy of the conquerors as the head of the social pyramid. Colonial domination, founded on the principle of indigenous inferiority-shared by the State and the conquerors-constituted the ideological groundwork that, by subduing anticolonial rebellions and social transformations of a more general nature, still...