Today is Mother’s Day in Bolivia. I’ve always liked this holiday; though perhaps that’s partly due to heavy “patriotic” government indoctrination I received in Bolivian elementary schools. In contrast to the US holiday, it (in part) honors one of the country’s “founders” (a founding mother?): Juana Azurduy de Padilla.
Perhaps it’s also fitting that she was from Sucre, Bolivia’s historic capital city & currently in tension w/ the MAS government in La Paz. So there’s a lot of ironic resonance regarding the holiday. Juana Azurduy was the wife of a “patriot” or “republican” (anti-royalist) guerrilla leader during the Spanish-American wars for independence. The two fought from 1809 until 1826 (her husband died in 1816). She fought not under Simón Bolívar, but as part of the forces organized around the Buenos Aires revolutionary junta (led by José de San Martín), though Azurduy’s group was often isolated & fought alone for most of a two-decade period against various royalist forces. Like most independence leaders, she died penniless & homeless.
But the holiday is set on the date of a battle during the wars for independence—a battle fought in Cochabamba in 1812—and so the holiday also honors them, as well. I’ve never fully understood why the men weren’t in town that day, but it was essentially the town’s women (led by a blind woman, no less) who led a poorly-armed militia to face a royalist force. Not surprisingly, they were defeated.
That’s a (very brief) background on Bolivia’s mother’s day celebration.
And w/ that, I’m heading off to Philadelphia to see my friend Jake, and from there we go to Wilmington, to attend an Iranian barbeque (hosted by my brother’s girlfriend) on Memorial Day. Isn’t multiculturalism grand?
