Julia Figueredo

Julia Figueredo was born on 22 May 1966 in San José, a rural settlement in Papel Pampa, second municipal section of the Villarroel Province, on the highland Altiplano Plateau.[1] The dry – bordering on arid – region is primarily populated by the Aymara, who base their livings on a mixture of animal husbandry and small-scale agriculture.[2] For their part, Figueredo's family were pastoralists: they grazed cattle and herded sheep, with some smallholdings for crop cultivation.[3]

A peasant, Figueredo's youth was mired in abject poverty.[3] Her father, Luciano Figueredo, abandoned the family, leaving her mother, Gregoria Paniagua Fernández, to raise Julia and her six siblings in solitude. The family's income allowed Figueredo to attend school only through fourth-grade primary.[4] As a young adult, she took vocational courses in nurse assistance, certifying her to work as a practicing midwife.[5][lower-greek 1]

After marrying her husband around age 19–20, Figueredo settled in Inquisivi Province in the tropical Yungas.[7] The couple tended to a small chacra in Lacayotini, a village in Licoma Pampa Municipality, where they harvested vegetables like potatoes and tomatoes and made work as dairyers.[8]

Around this time, Figueredo started taking part in the labor movement as a member of the region's rural trade syndicates.[3] Beginning in the early aughts, Figueredo progressively rose through the ranks of the Bartolina Sisa Confederation, chairing her local agrarian and women's union before being elected executive secretary of the organization's provincial branch in Inquisivi.[9] During this time, she was actively involved in the mass mobilizations that characterized early 2000s Bolivia, including the 2003 gas conflict and the tribulations of the 2006–2007 Constituent Assembly.[4]

Backed by community members in Licoma, Figueredo was appointed sub-prefect of Inquisivi by La Paz Prefect Pablo Ramos. In her position, Figueredo worked to develop provincial road infrastructure and public works and collaborated with the departmental administration to promote the bicentennial anniversary of the La Paz revolution – whose leader, Pedro Domingo Murillo, was born in Inquisivi.[10]

Natural sympathy toward left-wing tendencies, coupled with peasant syndicalism's already-existing ties to it, fostered Figueredo's affiliation with the early Movement for Socialism (MAS-IPSP).[11] Figueredo formally joined the MAS in tandem with her ascension through union leadership,[8] considering the Bartolina Sisa Confederation's entrenched roots within the party apparatus.[12] In 2009, Figueredo was put forward by her organization for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.[13] She wrested the nomination from among three contending candidates representing regional social movement organizations – the Bartolina Sisa and Túpac Katari unions and select cocalero groups – and was presented on the MAS's electoral list in the La Paz Department.[14]

Figueredo joined nine other members of the Bartolina Sisa Confederation in parliament – five in the Chamber of Deputies, with one other representing the same department: Patricia Mancilla.[15] Considering her Yungas origins, she was made a member of the Coca Leaf Committee from 2010 to 2011 but spent the duration of her term as part of the Prosecutor's Office Committee.[16]^[§] In 2013, Figueredo was elected president of La Paz's parliamentary delegation, the first indigenous woman to hold the post.[17] At the end of her term, Figueredo was not nominated for reelection, nor did she seek it, preferring instead to retire to her chacra in Inquisivi.[18]

• Plural Justice, Prosecutor's Office, and Legal Defense of the State Commission
  • Prosecutor's Office and Legal Defense of the State Committee (2011–2015)[19]
• Rural Native Indigenous Peoples and Nations, Cultures, and Interculturality Commission
  • Coca Leaf Committee (2010–2011)[20]

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