María Alanoca

María Alanoca was born on 2 December 1960 in Chipamaya, a rural settlement in the Los Andes Province of central La Paz Department.[2] Alanoca was raised in an impoverished Aymara household alongside seven siblings to parents employed in the mining industry. Her father was a laborer at Bolsa Negra Mine in the distant village of Lambate, located in the Irupana Municipality of Sud Yungas Province.[3]

Alanoca began working the mines of provincial La Paz Department at the age of 12;[3] a time when the presence of female laborers was exceedingly rare and considered taboo – even prohibited on some sites for fear of "bad luck".[4] She made a modest wage as a palliri,[3][lower-greek 1] pulverizing rocks and sifting through the resulting pulp in search of valuable ores.[6]

Fleeing poverty, Alanoca settled in El Alto at the age of 17,[3] accompanying a trend of migration among inhabitants of the Altiplano out of the countryside and into the fast-urbanizing city.[7] El Alto grew at an accelerated pace throughout the 1970s to '90s,[8] bolstered by the arrival of mineworkers dismissed following the closure of state mines[9] – by the early 2000s, "entire neighborhoods [were] made up of ex-miners."[10]

She set up shop as a street vendor, selling condiments to the market-goers of La Ceja,[3] the city's bustling commercial district.[11] As with most small traders in the informal sector, an affiliation with the numerous gremios 'guilds' representing El Alto's merchants followed shortly thereafter.[12][lower-greek 2] By the mid-1990s, Alanoca had risen to the post of general secretary of La Ceja's vendors' guild, representing one of the more populous areas of the city.[3]

Alanoca was a founding member of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) in circumscription 10 of El Alto,[3][lower-greek 3] the district encompassing the city's north-central zones: villas 16 de Julio, Germán Busch, Ingenio, and Tunari, the Alto Lima, Los Andes, and Puerto Mejillones barrios, as well as the northern reaches nearing the foothills of Huayna Potosí.[14] She served on the party's local branch directorate in 2000 alongside other regional leaders – including Vladimir Alarcón,[3] who later represented the then-13th district in the Constituent Assembly.[15]

External video
Fluent in both Spanish and Aymara, Alanoca made use of both languages in her campaign. A significant majority of El Alto identifies as Aymara and a large proportion are bilingual.[16]
2019 Aymara-language campaign ad
2019 Spanish-language campaign ad

Through her affiliation with the MAS, Alanoca spent a brief stint in parliament as a substitute for Wilfredo Calani from 2010 to 2015.[17] Absent from the 2014 ballot, she was nominated to contest circumscription 10 in the Chamber of Deputies in the 2019 election as a representative of the guild sector,[14] a constituency for whom the MAS commonly reserved a substantive quota on its parliamentary lists.[18] She won her race,^[§] but the wider election results – mired in allegations of fraud – were annulled.[19] In the unrest that followed – much of which centered in El Alto – Alanoca played an active role in pro-government mobilizations and was among the protesters who occupied El Alto International Airport to deny opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho entry into La Paz.[20]

Re-nominated in 2020, Alanoca's campaign hit a new stumbling block late into the race after the Supreme Electoral Tribunal disqualified her candidacy amid complaints that she was not a resident of the constituency she was running in.[21][lower-greek 4] Nevertheless, Alanoca was restored to the ballot on appeal, and she ultimately won the race in a landslide, accompanying a general citywide MAS sweep.[22]^[§]

Alanoca identifies with the evista wing of her party within the majority MAS caucus:[23] the bench of legislators closest aligned with former president and party leader Evo Morales – as opposed to a newer group affiliated with incumbent Luis Arce: dubbed arcistas, or more generally as renovadores 'renewers'.[24] Although largely ideologically aligned, a growing schism over both groups' conflicting loyalties led many in the evista wing to act in increased opposition to the Arce administration.[25] For her part, Alanoca was a vocal critic of those outside her camp and was no stranger to public spats with colleagues she considered "traitor[s]" to the party[26] – even as her own substitute, Zacarías Laura, aligned himself with the arcistas.[27] Alanoca voted in favor of censuring Arce's justice minister, Iván Lima,[28] and was one of thirty-two MAS legislators who aligned with the opposition to censure Government Minister Eduardo del Castillo.[29] Arce's move to re-appoint del Castillo after his ouster by parliament led Alanoca to call for the president's impeachment.[30]

In legislation, Alanoca backed social policy in favor of the elderly and disenfranchised youth.[31] Between 2020 and 2022, she presented three bills proposing expanded access to finance for senior citizens living in poor health or extreme poverty;[32] the creation of state-sponsored scholarships for children and adolescents orphaned during the COVID-19 pandemic;[33] and the establishment of a national sex offender registry accessible by the public.[31]

Alanoca at her office, 14 February 2022.

• Territorial Organization of the State and Autonomies Commission
  • Departmental Autonomies Committee (Secretary: 2021–2022)[34]
  • Rural Native Indigenous Autonomies Committee (2022–present)[35]
• Social Policy Commission
  • Social Welfare and Protection Committee (2020–2021)[36]

Online and list sources

Digital and print publications

Books and encyclopedias