In the first flush of the Morales/García Linera government, the mayor and councillors (who were indigenous peasants) and the professional civil servants were operating in a new and interesting political atmosphere. This had an inescapable impact on their day-to-day relations. New political priorities aside, though, there was still a productive friction between people of different ethnic and class backgrounds, which led to particular dynamics, which were themselves offset by narrative techniques and bodily disciplines, namely the adoption of a kinship idiom and the enforced presence of alcaldía employees in the countryside at certain times.
The municipal government authorities and the civil servants who worked with them provided material support for my research, in the form of transportation and lodging. The issue of support with transportation had initially seemed minor, but over time it became clear that being able to hitch a ride in government vehicles out to Tapacarí and back not only made life much easier, but also provided an insight into the production of social relations between municipal government employees and different understandings of 'work' as it related to the countryside. As with the people from the town of Tapacarí and the communities around it, mobility was key; local government staff had to be seen to be
'moving', and some of them spent more time in transit than they did at their desks. In addition to moving through physical space, the 'engineers' of local government were expected to be able to slip between ethnic and class categorisations with dexterity and so present themselves as skilled and masculine.
Over time, my own positionality within the municipal government office and its activities was also influenced by these sets of values. During the first few months of my fieldwork in Tapacarí, in dry season, I walked out to several different rural communities, alone and accompanied, firstly looking for a place to live and then eventually in order to get a sense of social order and how things were different in the peasant communities than in the town of Tapacarí. In June and July, for example, I visited six or seven villages in the upper reaches of canton Tapacarí and a few along the riverbed, staying overnight if the walk back to the town was too long. Although at the time I saw these as failed attempts to find a community to live in, they clearly made an impression on the councillors, Oversight Committee and other office staff members who came from Tapacarí, who would approach me and ask if it was true that I had walked up to such and such a village. When I answered in the affirmative, they would express surprise and approval.
In June 2006, I was tasked with supporting the organisation of a llama fair in canton Challa. While in the city, I helped with purchasing supplies, planning activities and ferrying round posters and publicity to different agencies and radio stations, including a day trip out to Challa Tambo to talk to people from the place where the fair was to be held and to plot out the site – and, in my case, ask questions about the tambo whose wall supposedly still stood there, forming part of the school in much the way described by Denise Arnold and Juan de Dios Yapita in Qaqachaka (2005). This, while definitely
feeling like the kind of 'work' I had agreed to help the municipality with, did not meet with much reaction (although it did yield some good interviews).
The week before the feria, however, I was in the town of Tapacarí (altitude 2700 metres above sea level), and so in order to get to the llama fair I walked to Challa Tambo (4300 m.a.s.l.), staying overnight in the community of Ch'illca Grande with a popular educator and his family, and asking them many questions about the village sindicato and their resistance to the ex-patrón. When my educator friend and I arrived at the llama fair and announced that we had walked from Tapacarí, the engineer who had been organising the fair pronounced 'Qué macho!' Unwittingly, I had complied with one of the fundamental qualities of an engineer or other fieldworker: demonstrating masculinity and acquiring knowledge by walking through the province.
Fortunately, the other qualities which engineers were supposed to display also came easily. As I discuss, communicative competence in the alcaldía was expressed through paperwork and written formalities, and through being able to fluently use a mix of Quechua and Spanish. Since I usually used my time in the office to write up field notes, this activity did not distinguish me too much from anyone else writing words, and being able to speak enough Quechua to get by was also an advantage. Neither was keeping up with drinking much of a problem. The heavy drinking sessions held in the city on q'owa nights and in the country as part of sojourns out for significant dates or fairs paled in comparison to the parties held out in the countryside for weddings or young men returning from military service, and being one of the only women who would stick around throughout a night's revelries resulted in a lot of conversations and the forging of
arduous journeys through the province that I shared with other alcaldía staff, during which they freely discussed office politics, their experiences of the countryside, and municipal matters. In some cases I followed these up with formal interviews.