By hwscott
Two days ago, I gave my ISP presentation proposal in front of the other students in the program, my professors, and other SIT La Paz community members. I am now officially in my Independent Study Project period, living on my own (not actually - still with my host family but with slightly different arrangements), and doing my research. I am researching a priest named Sebastian Obermaier, and his influence and perceptions of him in El Alto. So a lot has happened since my last post!
In that sense, I guess I should back up a bit, and tell how I have arrived at my topic. Two weeks ago, a few of our group went on a tour of El Alto with Marco Quispe, a journalist in that city who has a strong history of working with our program. In case you don't know (have I written this already in other posts?) El Alto is one of - if not the (census figures coming out at the end of the month will confirm this) - fastest growing cities in South America. During the neoliberal economic policies of which Bolivia was frontline and focus during the 80's and 90's, El Alto grew both in size and in extreme poverty as unemployed people came to the city due to privatization of national industry, only to find that the same policies had made basic necessities such as health care and running water too expensive for anyone living in the city. Yet at the same time, this population expansion has created the conditions for a thriving informal market intimately connected to the global market. Mandarin has become the new second language-of-choice over English, as small vendors send their children to China to find cheap clothing and consumer electronics to sell back in El Alto. The city is also the stronghold of what is seen as modern Aymara-indigenous culture and resistance; during the conflicts of 2003, Aymara students and revolutionaries shut down gas and electricity to the wealthier La Paz below, finding collective memory in the siege of La Paz in the eighteenth century by Aymara leader Tupac Katari. Seventy five percent of the population of the city is Aymara. While I had been in the city before, it was exciting to finally take an in depth tour after reading about it so much and learning this context.
In my various visits to El Alto before this tour, I had seen and developed an interest in various strange looking, overly colorful churches, all with tall bell towers that dot the vista of El Alto. They particularly stand out because save for the occasional equally colorful Aymara modern-architectural style building of a wealthier inhabitant, all of buildings in El Alto are short, squat, unfinished looking, and made of brick. Furthermore, due to the altitude of the city, there are no trees or plants. In this way, the churches pretty much define the landscape. After inquiring about them, I learned that they are built by a German priest named Sebastian Obermaier, who came here in the 70's and has been building churches ever since.
With my interest in religion here in Bolivia, especially the interaction with indigenous populations, my curiosity was piqued. Before my tour with Marco, I asked him if he could show me one of the churches, and if he knew anything about Obermaier, which turned out to be a great idea. He basically tailored the tour to me, and we were able to actually go to one of his churches and see Obermaier doing a double wedding! He was much older than I expected - at this point, he's over seventy. We also went to his headquarters, and saw the building where apparently he has a very popular television and radio station.
Since then, I have learned a lot more. He has not just built churches; in light of the neoliberal failures in terms of public infrastructure in El Alto, he has been a leader in building hospitals, schools, and working with city officials on construction projects. His media stations run popular literacy programs in Spanish and Aymara. He has built more than 100 churches in an attempt, as he says, to keep up with the crazy population growth in El Alto. Unlike many other conservative church leaders, he actively encourages mixing Aymara beliefs and practices with Catholic, saying that it allows Alteños to take on their religion as their own. In the uprisings of 2003, when the military blocked access to El Alto for La Paz ambulances and subsequently started shooting civilians in the streets(almost 50 people died and many more were injured), Obermaier's team was basically the only medical staff in the city. Apparently he also has huge respect because he has chosen to live in conditions worse than most Alteños, in a small shack behind his home church.
However, there are also many not-so-savory factoids about Padre Obermaier. In 1998, Obermaier was the presidential representative for President Banzer in El Alto, which meant that he was in charge of distributing resources from the central government to the city during the height of the neoliberal era, working for a president that in the seventies was a brutal dictator and later popularly reelected (huh?). There are stories of him building churches in meeting spaces for community organizations and soccer fields for youth. If communities refuse to build his church, he withholds marriage and baptism ceremonies from them. Finally, many complain about this foreigner’s strong influence with city officials.
In talking to many people about Padre Obermaier, I keep hearing the same phrase: "People either hate him or love him." After learning about this controversial figure, I've decided to do my research on him. It is a worthy and important topic to study because nothing has ever been written academically on him. Furthermore, I learn every day more about how strong his influence in the city of El Alto is. Indeed, it seems as if the history of El Alto cannot really be told without including the contributions (for better or worse) of Padre Obermaier.
I proposed a plan of research two days ago that will be modified heavily, but at this point goes like this. I will spend this week further focusing my research questions and modifying my methodology, but also going over every news article I can find about Obermaier to construct a history of sorts of his involvement with El Alto. I will also try to somewhat scientifically and quantitatively count the perceptions in favor of and against Obermaier of the people interviewed in the articles. Next week, I will live with Marco Quispe (who is also my mentor for this project) and spend time in Obermaier's center of operations, Villa Adela. While there, I will try to interview Obermaier himself, the bishop of El Alto, and community leaders in Villa Adela. I will also attempt to count the number of churches he has built (the last count I can find was in 2005) and interview a number of other people which I will determine this week have some connection with him.
Because I only have three weeks to do this study, I am extremely limited in what I can do. However, I hope by my next blog post I will be able to report what I learned about the perceptions of Padre Obermaier and the extent as to his influence in the city!