Al Gore, Bring on the Ark!

I hear Seattle is having snow! Here, it oscillates between seventy degree wether and severe rainstorms. Sometimes I sun myself on the roof in a swimsuit, and sometimes I need an umbrella to get to the kitchen.

While this is normal for the season, the severity of this shifts is not. By all accounts, the rains are coming earlier, in November, and La Niña is hitting harder. This is the third year of catastrophic flooding. So climate change seems pretty real from where I'm sitting.

In the Chapare, outside of Cochabamba, the town of Villarroel has been submerged. In El Alto, outside of La Paz, mudslides have buried entire barrios. It's the worst in the eastern lowlands, like Santa Cruz and the Beni. People's adobe houses have been destroyed, their animals drowned, their crops decimated, their lives on the economic margins made infinitely more difficult.

There's no aid. Even if there were, the is no way to get it there, as the already pitiful infrastructure has been destroyed, and the airforce is too poor to have long-range helicopters. And so we wait and pray.

Picture credits to the AP. I'm trying to stay as far away from the flooding as possible.

Happy Tinku!

I was shopping in the Cancha today when something spectacular caught my eye. This pirated DVD cost me all of 3bs (50¢) and may be my new prized possession. Although it may be hard to appreciate if you haven’t lived in both Bolivia and the United States, a Happy Tinku is the most hilarious oxymoron imaginable.

Tinku is a traditional dance, which I described during Carnival. But the dance is a representation a very real ritual. Tinku is traditional combat between indigenous communities. Tinku is rarely practiced these days, and is found primarily in rural Potosi, Oruro and Sucre. Few outsiders have seen Tinku, but the people I know who have described it as absolutely terrifying. A fellow I work with actually invited me to a supposedly tamer Tinku in nearby Tapacari, but I declined, having learned my lesson with cockfighting in Nicaragua, Mexico and Guatemala.

During festivals, different communities come together for days to trade, sing, dance and above all else, drink. As different communities drink themselves stupid, latent hostilities and rivalries can rise to the surface, and people become increasingly aggressive. Young men don leather helmets like those of Phujllay and bind their hands with leather belts, sometimes with stones in their fists. They supposedly strike at each other with sickening ferocity, until one combatant is unconscious. Most years someone dies during a Tinku. Their blood is considered an offering to Pachamama, in lieu of a llama. While that may be hard for us to understand, Tinku does serve an important purpose, both asserting indigenous identity and diffusing conflicts between rival communities.

Occasionally young women also fight, but it’s generally a more subdued affair, with scratching, hair pulling and clothes ripping. So I suppose one might be able to draw a parallel between Jerry Springer or brawling fratboys in our society and Tinku in Bolivian society, but I’m still not a big fan of either.

Alasitaing It

Yesterday I took the day off of work and spent seven hours, each way, on a bus La Paz to experience Alasitas. And it was well worth it. Alasitas is already one of my all-time favorite holidays, right up there with Guy Fawkes Day and Bloomsday.

Alasitas means buy from me in Aymara. During the festival Bolivians purchase tiny items they hope to receive in the coming year, bless them and offer them to the household God of abundance, Ekekko, in hopes of receiving the real thing in return.

Alasitas used to fall on the autumnal equinox, celebrating the fields’ abundance. Thunupa, a pagan god, was offered foodstuffs, household goods, construction materials and such. When the Spanish came they shifted the date, so the annoyed Aymara changed the festival into a kitschy mockery of the real deal. Now Ekekko, which is Aymara for dwarf, is offered wallets full of cash, cellphones, first class tickets to Miami, lowriders and so on and so forth.

There was miniature everything. Petite pastries and salteñas. Little cigarettes and coca leaves. Diminutive newspaper editions. Enchanted by the adorable, itty-bitty objects, I joined in the hustle and bustle, as everyone rushed around, trying to buy everything before twelve. As midday approached the activity in San Francisco reached an apex and it was so crowded that we were unable to move, a sea of people smiling, singing and sharing the abundance. Unfortunately, neither peace nor forgiveness were for sale, so I settled for stuff.

At exactly noon, when the blessing is supposed to be most effective, I purchased for some of the best magic money can buy. In a ceremony that involved burning incense and monopoly money, ringing a bell, chewing coca, doing a shot, confetti and streamers, and spitting on me, a Yatiri blessed me and my things for the coming year.

The photo reminds me of an I-spy. If you expand the picture (by clicking on it), can you find the things I want?

A thesis and diploma?
Firecrackers?
Laundry soap and a broom for a clean house?
Trigo y mapuey?
A Bolivian visa and airline ticket for safe travels?
A crate of beer?
Music?
Toilet paper for no tummy troubles?
A rhinoceros?

Hungry Ally Haiku

Juicy, spicy, sweet.
Oh savory salteña.
Fill my mouth with mmm.

Piping hot, pica.
A perfect little pastry.
Meat and veggies, POW.

Only three b’s.
At a simple streetside stand.
Stop, snack, chat, no más.

Of course, your calle culinary options aren’t limited to my midmorning snack muse, the salteña. Other favourites include chocle, gigantic corn on the cob and a hunk of queso fresco, cordero, a sort of lamb and potato shish-kabob, and charque, llama jerky, often served over quinoa. To wash it all down there’s chicha, a think, tart fermented corn beer that campesinos brew in their backyards. Basically, Bolivia is a paradise for those with the uncommon combination of a strong stomach and a sophisticated palate. Take that, Tom Douglas.

Scared and Psyched to Shop

La Cancha, the market here in Cochabamba, is the biggest market in Bolivia. It makes going shopping simultaneously one of the most fantastic and stressful things about being in Bolivia.

The Cancha goes on for acres, block after block of covered stalls and street carts. On Wednesday and Sunday, market days, it seems to double in size. You can buy anything, but it will take you forever to find it, pawing through gigantic piles of cheap, tawdry tat. (Everything in the picture in the previous entry, excepting a few books, was bought in the Cancha.) Everything is also extremely cheap, but you have to haggle relentlessly, which I absolutely hate. It’s all extremely unhygienic, dogs, dirty children, mud and trash mingling to create a singular stench.

Thus far, I’ve had incredible Cancha karma.

First, I bought a laptop. I didn’t bring mine, but a computer was quickly becoming a necessity. Now, buying a laptop in an open air market would normally seem strange and stupid to me. But there is was, a Toshiba Satellite, sitting in between some tennis shoes and sacks of potatoes. Brand new, in the box, for a fraction of what it would retail for in the States. I tried it out in the street, the guy added some pirated software, and away I went. My apologies to whomever it was stolen from.

Then, on Tuesday, I got robbed. I was buying cherries from a little cholita and she kept stalling, arguing with about how much I wanted, counting and recounting my change. I slipped my wallet in my front pocket to arrange my purchases. As I turned around, thinking how strange it was, someone picked my pocket! I took off after him, screaming. As I ran, two guys joined in the chase. Three blocks down one of the good samaritans tackled the thief, knocking him flat on his face, in a mud puddle, in the middle of the street. Everyone stopped to stare, swearing at the guy, summoning the police, calling me a stupid gringa. I felt a little sheepish, getting pickpocketed, but all’s well that end’s well, and it felt good giving the guys the money.

Welcome to the Working Week

I’ve finally started work, settled into some semblance of a routine and have a shaky understanding of what we’re doing.

My team consists of Theo, a Dutch ex-pat and President of Acción Andina, Yeshid, director of the migration project at the Centro Vicente Cañas, Cristina, a Chicana-Filipina Berkley PHD candidate and Oscar, a University Mayor de San Simon undergraduate student.

We work for Centro Vicente Cañas, but we never actually work at Cañas. They recently fired an entire department, but they have been unable to evict them from what would be our offices. So we work at home, occasionally meeting at Theo´s office. My teammates are incredibly kind and caring, explaining everything and helping me adjust. Still, I don’t think I’ll ever entirely adapt to everything starting an hour late and people chewing coca in meetings.

We are writing a report, which will eventually become a book, on the effects of external migration on social, economic and political development in the Zona Sud of Cochabamba. We work in four barrios: Mineros San Juan, Lomas Santa Barbara, Nueva Vera Cruz and K’ara K’ara.

Founded in the last fifteen years by internal migrants, the barrios lack basic services and the people are desperately poor. None of them have running water, so they have to rely on periodic tanker trucks. Parts of the barrios have electricity, which only works when the rest of Cochabamba isn’t consuming much power. Transportation only runs when the roads are dry and even then it’s infrequent, uncomfortable and overcrowded. Only a few of the barrios have schools, and only elementary schools. The government hasn’t paid the teachers in months, so the communities have taken up collections to keep them from striking. There are no hospitals or pharmacies in the communities, so people don’t get much healthcare. In Lomas, people bought their land from shady speculators, so none of them have legal titles and they are often threatened with eviction. K’ara K’ara is located between the dump and the airport, which is almost unbearable, between the stench and the sounds of planes, which pass a few hundred feet above.

In all four of the barrios about one in five families have someone abroad. Most of the migration is to Spain and Argentina, with small Bolivian communities in Chile and the States (specifically Arlington, Virginia). It’s already clear that the migration has both positive and negative effects. Remittances send children to school, start businesses and help people survive with a little more dignity. At the same time, they strain the social fabric, as families are separated and children are left alone of with other relatives, the community is segmented and class divisions created.

Right now, we’re trying to define our informants and set up interviews. So Sunday morning, at 6am, in a rainstorm, we were out and about in Lomas, asking after the community leaders. It was pouring out, none of the roads and paths are paved and the barrio is built on steep slope, so everything was mud, and we were slipping and sliding down the hills. We were soaked to the bone and filthy, unable to find any of our informants, because there are no addresses. To make matters worse, feral dogs would periodically attack us, forcing us to retreat. As horrible as it sounds, everyone seemed to appreciate that we were there, and the team made it fun. Fieldwork is awesome.

Unfortunately, a significant part of my work is solitary and academic. I spend a lot of time in an archaic library reviewing loquacious literature, all in Spanish. I also spend tedious hours transcribing thickly accented, colloquialism-spattered, barely intelligible interviews, also in Spanish. My Spanish is completely inadequate for the work, but it’s forcing me to catch up quickly.

Here’s the home office I’ve set up. Please note my new goldfish, Sashimi and Yoshimi.

And An Entirely Other Waterwar!

Carnival is quickly approaching. Here in Cochabamba, that means only one thing: A gigantic, all-out, no-holds-barred, city-wide waterfight. It gets worse on the weekends and on especially sunny days.

It dosen’t matter where you are. Walking down the street, sitting in an open air cafe, or riding in a taxi with the window rolled down are all perils. Waterballons are lobbed out of car windows, super-soaker snipers perch on balconies, sometimes people simply dump buckets of water off of buildings. These shenanegans are not confined to children. Sometimes, a middleaged businessmen will have squirtgun up his suitsleeve or an elderly cholita will have waterballoons in the gigantic bundle she carries on her back.

Since I’m a young white woman, I might as well have a big bullseye painted on my back. It doesn’t matter if I’m dressed up or down, working on my laptop or reading a book, anytime and anywhere, I am a target. I get wet at least once, usually twice a day. I’ve been trying to develop my evil-eye, unfortunately to no avail. As such, I’m forced to arm myself before leaving the house every morning. Keys, check. Wallet, check. Cellphone, check. Squirtgun, check. Such is the difficult life of Ally abroad.

The Water War

Today, as in 2000, Cochabamba has chronic water shortages. Where I live we can go days without running water. In the outlying and rural areas people rely on periodic tanker trucks which sell water by the barrel, which is often recycled from rich peoples’ swimming pools or siphoned off of drainage ditches.

These water issues came to a head in 2000, when Cochabambinos made it clear that water is a basic human right and that they wouldn’t be bullied into the Washington Consensus by the World Bank or by multinational corporations, in what’s often referred to as the Water War.

To explain the issue, I’ll start with a little macroeconomics lesson:

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, the result colonial pillage and centuries of political instability and strong-arming. The mineral extraction economy is boom and bust and is often subject to hyperinflation. The government is highly indebted and often unable to provide the most basic services to its people. As such, Bolivia is at the mercy of the World Bank and the International Monetary fund.

The World Bank and IMF subscribe to neo-liberalism, a school of though which sees the market as a panacea for all development issues. They tend to privileges economic development over all else. Thus, social spending should be cut so that debts can be repaid more quickly and currencies should be devalued to stabilize the economy, at society’s expense. They also assume that what benefits developed nations will automatically benefit the developing nations they invest in. Thus, trade should be liberalized and the market deregulated so that developed nations have easy access to the markets in which they have advantages without the hindrance of labor and environmental laws. Finally, they believe that anything government can do, business can do better. Thus, all public services should be privatized, even if that means not everyone will have access.

The World Bank and IMF force poor nations to implement these neo-liberal reforms. They condition loans, development dollars and debt relief on so-called Structural Adjustment Policies. The policies are a package of austerity measures, currency devaluation, trade liberalization, deregulation, a focus on direct export and resource extraction, privatization and governance policies. While these policies can be helpful, they are usually more helpful to developed nations than developing nations, and they are often hurtful.

In Bolivia the cornerstone of structural adjustment has been privatization. The hydrocarbon, telephone, airlines and railways industries were quickly bought-off, the nation’s assets sold away at bargain basement prices. Water was less lucrative. When Cochabamba’s water rights went up for auction there was only one bidder. Water privatization was a condition of a much needed $25 million World Bank loan, so Bolivia was forced to accept the offer.

The buyer was Aguas de Tunari, coalition which included US corporation Bechtel. President Hugo Banzer signed a $2.5 billion, 40-year concession with a guaranteed minimum 15% annual return on the investment. The conditions of the concession required Aguas de Tunari to pay down water authority’s debt, expand and improve the existing water system, and finance the Misicuni dam project. The Misicuni dam project was, by all accounts, impractical, uneconomic and only beneficial to Banker’s wealthy backers, including the corrupt mayor of Cochabamba, Manfred Reyes Villa.

The concession and the corresponding Law 2029 gave Aguas de Tunari a monopoly over all water and sanitation in Cochabamba, including campesinos’ irrigation systems, communally built water networks and rainwater collection schemes. Aguas de Tunari was allowed to install water meters on wells residents had dug, charging them for the meters and the water. They quickly raised rates 35%, to about $20 a month. Minimum wage here, which most Bolivians don’t make, is $70 a month, so the hike was a huge burden.

Local residents organized, led by Oscar Olivera of La Coordinadora and Omar Fernandez of FEDECOR. When the government refused to recognize them and their popular referendum against Aguas de Tunari they began protesting. Retired and laid off miners and factory workers, lustrebotes, street vendors, university students, the middle class, cholitas, campesinos, cocaleros and just about everyone else in Cochabamba was involved in a four day general strike. Other protests broke out across the nation, and at one point there were blockades in five of the nine providences and a thousand-person march to La Paz (in a nation of only eight million).

In response President Banzer declared a state of siege, the Bolivian equivalent of martial law. Meetings of more than four people were prohibited, freedom of the press severely limited, and many of the opposition leaders arrested and sent to prisons in the Amazon region. The situation escalated, protesters and police exchanged rubber bullets, tear gas and molotov cocktails, there were hundreds of injuries and five deaths. In one case, which was caught on tape, an army captain fired into an unarmed crowd of demonstrators, killing high school student Víctor Hugo Daza.

After Daza’s death, the political situation became so unstable that the Aguas de Tunari executives were forced to flee the country. Desperate to change the laws in contention and end the strikes, the government rented planes to fly a quorum of delegates back to the capital. Water rights were turned over to La Coordinadora and Olivera declared victory for the people of Cochabamba.

Arguing that they had been forced out, Aguas de Tunari eventually filed a $40 million lawsuit with the WTO claiming compensation for lost profits. In 2006, the lawsuit was dropped. Banzer and the army perpetrators have not been brought to justice for their human rights violations. The water situation here has not improved at all. It’s still expensive, dirty and chronically unavailable.

Still, the water war was an incredible success. People here are proud that they stood up to a gigantic corporation and said no to neo-liberalism. Rightfully so. Bolivia stands as an early example of the other option, the possibilities outside of the Washington consensus. Bolivia is slowly but surely paying off their enormous debt, diversifying and expanding their economy, trying to protect human rights, foster an independent identity and act sustainably at the same time. They’re not alone. Today Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba stand with them and against neo-liberal imperialism.

This mural says ¨Bolivia is not in play.¨ I walk by it everyday, and it always makes me proud to be here.

Cochabambina Cool

After a long and arduous journey which included a no blockade dance, bidding on sold-out bus tickets, sleeping on the stranger in the next seat and a midnight snowstorm, I've finally arrived in Cochabamba.

I am so happy to be here. While there aren't really any tourist attractions, there is warm weather and friendly faces, which is exactly what I wanted after cold, gray and conservative La Paz.

Cochabamba has a mild Mediterranean climate and a bright blue sky, only occasionally obscured by instantaneous and torrential downpours. The plazas are filled with park benches, ice cream sellers and shoeshine boys, shaded by palm trees and bordered by lovely Baroque churches. The Prado is lined with open air cafes, perfect for lingering over Cochabamba's famous cuisine and taking a parade of Caporales dancers, which are almost constant in the run-up to Carnaval.

Cochabama is Bolivia's breadbasket. When the Incas invaded from Peru, they were quick to colonize the fertile valley, so the people here are Quechua, as opposed to the Aymara of La Paz and the Altiplano. The indigenous women wear short velvet polleras, sandals, and wide-brimmed straw hats, adding to the air of eternal spring. Moreover, the Cochabambinos seem to be far more open than their highland counterparts. People are always happy to stop and chat, wanting to know who I am and why I'm here. I'm even a little relieved that the catcalls have resumed.

The openness suprises me, because there are an incredible number of gringoes here, some of them incompetent peace corps kids and others overzealous missionaries. At the same time, I must admit, there are some alright faithful folk. As it turns out, I'm living with two Maryknoll missioner boys, Jason and Steve.

We live in a barrio to the south of town, opposite the lovely Lauguna Alalay, which is Quechua for "Oh, cold!" There are stone-cobbled streets overgrown with weeds, walls covered with graffiti murals and plenty of parks for pick-up futbol matches. Evo Morales has a house a few blocks away. Our house is 'medidas aguas' which means that all the rooms open out onto the patio, forcing you to run through the rain and dodge the crazy annoying dogs to go to the bathroom or kitchen. But, between the showerhead shorting out and the pilot light of death, the kitchen and bathroom are somewhat scary. Fortunately my room is bright and airy, and I'm planning to paint it soon.

This gigantic statute, Christo de la Concordia, overlooks the city. At 33m plus it's a hair higher than the Rio de Janerio statue it's modeled after. While display of one upmanship and evangelism would normally annoy me to no end, it orients me when I get lost, so I've forgiven it.

Go to Jail, Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

Today, continuing my death-tourism stint, I tried to visit the infamous San Pedro prison. San Pedro used to have a brusque tourism business, but visits were called off after few too many tourists were caught buying cocaine. In order to visit, I had to have an inmate to visit and official permission.

Sebastian, a Dutch tourist awaiting trial on cocaine charges, and a friend of a friend, invited me to visit him. Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain official permission to visit him. Apparently, Sebastian was on some sort of probation, I was suspicious because I was white, and the person I needed to bribe was away on other business.

Instead, the guards let me stand at the gate and talk to Sebastian. Being a white woman and bearing a carton of cigarettes, a bag of chocolates and bars of soap, the inmates clamoured at the iron gate to talk to and touch me. The majority of the men I met were awaiting trial, almost all of them on drug charges. Some of them have been stuck in the stalled judicial system for years.

Inside the prison there are no guards, no uniforms and no real rules. The 1,500 or so prisoners must resolve disputes among themselves. They organize into unions and elect leaders. The prisoners are also quite political. Posters of Evo adorn all of the walls, and candidates campaign inside the prison. Problems that can’t be resolved peaceably are usually settled with knife fights. Prisoners accused of commiting particularly heinous crimes are often killed in vigilante violence. There are an average of four deaths, from 'accidents' and natural causes, each month.

San Pedro is divided into eight separate barrios, each centered its own patio. Some areas are better than others, and each has a hotel-style star rating. While wealthy inmates can buy or rent cells, poorer inmates sleep on crowded corridor floors. Towards the top of the prison, the cells are quite swank, complete with kitchens and bathrooms. One drug-baron, caught with $420 million worth of cocaine, had a second story built onto his cell. On the first floor, the cells are unsafe, with violence, vermin and diseases running rampant.

To supplement their meager rations, improve their cells and survive the prisoners must earn money. The prison is like a little city, with food stalls, repair shops, shoeshine boys, barbers, billiard halls and everything else you could want. However, the two biggest businesses in San Pedro are distractions from the difficult life: drink and drugs and soccer. Contraband substances seem to flow freely through the prison, the officials easily paid-off. There are cocaine laboratories in some of the cells. Apparently, it is so lucrative that many of the San Pedro guards pay for their postings. Soccer is almost equally important. Coca-cola sponsors the teams, in exchange for exclusive sales in the prison. On big games single bets can reach $1000. Sometimes, players are even scouted out by the wealthier sections.

Family members can come and go freely and some children live in the prison. There are so many of them, San Pedro has its own school. Without other relatives, the children don’t have any options. They offer suffer abuse, and are always stigmatized. However, as one father explained to me, they do their best to shield their kids from the violence and shame, and they are able to provide some stability and normality because they stay together as a family.

The San Pedro prison was an incredibly interesting and ironic place, a microcosm of Bolivian society. The majority of inmates are indigenous, there’s an astonishing divide between rich and poor, and almost everyone is there as a result the War on Drugs. Although I'm glad I visited, I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard as I did on the cab ride home.

For more information and some excellent photos of the inside check out this BBC article and the Marching Powder website.

Bolivian Politics 101

This weekend Tracy and I were determined to get out of the city. We got up at dawn on Saturday morning and slogged up to the bus terminal, aiming for Sorata, a town a few hours north. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the bus station it was closed. There was a blockade. That's how Bolivians protest. There are so few avenues to power and little access to political infuence, people feel so disenfranchised, that they are forced to drag rocks, trees, old cars, burning tires, and so on and so forth into the streets, blocking all traffic from one part of the country to another and effectively paralyzing it.

Apparently, some Bolivian bus drivers are upset at the aptly named Seguro Obligatorio de Accidentes de Tránsito, or SOAT, an annual transit tax. Actually, all of a sudden, Bolivians seem to be upset about everything. Now that Christmas is over, the population of La Paz seems to have doubled, doubled their pace and doubled their grudges. This morning there were three dozen riot cops supervising the demolition of one of the municipal markets, a la the occupied territories. This evening there was a small protest in Plaza San Francisco. I stopped to watch and listen. A small group of indigenous people were stumping for the controversial new constitution and against the Media Luna autonomy movement.

A bit of background:

Santa Cruz and the rest of the Eastern lowlands, collectively called the Media Luna, consisting of the Beni, Pando, Tarija and Santa Cruz are culturally distinct from the rest of Bolivia. They tend to be whiter and more western than other Bolivians. Without exception, those that I've spoken to have been very kind to me, but utterly and unapologetically bigoted, refering to indigenous people as dirty Indians, swine, and a multitude of other unspeakable things. Unfortunately, these people also control much of the wealth and want to keep it to themselves. In recent years, government revenue has shifted from mineral extration, centered in the Altiplano West, to hydrocarbon extraction, agrobuisnesses and cattle ranching, centered in the Lowland East. So Santa Cruz and the Media Luna have begun rumbling about autonomy, if not outright succession.

On the other hand, Evo Morales campaigned promising a new constitution, one that would concentrate more power in the hands of the poor indigenous majority, concentrated in the Western Altiplano, instead of the whiter, wealthier minorty, concentrated in the Eastern Lowlands. After he was elected he conviened a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. Unfortunately the opposition, unhappy with the proportional representation system, boycotted the assembly until the last minute. As a result, the legitamacy of the new constitution is in limbo. This is unfortunate, because it's incredbily progressive, focusing on health and education, increasing indigenous participation in government, redistributing hydrocarbon revenues and idle land, reducing the influence of the church and allowing gay marriage, while concentrating a little more power in the hands of the central government.

The political tension over natural resource revenues is mixing with racial tension and Evo Morales' election and constituent assembly is accentuating it, creating an incredibly explosive situation. The opposition has also begun attacking MASista representatives, preventing them from attending the constituent assembly.Youth gangs, called the Juventud Cruceñista, roam the streets of Santa Cruz beating up Cholitas. A few weeks before I arrived a sometimes revolutionary highland group called Los Ponchos Rojos killed and mutilated a pair of dogs on national TV, as a warning to the Media Luna. People are angry and afraid, and there have been a lot of attacks on individuals.

The speaker was standing under a Whipala, an indigenous flag. I thought it was interesting, and I snapped this photo. Oh, what an error. Immediately, I was surrounded by a gaggle of angry indigenous people, yelling in an unintelligible mix of Aymara and Spanish. "Where are you from?" one of them demanded. "Are you a journalist?" another asked. I explained myself, showing them my passport and pictures, taking care to emphasize my differences with our president and my support for theirs. Once they were sure I was an ally, they were actually quite kind, explaining their positions and posing for pictures. (Apologies for the pun). Apparently, because I was white, they originally thought that I was from Santa Cruz. Had I been, I have no doubt that they would have beaten me senseless and bloody.

All’s well that end’s well and I have learned an important lesson about the liabilities of white skin. Plus, if I’m going to get lynched for a photo, it should be a better one than this.

Textiles and Cholitas

Many indigenous women in La Paz, called cholas and cholitas, have adopted a particularly unique and now ubiquitous costume. It was originally imposed by seventeenth-century Spanish governors, but today it's a fashion, an identity and an outward display of wealth.

The women wear polleras, or gigantic petticoat skirts which emphasize the width of their hips. Over the pollera they wear lacy blouses and colorful shawls, often accented with sequins and fringe. Under the pollera they wear knee-high lace-up boots, or flat slippers. My favorite part are bowler hats, pinned at a jaunty angle over a pair of braids. It's unclear how they came into vouge. Some people say that a businessman imported too many and convinced the Cholitas that is was the latest Spanish fashion.

In general, traditional fabrics have been eschewed by indigenous women in the city as the mark of campesinas and tourist tat. However, I did meet this Cholita spinning in the street, and she told me a little bit about her trade and let me take her picture, which was a rare treat.

She was working with alpaca wool, which is prized over that sheep and llama, but below vicuña wool. She was pulling out clumps of wool, rolling them between the fingers of their right hand and on to a spindle that they keep moving with their left hand in one seamless motion. For everyday threads the spindle is spun counterclockwise. For ceremonial and special threads the spindle is spun clockwise. Eventually, she'll dye the wool with plants and minerals and weave it on a backstrap loom, as she has since she was a teenager and as her grandmothers for generations before her did.

Then she'll sell it for a fraction of what it's worth to tourists who have no idea the back-breaking, blinding work and hundreds of hours that go into their souvenirs.

Bolivia Has the EMP Beat

Today I paid a visit to the Museo de Instrumentos Musicales. While there is plenty of Bolivian guacarock, reggeton, ranchera, cumbia, nueva canción and etc., Bolivia has retained an incredibly rich folk music tradition with all sorts of instruments of their own invention.

We saw lots of charangoes, tiny guitars adapted from Spanish lutes and mandolins. However, charangoes are traditionally constructed out of armadillo shells. There are a few explanations for the unconventional soundbox selection. Some people say that Andean musicians liked the sounds of the Spanish instruments, but could not bend wood into the appropriate shapes and had to use armadillo shells. Others say that the Spanish prohibited Andean music, and that the charango was created because it was easily hidden. We also saw tortoise shell and more conventional carved wood charangoes. Charangoes usually have ten strings, requiring incredibly nimble and slender fingers. They appear and are tuned a little like an ukulele, but is played more like a banjo, and sounds completely different than either. All the strings are tuned inside a single octave, so it creates very full and sustained sound.

We also saw zampoñas, the panpipes so often associated with Andean music. They’re usually made from bamboo tubes of varying lengths. Some zampoñas are taller than the tiny musicians who play them! Pieces of dried corn, or pebbles, are placed in the bottom of the pipes to precision tune them. The pipes are split into two rows, called the ira and the arka, which symbolize the male and female, and together form a full scale. Traditionally, two people play the zampoñas together, but today one musician is more common.

Finally, there were plenty of quenas. Quenas are bamboo flutes played by pinching the top of the tube with your lower lip, and blowing downwards, as I imagine a beaver would. Pinquillo, tarkas, and moseños are similar variants. Other distinctively Andean instruments include the pututu, a ram’s horn, chajchas, a shaker made of goat, llama or sheep toes, and every imaginable size and shape of drum and rattle.

The museum also had a huge collection of non-Bolivian instruments. My favorite was this Peruvian ocarina. Then there were also homemade instruments, including a guitar made out of a spam can, and an exhibit explaining the tin can telephone. Finally, there were some instruments that I can only imagine came from a Dr. Seuss book.

The EMP has absolutely nothing on this museum. They had way more instruments, cooler instruments, tons of stuff to touch and play with. The EMP's only advantage is its amazingly ugly building. Not to be outdone, the Museo had blueprints of charago shaped edifice on display. If only Paul Allen had an interest in armadillo guitar shaped buildings.

Happy New Year!

Unlike Christmas, New Year's Eve celebrations appear to be exactly the same in all parts. Stay up late, get silly drunk. Bolivians generally begin the festivities at midnight, and continue with the drinking and dancing until 6am or so. Paul, Tracy and I weren’t up that much celebrating, so we started a little earlier and went for a more conventional pub crawl.

However, the pub crawl quickly turned into a drunk-girls-in-high-heels-on-cobblestones-can't-find-a-cab-stumble across the city. After a few close calls with me looking up at the lovely holiday lights instead of what was in front of me, oncoming traffic and children with homemade fireworks, we decided to settle on a single club.

At midnight we ended up at Ram Jam, which was apparently the hot place to be, both literally and figuratively. As someone said, if Bolivia had a Paris Hilton, she would have been there. The place was packed with a mix young of foreigners and paceños, in all sorts of bizarre fashions, shaking it to 70s and 80s pop hits. The Bolivians were almost astoundingly drunk, and yet still standing, singing and dancing through the entire evening. There were party hats, noise makers, and streamers that we accidentally caught on fire with a candle. Plus, in a truly ridiculous turn of events we ended up dancing on a raised stage for the local television news.

And despite the incredible, high-altitude hangover that ensued, this New Years, I resolve to take myself and everything a little less seriously, and to let my adventure unfold one day at a time.