Ancelma Perlacios Peralta was born on 26 July 1964 and is a Bolivian cocalera activist, politician, and trade unionist who served as senator for La Paz from 2015 to 2020.
13 Facts About Ancelma Perlacios
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Ancelma Perlacios was the first-ever Afro-Bolivian to serve in the Senate.
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Ancelma Perlacios's tenure coincided with rising conflict between her party and the Yungas-based cocaleros she represented, in which she ultimately sided with the former.
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Ancelma Perlacios was born on 26 July 1964 in Chicaloma, a rural community situated in the tropical foothills of La Paz's Sud Yungas Province.
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Ancelma Perlacios completed portions of her primary schooling in her hometown up to the seventh grade but dropped out before advancing further.
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Ancelma Perlacios's situation reflected a common fact of life for many women in rural agrarian areas of the country, where high school attendance, much less graduation, was often infrequent, even into the second half of the twentieth century.
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Ancelma Perlacios became active in community organizing relatively late in life, not participating in grassroots movements until the mid-2000s, when she was already in her early forties.
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Ancelma Perlacios later held the same post in the Chicaloma Women's Center from 2006 to 2008.
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Ancelma Perlacios's rise through the ranks of women's union leadership culminated in her 2008 election as executive of the Unified Regional Federation of Peasant Women of Irupana.
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Ancelma Perlacios's election attested to the openness of the MAS towards including women of rural backgrounds on its roster of candidates, especially in 2014, an action that produced the largest caucus of peasant women elected to parliament in Bolivian history, both in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
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Ancelma Perlacios spent much of her senatorial term focused on matters related to coca, its cultivation, regulation, and decriminalization.
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Ultimately, Ancelma Perlacios held the party line on the matter, rejecting calls from ADEPCOCA that she file a motion of unconstitutionality against the legislation on their behalf, a fact that led the organization to declare her persona non grata.
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The final passage of the General Law of Coca ruptured the government's fragile relationship with Yungas cocaleros, and though Ancelma Perlacios continually called for dialogue to resolve the conflict, organizations like ADEPCOCA remained steadfast in their mobilized opposition to the new regulations.