From identity to ID card: Becoming a woman (and) Indigenous in Bolivia

Abstract

I met Brigida in 2015. At the time, she presented herself as a young gay man, somewhat androgynous, and identified herself as culturally mixed-race (Mestizo). Today, in 2023, her identity card is that of an Indigenous woman, a Chola. This took place in the context of the Indigenization of Bolivian citizenship and the passing in 2016 of a law that allows people to change their gender at the civil registry office simply by making a declaration. Brigida’s double transition (of gender and ethnicity) is an opportunity to think together about the regimes of belonging and authentication of gender and ethnicity that are co-constructed in her trajectory.