Bolivia’s Indigenous Women Climbers Fear for Their Future as the Andean Glaciers Melt

Cholita climbers Suibel Gonzales, left, and her mother Lidia Huayllas descend the Huayna Potosi mountain, near El Alto, Bolivia, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023. (AP)
Cholita climbers Suibel Gonzales, left, and her mother Lidia Huayllas descend the Huayna Potosi mountain, near El Alto, Bolivia, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023. (AP)
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Bolivia’s Indigenous Women Climbers Fear for Their Future as the Andean Glaciers Melt

Cholita climbers Suibel Gonzales, left, and her mother Lidia Huayllas descend the Huayna Potosi mountain, near El Alto, Bolivia, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023. (AP)
Cholita climbers Suibel Gonzales, left, and her mother Lidia Huayllas descend the Huayna Potosi mountain, near El Alto, Bolivia, Sunday, Nov. 5, 2023. (AP)

When they first started climbing the Andes peaks, they could hear the ice crunching under their crampons. These days, it’s the sound of melted water running beneath their feet that they mostly listen to as they make their ascents.

Dressed in colorful, multilayered skirts, a group of 20 Indigenous Bolivian women — known as the Cholita climbers — have been climbing the mountain range for the past eight years, working as tourist guides. But as the glaciers in the South American country retreat as a result of climate change, they worry about the future of their jobs.

The Aymara women remember a time when practically every spot on the glaciers was covered in snow, but now there are parts with nothing but rocks.

"There used to be a white blanket and now there is only rock," said Lidia Huayllas, one of the climbers. "The thaw is very noticeable."

Huayllas said she has seen the snow-capped Huayna Potosí mountain, a 6,000-meter (19,600-feet) peak near the Bolivian city of El Alto, shrink little by little in the past two decades.

"We used to walk normally; now, there are rocks and water overflowing," said the 57-year-old woman as she jumped from stone to stone to avoid getting her skirt and feet wet.

Edson Ramírez, a glaciologist from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in France, estimates that in the last 30 years, Bolivian glaciers have lost 40% of their thickness due to climate change. In the lower parts of the mountain, he says, the ice has basically vanished.

"We already lost Chacaltaya," said Ramírez, referring to a 5,400-meter (17,700-feet) mountain that used to be a popular ski resort and now has no ice left.

With no ice left in the lower parts of the mountain range, the Cholita climbers need to go further up to find it. This has reduced the number of tourists seeking their services as guides.

Huayllas would not say how much she makes as a tour guide, but she said a Cholita climber currently makes about $30 per tour. That is less than the $50 per tour they used to make.

In 2022, during the September-December climbing season, the Cholitas did 30 tours, Huayllas said. This year, through early November, they had barely done 16.

The situation has gotten so critical, the 20 women have looked for other jobs to make ends meet. Some of the Cholitas have started making and selling blankets and coats with alpaca wool from the Andes, Huayllas said.

"If this continues, we're going to have to work in commerce or do something else for a living," said Huayllas, although she quickly dismissed her own pessimistic thought, somehow hoping for a change: "No. This is our source of work."



Trump Replaces Obama Portrait with Painting of... Himself

Former US president Barack Obama's portrait was unveiled at the White House by then-president Joe Biden in September 2022. Mandel NGAN / AFP/File
Former US president Barack Obama's portrait was unveiled at the White House by then-president Joe Biden in September 2022. Mandel NGAN / AFP/File
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Trump Replaces Obama Portrait with Painting of... Himself

Former US president Barack Obama's portrait was unveiled at the White House by then-president Joe Biden in September 2022. Mandel NGAN / AFP/File
Former US president Barack Obama's portrait was unveiled at the White House by then-president Joe Biden in September 2022. Mandel NGAN / AFP/File

Donald Trump took his rivalry with Barack Obama to the walls of the White House Friday, replacing a portrait of the former US president with one of himself surviving an assassination attempt.

The 78-year-old Republican moved the picture of the Democrat, the only Black US president, to the opposite side of the famed residence's grand entrance hallway, AFP said.

The move is a highly unusual one for a sitting president, as most must wait to leave office before getting their portrait hung in the historic 200-year-old building.

"Some new artwork at the White House," the White House said on X, along with a video of people walking past Trump's new picture in the spot by the main stairwell where Obama's formerly hung.

The new painting shows the iconic moment when a bloodied Trump pumped his fist and shouted "fight" after a gunman shot him in the ear in Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024.

A White House official said they didn't immediately have information about the artist who painted it. It closely resembles a photograph of the same moment taken by the Associated Press (AP) news agency.

Several White House officials later posted pictures of Trump's new picture, while showing Obama's portrait nearby.

"The Obama portrait was just moved a few feet away," White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said on X -- while telling a critic of the move to "Pipe down, moron."

Traditionally US presidents often shift portraits of their predecessors, while keeping pictures of the most recent officeholders in the main entrance hall.

Obama's was unveiled in 2022 by then-president Joe Biden and shows the 44th president in a black suit and grey tie against a white background.

But the White House's fanfare around the switch-up reflects Trump's long and bitter rivalry with Obama, who was president from 2009 to 2017.

The billionaire launched his political career by pushing the racist and false "birther" conspiracy theory that his Democratic predecessor was lying about being a natural-born American.

Obama responded by repeatedly mocking Trump, most notoriously in a roast at a White House Correspondents Association dinner in 2011.

It also reflects how former reality TV star Trump has never been shy about putting tributes to himself in his various residences.

He recently hung outside the Oval Office a gold-framed version of his mugshot from a case over alleged efforts to interfere with the 2020 election.

And he has a large bronze sculpture of his defiant reaction to the Butler assassination attempt at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.