Goodbye Bolivia

It’s our last day in Bolivia and I’m super sad to go. The second I stopped being homesick and started enjoying it and speaking better Spanish it’s time to leave. However, I’m looking forward to more atmosphere, fewer roosters and access to the ocean.

For our last day in Bolivia we visited Chacaltaya, the world's highest developed ski resort, pictured here. At 5400m the 1km hike was exhausting, but it made it was an incredible end to the trip. From the summit we could see the Andes stretching out around us, Illimani to the South, Illamupu to the North, La Paz and Lake Titicaca to the West and Huyani Potosi to the East. In some ways it seems so simmilar to Seattle, with Rainer to the South, Baker to the North, the Cascades to the West and the Olympics to the East.

So that's all for Allyabroad the Bolivia edition. Stay tuned for Allyabroad in the Peace Corps, coming 2010.

The Other Great Andean Empire

Today we visited Tiahuanaco (or Tiwanaku), an archaeological site about an hour outside of La Paz. Tiahuanaco is, in many ways, the cradle of Andean civilization. It's still the spiritual center of the Aymara world. On the Winter Solstice (in June south of the equator), which is the Aymara New Year, thousands of Yatiris and other Aymara gather to perform elaborate rituals, akin to those I experienced at Alasitas and in the Mercado de Hechiceria in La Paz.

Little is known about Tiahuanaco society, given that the site was abandoned by the time Europeans reached it, and no written or clear oral record survives. It was established around 1000 BC, and by 100 BC it was a complex, highly organized empire. By 700 AD the society controlled much of Bolivia, Southern Peru, Northern Argentina and Chile. Both the Aymara and the Quechua (aka the Inca) claim to be descendants of the Tiahuanacos, while the former's claim is somewhat stronger than the latter's.

The success of this society is remarkable, given that it was based on potato and quinoa cultivation and llama herding. Once, the Titicaca basin fed over 100,000 people. Today, some 7000 people barely eke out an existence. The Tiauanaco society was so successful because they adapted to the environment, building huge agricultural beds called sukakullos. The beds we saw were about three feet high and twice the size of a football field. They are filled with layers of gravel, they clay, then sand, then topsoil, tilled into rows with deep depressions in between. The rocks salinization from slightly salty Lago Titicaca, while the raised beds kept the plants warmer, extending the growing season, and the depressions prevented flooding in the wet season and provided more even irrigation in the dry season. It's been estimated that yields were up to 1000 times higher, so Altiplano farmers today are actually experimenting with reviving the sukakullo. Awesome, huh? Yes, I am a huge agricultural dork.

From about 1000 AD on, Tiahuanaco was in decline. The glacial record suggests a that there was prolonged drought, possibly in combination with an invasion and/or earthquake. It's a great example of the theories in Jared Diamond's Collapse: A society grows beyond it's ecological carrying capacity, in part because of empire building and conspicuous consumption/monument building. It's unable to produce enough to feed everyone, nor to trade for necessary goods found only in other ecological zones, and it can't survive environmental upsets. Unfortunately, we know so little about Tiahuanaco society because it was looted by Spanish conquistadors, looking for gold. Then some of the ruins were dynamited for rocks for railroad construction. And of course, social scientists from our supposedly advanced society have stolen some of the most valuable artifacts for our museums.

Today they're doing a somewhat more professional job preserving what's left. Experts believe most of the society is still buried. We saw all the trappings of a traditionally archaeological dig, including a human and llama burial being excavated with hand brushes. A few really cool monuments remain, including two portals, elaboratley adorned with creation gods, pumas, condors and snakes, aligned so that the sun shows through one on the summer and winter solstices and through the other on the spring and autumn equinoxes, as well as a number of monoliths and a subterranean temple, filled with faces like the one pictured above, which were believed to be representations of conquered cultures.

Isla del Sol, Birthplace of the Sun

Today we hired a boat and guide to take us on a tour of the Islas del Sol and de la Luna. Stately ruins and pretty little sedate farming villages are scattered along the island. They're so picturesque and the sun shines so bright and warm compared to the rest of Western Bolivia it seems absolutely magical.

The Isla del Sol, or Island of the Sun, is supposedly the birthplace of the sun itself as well as the Inca god-king Viracocha and their Adam and Eve, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo. It's at the center of the Tiahuanaco creation story, and in turn, the Aymara and Quechua (Inca) creation stories.

The biggest ruin complex is the Santuario, an elaborate temple surrounding the Huellas del Sol, or footprints of the sun, where the sun was believed to have been born. It was once the primary Inca pilgrimage site, attracting thousands of worshippers each year, most of whom weren't even allowed on the island, let alone near or into the temple. My favorite of the ruins were the Escalera del Inca, a steep stone staircase down a natural amplitheater and through impressive agricultural terracing, along which a freshwater culvert runs. The three feeder springs represent the three Inca maxims: Don't steal, don't lie, don't be lazy.

Northwest of the Isla del Sol is the smaller Isla de la Luna, or Island of the Moon. It was also called Coati Island, or Queen Island, as it was associated with women. The temple on is island was used for offerings to the moon, but is often called the Temple of Virgins, as it was staffed exclusively by young women. Ironically, the island was also used as a clandestine detention center for political prisoners in throughout 20th century. Because every country's gotta have a little Gitmo.

Northeast of the Isla del Sol you can barely see a submerged stone column. The underwater area nearby was excavated, revealing a massive stone temple and precious gold, silver and stone artifacts, Bolivia's own Atlantis.

Copacabana, As Close As Bolivia Comes to the Sea

Yesterday we traveled from Lago Poopó to Lago Titcaca. Awesome, I know. I've been waiting all trip to say that. But all silliness aside, Titcaca is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It's a vast, sapphire-blue lake, speckled with islands along the shore. You would swear you were in the Mediterranean, save the Andes rising abruptly and icily in the background.

The city at the south of the lake is called Copacabana. While it's not Brazil's playa pilgrimage site, it is the site of serious religious pilgrimages. They have a beautiful black wood virgin, housed in an impressive white cathedral, adorned with elaborate blue tilework and almost Moorish domes. Cars and trucks are often blessed in the plaza outside, in colorful cha'lla rituals those I saw at Alastitas and in the Mercado de Hechiceria. And while the liquor, coca, streamers, firecrackers and trinkets probably aren't as effective as safe driving and auto insurance, they are a hell of a lot more fun.

Above the city looms Cerro Calvario, a hallowed hill. The twelve has the twelve stations of the cross, but in a distinctly pre-Colombian tradition many indigenous people carry stones to the top of the hill, creating Apachetas like those I saw trekking Takesi and on the World's Most Dangerous Road. For me the most sacred thing was sitting on top, watching the sunset over Lago Titcaca and Peru in the distance, burning orange to blood red before engulfing us in total blackness.

It was also wonderful just to be on the water. Growing up in Seattle, I didn't realize how large the Sound looms in my world. Being landlocked is hard on me emotionally. It bothers many Bolivians as well, who had their coastline annexed by Chile in the 19th century and consider access to the ocean a point of pride. We went sailing out a less-than-seaworthy little boat, stranded, and rowing back for a scrumptious trout lasagna dinner, which was a great sea fix.

Salty! In a good way.

On the final leg of the southwest circuit we crossed the Salars Chiguana, Uyuni and Coipasa. The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat on earth, twenty-five times bigger than those in Utah, and by far the most surreal place on the planet.

Between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago Lago Minchin covered the southern altiplano. After it evaporated the area lay dry for 14,000 years, until the emergence of Lago Tauca. Tauca dried up some 12,000 years ago, leaving Lagos Poopó and Uru Uru and the Salars. The Salars were the lowest points in the lake, where, without an outlet to the sea, minerals leached from the mountains collected, forming the salt flats.

An indigenous account holds that Yana Pollera, one of the nearby peaks, fell in love with Thunupa and Q’osqo, two neighboring volcanoes. When she gave birth to a child the two mountains fought over who was the father. Concerned for her child’s safety, she sent it to the south and flooded the plain between them with breast milk so it could feed. Eventually the milk turned to salt and the Salar was formed.

When there’s water on the Salar it reflects the sky, the horizon disappears and the heavens seem infinite. When the Salar is dry it’s an endless expanse of white ground and blue sky, eerily empty. In some areas minerals like lithium have separated the Salar into perfectly shaped hexagonal tiles.

We felt as if were gliding across the Salar, like the surface of another planet. That was, until the jeep got a flat tire, our fourth of the trip, at 100kph. All of a sudden the steering went a kilter, and we started sliding sideways. In the five seconds it took to slow to a stop the tire wall had melted away, exposing the rim and bending the retaining ring at a 45° angle. Thank goodness we had an extra tire and a mechanically talented guide, because I don’t think AAA makes calls there.

The vast expanse is broken up by a few bizarre islands. As last testament to the Salar’s lacustrine origins the islands are coral, now covered in centuries old giant cacti. They’re incredibly inhospitable and harsh, but the one we visited, Isla del Pescado, was actually inhabited by persecuted Inca during the colonial period.

Communities of indigenous people continue to make their living on the Salar today, harvesting salt, borax and other minerals. They scrape the salt into the perfect little mounds pictured here, shovel them into trucks, iodize them and export them to Chile and Argentina. Many people also make their homes, stores and hotels, including the one we stayed in, out of salt. It’s surprisingly warm, since nights on the Salar can reach -50°F. On the margins of the Salar super-hardy people sill herd llamas and grow quinoa.

Again, a picture is worth a thousand words. Or in this case 12,106 sq.km and 10 billion tons of salt.

The Southwest Circuit

We left Tupiza and headed southwest towards the Chilean and Argentinean borders and the Reserva de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, into some of the most isolated and desolate scenery on earth.

The second morning our first stop was San Antonio, a ghost town once famed for gold mining. Our guide explained the local legend, that the townspeople grew so rich gold mining than they became wasteful, building houses out of gold, burning wheat for fuel and killing babies. In retribution, an old woman went from house to house sweeping, brining plague and pestilence with her. While the story is certainly charming, I think the actual sequence of events, environmental collapse as a society on the margins of survivability grew too large, might be even more interesting. Among the ruins there were these crazy creatures called viscachas, which look like crosses between squirrels and bunnies, but even cuter. We also saw ostriches just outside of San Antonio, absurdly out of place in the Andean highlands.

The figurative and literal highlight of the second day was Laguna Verde, a day-glo green lake. It’s stained such a startling color by lead, sulfur, arsenic and calcium. An icy wind blows constantly, churning the lake into green and white froth. Volcan Licancabur rises imposingly above lake, straddling the border between Bolivia and Chile.

We also visited the Mañana del Sol Gysers, a field of furiously bubbling mud pools and steaming fumaroles. We were warned to approach carefully, as the ground has given way underfoot, scalding imprudent tourists to death. It was nearing dusk, and the temperatures dropping, so a soak didn’t seem like such a bad idea to me.

On the third day we visited Laguna Colorada, a rusty red lake ringed with brilliant white sodium, magnesium, borax and gypsum sediments and bright green grasses. It appears apocalyptic, except for the flamingo population, eating algae and plankton from the florid waters. They were the first of many flamingoes we saw, thriving at highs of 4300m and lows of 0°F.

We also drove through the Desierto de Dali on the second day and Desierto de Siloli on the third, high-altitude wastelands of volcanic ash and red rock. Over the centuries the relentless wind has sandblasted the boulders into surreal shapes, creating perfect climbing rocks. There was not a sign of life in sight, except vicuñas, like llamas, but smaller, softer and super hardy.

Again, I can only say so much before Mira has to take over for me.

Kid, the Next Time I Say Let’s Go Someplace Like Bolivia, Let’s Go Someplace Like Bolivia!

Last night we travelled to Tupiza, a tiny, dusty, somewhat deserted mining town. While the minerals have all but been exhausted, the lower altitude, warmer climate, slower pace and dramatic desert scenery are turning Tupiza into a tourist destination. Blue and green mountains give way to weirdly eroded red rock formations and canyons, which give way to sandy dry washes, or quebradas, studded with cacti. The spires, pinnacles, and arches make you feel as if you’re in another world, but at the same time, it seems like the Southwestern United States.

Tupiza was also the last stomping grounds of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. At the turn of the 19th century, as Wild West banditry was being reined in by the federal government and the Pinkertons in pursuit, Butch and Sundance fled to South America to start a new life on the straight and narrow. However, old habits die hard, and shortly thereafter they were linked to bank robberies in Argentina and Chile and forced to flee to Bolivia. Again, they sought honest work, but after a while, returned to their old ways.

In Tupiza a large military presence deterred bank robbery, but Butch and Sundance learned of a poorly guarded Aramayo mining company payroll to be transported across the mountains by mule. The outlaws intercepted the convoy at Huaca Huañusca, dead cow in Quechua, finding $90,000, instead of the $480,000 they had been expecting. Pursued by the military and angry miners, whose pay had been stolen, they fled north, stopping the night in San Vicente.

Unbeknownst to them, a military patrol was also posted there. After nightfall a shoot out ensued and in the morning the bandits’ bodies were found, Butch having shot the wounded Sundance before turning the gun on himself. They were buried in an unmarked grave, giving rise to rumours that the Butch and Sundance survived, even returning to the United States.

We rented horses and rode though the badlands, playing bandits and stopping for a tamale picnic in a particularly picturesque canyon. However, we’re going to need more practice as Wild West gunslingers, what with the sunburns, super sore butts and squeamishness about violence.

I am Rich Potosí, Treasure of the World, King of the Mountains, Envy of Kings

In the late 15th century Potosi was one of the largest cities on earth, larger than New York, Paris or London. Today, it’s a city of crumbling colonial houses and churches and desperate poverty, a desolate shell of its former glory. Above the city looms Cerro Rico, stained red with centuries of miner’s blood and minerals, pockmarked with dynamite like the faces of the people, the source of all that wealth and poverty.

An estimated eight million men have died in Cerro Rico extracting over 50,000 tons of pure silver for the Spanish crown alone.

The Inca never extracted silver from Cerro Rico. Legend has it that a booming voice warned them that the minerals were meant for others who would come from afar. In 1545 a llama herder was camping on Cerro Rico and lit a fire he lit to keep warm. The fire melted the ore and molten silver flowed out of the fire. The Spanish crown quickly caught wind of the discovery and began exploring the area.

To extract the minerals the colonists instituted the mita system, requiring all indigenous Bolivian men to serve six months in the mines. When that proved insufficient, they began importing African slaves. The men died laboring in the mines, pushing the mills that process the minerals like mules and from mercury poisoning, stomping the silver amalgam with their bare feet, killed by overseers, their diseases, or opting for suicide instead of the misery of life in the mines.

After Independence, control of the mines quickly passed to three major mining families, the Aramayos, the Hothschilds and the Patiños. The silver barons, and tin barons after them, controlled the Bolivian government for the next century and a half. While conditions within the mines improved, the quality of ore declined and the dependence on a single export devastated the economy with each boom and bust cycle.

As mines were privatized and people laid-off in the 1930s and again in the 1980s miners began to demand the opportunity to extract the minerals for themselves. Since most of the mines were stripped centuries earlier and the profit margins on the remaining minerals are slim the government gave the rights back to the miners.

In the afternoon we went to visit a collective mine. Outfitted in rubber boots and raincoats, old fashioned headlamps and bandanas for facemasks we got a little taste of life below.

The conditions in the collective mines are little better than they were centuries ago. The lower levels are reached with rickety ladders, leading to tunnels so low you have to crawl or slide on your stomach. Sulphur, arsenic and other noxious gasses fill the air, leaving you gasping for breath. The temperatures can climb above 100°. There’s standing water and unmarked holes below, falling rock above. At 4500m, walking, let alone wielding a pick axe or towing a trolley of ore, is exhausting.

We spent an hour and a half in the mines, and I feel as if it shaved years off of my life. Miners will work ten to twenty-four hour day, often without food or drink, only stopping to chew coca. Once they start work, the can expect to live about fifteen years before succumbing to silicosis, if they manage to avoid accidents.

Despite this, many of the miners are children as young as ten or twelve. They’re often forced to support their families, their fathers having died in the mines or the victims of black lung disease, coughing up blood and tissue. One of young miners’ jobs is lighting the dynamite that older miners have laid, since they can crawl out of the shafts more quickly.

It’s no wonder that when the Spanish colonists described heaven and the hell indigenous slaves decided that the mines must be hell and the devil himself the owner of the minerals. Outside of the mines the men are Christians, but inside each mine, just beyond the last rays of light, there’s a statue of this devil, el Tio, or uncle. With twisted horns and tail, leering smile and erect phallus, I found the Tio a little terrifying. The miners have a more collaborative relationship with El Tio, making offerings, asking for his minerals and his protection from accidents. Every Friday the miners chew coca, smoke cigarettes and drink Ceibo with their Tio. They also make llama offerings in hopes of satisfying el Tio’s bloodlust, leaving the men alive.

While offerings to el Tio aren’t quite as effective as OSHA, they are a lot more fun. But all flipness aside, I think we came as close to hell on earth as we ever will today. For look at Cerro Rico and the children who work there check out The Devil’s Miner, a fantastic documentary.

Eating Human Hearts and Drinking Grain Gin

Today we visited Tarabuco, a small village Southeast of Sucre for the town festival, Phujllay, which means play in Quechua.

Phujllay has its roots in pre-Hispanic Pukhara fertility festival, akin to our Thanksgiving. The festival begins with a Quechua mass, followed by a chicha and ceibo fuelled parade of folkloric dances, and finally the Pukhara, an altar decorated with flowers, fruits and vegetables, bread and bottles of alcohol and the election of a virgin princess.

Today Phujllay also commemorates the Tarabuceños’ triumph over twice as many Spanish troops in the Battle of Jumbate on March 12, 1816. Stories, and the statue in the town square, have it that the victorious warriors cut open the chests of the Spaniards, ripped out their steaming hearts and ate them in ritual retribution for their abuses.

The ferocity of Tarabuceño culture is apparent insofar as they been able to retain their distinct indigenous identity. Phujllay presents an amazing array of colourful costumes and traditional song and dance. Young men and women from communities across the surrounding countryside come to dance. They are the pride of their pueblos, who will scrimp and save the entire year for the brightest costumes and best instruments.

The Tarabuceño men wear elaborate white shawls embroidered with mirrors, helmets adorned metallic flowers, thick wood sandals with copper spurs that clank as they dance. They jump from one foot to the other, waving a pink silk scarf in one hand. The stomping is raucous and cacophonous, yet strangely harmonious, accompanied by percussion and panpipes.

The women wear wide brimmed hats, blood red, with green and yellow ribbons waving from the edges and coins sewn around the crown. The girls stay in the center of the circle, where they wave white wiphalas. They would often hide their faces behind the flags, as if afraid of the outsiders.

The most fantastic are monteros, leather helmets modeled after and mocking the Spanish soldiers’ costumes. They are adorned with a flowers, pompoms and feathers, like fountains of color. The monteros play huge horns and flutes, up to three meters long, stooping under their weight, then triumphantly throwing their heads skyward.

I can’t do the dancers justice describing them, but hopefully the pictures convey some of the beauty and pride.

Torotoro, The Land Before Time

Yesterday was my last day in Cochabamba. While I was sad to go, we left in a chartered six-seater Cesna, flying over the lush green countryside and the flooded fields of Cochabamba and into the red canyons and rugged rock formations of Torotoro, a fitting exit.

Visiting Torotoro is like time travelling in so many senses.

The town is absolutely tiny, with small adobe houses and sagging tiled roofs, mud tracks that can hardly be called roads, a few stores and only one working phone. When I arranged the flight, the pilot assured me that he would have the townspeople clear the animals and tall grass off the pista before we arrived. When we landed on the dirt airstrip, we were greeted by a gaggle of village children, who had run up to see the plane. As we walked through town everyone would greet us from their front stoops, sitting, spinning, chatting in Quechua, mending tools and watching naked toddlers play in the mud.

The town is the center of Parque Nacional Torotoro, sparsely populated, arid scrubland and Andean foothills, broken up by deep red ravines and slabs of grey stone turned skyward as the Andes pushed upwards. Torotoro takes its name from the Quechua TuruTuru Pampa, which translates to mud-mud-valley. All that mud created an idea environment for preserving a huge number of dinosaur footprints.

Unfortunately, Torotoro’s remote location and Bolivia’s lacking scientific community leaves little reliable information about the palaeontology. For instance, many townspeople believe that the footprints were left in hot lava by dinosaurs fleeing a volcanic eruption. One guide even told us that the red rocks were the result of the lava. We can be sure that the tracks were made in the cretaceous period, from 145 to 65 million years ago. Ankylosaurus, velociraptor, and sauropod tracks, the family that includes the Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, have been identified.

The bizarre geological formations, including immense canyons and rushing rivers, sheer cliffs, limestone caves, and natural stone bridges add an antediluvian ambiance. Prehistoric looking plants with giant thorns stud the stony ground, making it seems like the land before time. There were also fossilized seashells, shark teeth and trilobites from drier epochs which I found particularly ironic, in a landlocked country at 2600m. We even met an elderly man who collected meteorites from the earliest epochs, among other geological oddities. Torotoro’s pre-Inca peoples also left rock paintings, a reminder that we are only the most recent residents.

The immensity of geologic time and the tectonic force left me feeling very small, yet at the same time, like an Allosaurus!

Accidentally Advocating Extrajudicial Justice

My work in Cochabamba is quickly drawing to a close. I had a funny experience a few days ago that made me feel like my time here has come full circle, from being mistaken for an angry opposition member to being mistaken for an angry MASista.

In the lull between Carnaval and Easter people are back to protesting. While the difficulties over the Constitutional Assembly, land reform and the Santa Cruz autonomy movement continue, the current protests are focused on the recession and falling real wages. In recent weeks the price of a piece of bread has risen from 30 centavos to 50 centavos, or from about 4¢ to 6¢. While this may still seem like a steal to you and me, it’s a huge issue for ordinary Bolivians, two-thirds of whom live on less than a dollar a day. A lot of families are hurting, their children going hungry.

Perhaps most pathetic, the Bolivian recession is, in part, the result of the Bush administration’s economic mismanagement and insufficient oversight of the mortgage industry. The economic downturn stateside affects Bolivia so severely because most savings accounts and investments here are in US dollars, because Bolivia has some preferential trade deals with the US in return for their cooperation in the War on Drugs and because Bolivia imports most of their food and manufactured goods from neighboring countries, which are also affected. So Bolivians, without savings, without a social safety net, are already feeling it far more than we ever will in States.

Every day this week there has been a different march to raise the minimum wage. A large group of students is camped out in the central plaza, hunger striking for educational funding. On Wednesday there was an all-purpose blockade, bringing together a bunch of different issues. I got stuck behind the blockade, so instead of sitting in traffic in my taxi, I went to see what was happening.

Having learned my lesson with the angry alteños, I introduced myself and asked permission to take this picture. I explained my support for Evo and my solidarity with indigenous Bolivians. While the blockaders were very interested in what I had to say, so was a reporter who overheard me. Reporters seem to be especially interested in what I have to say. I’ve been interviewed for radio three times and on television twice now.

Just before the reporter started his camera rolling one of the blockaders handed me a police baton. Instead of asking why he had given me the stick and handing it back, I held onto it. The reporter, for his part, asked me all sorts of leading questions. Plus, since my Spanish isn’t my first language and I was on the spot, my answers weren’t as nuanced as I would have liked. Instead of saying that I thought the perpetrators of Enero Negro should be brought to justice within the confines of the court system or legally sanctioned community justice forum, I just said they should be brought to justice.

So I was on the news, standing in front of a blockade of burning tires, appearing to advocate lynching, punctuating my points with a police baton. Here’s hoping they let me back in the States. However, I am searching for a copy, since it would be the coolest souvenir imaginable.

Dealing with Death as Bolivians Do

In the last year I’ve lost a lot of wonderful people way too early. Recently, malaria meds have been forcing me to face these deaths, turning my dreams into sometimes funny, sometimes frightening montages of my departed friends. It’s as if Pedro Almodóvar is camped out in my mind. Volver meets Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, with a little bit of Guillermo del Toro thrown in for good measure.

Since such macabre subjects have been on my mind, I though I’d give another little anthropology lesson about a different death ritual, Ñatitas. It’s is an Aymara tradition, rooted on the altiplano and in La Paz, celebrated in conjunction with the Day of the Dead.

Every year, on November 8th hundreds of people flock to the cemetery, carrying human skulls. They are crowned with flowers and offered cigarettes and coca leaves. Sometimes they sport sunglasses, other times sombreros. People serenade them and light candles and at the end of the day a priest says a mass over the skulls.

People take their skulls home and put them in places of honor for the rest of the year. Aymara believe that each person has seven souls, and that one of these souls stays with the skull. Thus, they must be treated well. When they are respected ñatitas will bring luck, protecting people from harm and their houses from thieves. Mistreated, a ñatita can bring misfortune to a family.

Personally, I’m more inclined to believe that having a human head in your house scares off most would-be burglars. I also find it funny that while most ñatitas are family members, others are bought in the black market, or unearthed from abandoned graves. People will make up names for their ñatitias, making them a part of the family.

Thanks to Martin for this photo of a ñatita, which means pug-nosed in Spanish.

When Being a Good Parent Means Going Away

My apologies for the paucity of posts. I have been absolutely swamped at work. One of our communities is having a leadership conflict, which was substantial setback for us. So I’ll share some of what we’re working on. These issues just scratch the surface.

Migration is globalization at its most intimate. Displaced and dispossessed by the neoliberal economic system, unable to make ends meet, families are forced to make difficult choices.

Bolivia has high levels of both internal and external migration. When the mines were privatized in the late eighties and early nineties tens of thousands of workers were laid off and migrated from Potosi and Oruro, primarily to Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. With the second round of agrarian reform and the encroachment of huge estates, during the same era, many people lost their landholdings and migrated from the altiplano to El Alto, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz.

The prospects for work aren’t much better in El Alto, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. The official unemployment rate is 70%, and the underemployment rate just as high. Most people work in the informal economy, as street vendors, day laborers and domestic employees. Education seems to have little effect. Taxi drivers often have university degrees. Even the employed don’t earn enough to feed their families. Minimum wage works out to about $70 a month. With such bleak prospects in Bolivia, many go abroad.

Approximately 30% of the population lives abroad. About a 1.5 million Bolivians have migrated to Spain, and a million more to Argentina, and half a million to the US, leaving around eight million people in the county. There are smaller communities in Chile, Brazil and Italy, and pockets in Peru, Ecuador, Israel and Japan. Approximately 50% of the population is expected to live abroad by 2020.

Families see migration as an investment for the future. They will borrow huge sums, up to $10,000, to travel abroad. Sometimes the investment pays off, and the migrants save enough to send their children to school, to provide for their families, to build new houses, and eventually, to invest in small businesses, taxis, and rental properties. Other times the migrants are unable to find work or adapt to life abroad, or, in the case of illegal immigrants, are deported, and the investment, plus interest, is lost.

Migration’s effects on families are the most marked. Last week I was interviewing a woman in her garden while her two year old son played nearby. Every time a plane passed overhead he would point and say "Papa!" An eight year old boy I talked to told me that he didn’t have a father, even though his had only been in Argentina for a year. The effect is even more pronounced when mothers migrate. Since most of the Spanish demand is for domestic workers almost 60% of Bolivian migrants are women. They are forced to leave their families behind, in the care of relatives, or in a few cases, alone. I interviewed one sixteen-year old in charge of four siblings. I’ve meet other teenagers who live alone and receive remittances from their parents. In these cases, children have little incentive to stay in school and on the straight narrow. As a result, Cochabamba has high rates of teenage drug and alcohol abuse and pregnancy, and child abuse and molestation.

Migration also has huge effects on communities. In the barrios where we work we often see huge houses, made of brick, painted bright colors, with one-way glass windows, red terra-cotta roofs and tile floors. They stand in stark contrast to the other one-room casitas, constructed of adobe, with scrap tin roofs and dirt floors. Unfortunately, the nice new houses are often empty, their owners abroad, while families of six or seven squeeze into the more humble houses. Returned migrants also invest in their communities. Migrants sponsor schools, churches, health centers and parks. Oftentimes, this is a huge help for the communities. Other times it’s conspicuous charity, benefiting the donor more than the community. When the migrants return for fiestas like Carnaval or Independence Day they’re often the patrons of lavish parties, with abundant alcohol, food and entertainment, which last for days on end. These parties can also create competition and division within the communities.

The most damaging is the brain drain phenomenon. Migrants are generally younger, closer to middle class, more educated and competent, and most able to improve their communities. I talked to one returned migrant, who had a college education, but moved to Spain to pour cement because wasn’t able to find work. Losing their best and brightest slows Bolivia’s development even further.

It remains to be seen, the benefits of migrant’s remittances will outweigh the costs of their absence. It just seems so unfair that some of us are forced to make such difficult choices.

This picture was taken in La Paz, of an internal migrant from Achacachi.

Saving the Rainforest and Avoiding Rabies

Despite its chronic instability, the Chapare is an absolutely amazing place. Villa Tunari has a lazy, laid back feel, with abundant cold cerveza and swimming holes. For me, the main attractions were the national parks and tiny villages outside of town.

Getting to the Parque Nacional Carrasco proved a challenge, because it’s a few miles out of town and I couldn’t find a taxi. Luckily, the owner of my hotel lent me his moto. A gringa, riding a motorcycle through the countryside, skirt and long hair flying, stirring up dust and scaring everyone’s chickens, made for quite a sight, but it was super fun. Getting inside the park was also an experience. There’s a huge river between the ranger station and the protected area, which we got to cross in a zippy little cable car contraption.

Parque Nacional Carrasco encompasses over 600,000 hectacres of cloudforest, starting in the altiplano, plunging down the steep Andean hillsides into the rainforest river basin. The tiny bit I explored was home a rainbow of birds, reptiles and insects. My favorties were the blue morpho butterflies, which are impossible to photograph, and the bullet ants, which indigenous communities used to use to punish people guilty of serious crimes. They would tie them to a tree and stir up the ants, which would kill most people in a few hours. My guide also insisted on surprising me with “algo super cool,” in a cave, which turned out to be vampire bats. He was a little taken aback by my response to the bats, running screaming out of the cave. I was more interested in walking around the rainforest, just taking the unique jungle smell and the cacophony of crazy bird, bug and snake sounds.

While the part of the park we explored has had more human impact, the interior of the park is so impenetrable that it’s still pristine. Jaguar, tapir, peccary, tropical bear, giant anteaters and thousands of other species live in the biodiversity hotspot. Its home to over a hundred species of orchids. There are even reports of an uncontacted Yuracaré tribe in the interior. Unfortunately, the edges of the park are quickly being eroded by logging, hunting and settlement. Enforcement is virtually impossible with a few dozen rangers for thousands of hectares. The threats come from all sectors, from major multinational corporations to subsistence farmers trying to scratch out a living.

Corporations are an easy culprit. In the Chapare, they’re really only involved in hardwood logging. In the Beni, Pando, and Santa Cruz, soybean cash cropping and cattle ranching are bigger issues. In Santa Cruz and the Chaco, hydrocarbon exploration and extraction cuts huge access roads through the forest, never mind the effects of oil spills from poorly constructed and cared for pipelines.

In the Chapare, poor people are often the unwitting culprits. In many cases, the parks are created around communities who live in or off of the forest. In other cases, migrants from the altiplano, desperate for a little scrap of land, illicitly settle in the parks. Some are modern hunter-gatherers, poaching plants and animals that fetch high prices. Others are farmers, whose slash and burn agriculture and grazing animals contribute to deforestation. Once cleared, the nutrients in rainforest soils are quickly depleted and the settlers have to clear more land, creating a cycle of deforestation and the eventual loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, disruption of the water cycle and climate change, making cultivation even more difficult. The tensions between sustainability and subsistence for those on the edge were aptly illustrated in Parque Machia and Villa Tunari.

Parque Machia is a refuge for rescued animals that have been poached and kept as pets. The better part of the park was closed, damaged by the recent rains. Fortunately, the park’s monkey population had relocated to the ranger station. Since they’ve had so much human contact, they actually wanted to be closer to humans. They were super inquisitive and sociable. The squirrel monkey pictured here was absolutely adorable, until he stole my sunglasses. When I tried to take them back, he bit me! Fortunately, it didn’t break the skin, and he finally agreed to swap my sunglasses for some grapes.

Back in Villa Tunari I went to a local comedor for lunch. As is the norm, there was no menu, just a special of the day. After a few bites, unable to identify the animal, I asked what it was. I was eating jochi, or agouti, an endangered animal akin to a guinea pig. The next day I went to a different comedor asked what the special was. “Taitateu,” I was told. When I asked what kind of an animal it was the proprieties claimed it was chancho, or pork. Unfortunately, when the plate arrived, it was clearly not pork. “Chancho de monte,” the woman clarified, which is peccary, an endangered wild pig. After that I finally wised up and just asked for fish.

There’s a new picasa album up with more pictures. Unfortunatly, they, like playing Amazon Trail as a kid, can't quite do the jungle justice.

The Chapare and the Coca Conflict

I decided to take a weekend during the week, since we work on Saturdays and Sundays, and venture out to Villa Tunari, in the Chapare region. The Chapare has gained notoriety for its coca crops. While the coca of the Yungas is widely chewed and central to the Andean cosmovision, the bigger, bitterer leaves of the Chapare are generally processed into cocaine for first-world consumption.

In the Chapare coca is grown by peasant campesinos. Then it’s bought by narcotraficante networks, and collected in clandestine labs deep within the Chapare and Beni rainforests. There it is processed with ether, hydrochloric and sulphuric acid into a paste. The coca paste loaded into light planes and flown from hundreds of hidden airstrips to Colombia for more processing. Finally, it’s smuggled into the US, where it sells for a thousand times more than the cocaleros’ take.

Ironically, the US inadvertently encouraged coca cultivation for cocaine production. In the 1970s USAID monies built the Cochabamba-Santa Cruz highway, opening the Chapare to colonization. In the 1980s, thousands of miners were laid off in neoliberal labor-flexibilization programs promoted by the US and their multilateral interests, and as many altiplano campesinos were displaced by neoliberal land reform that dispossessed them of their lands. Encouraged by the government, many of them migrated to the Chapare, where they found the perfect new cash crop. Coca grows well in the Chapare’s poor soils (since most of the nutrients are stored in the standing rainforest), provides immediate returns, requires little work, and has a high price.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, when structural adjustment was in full swing and the economy in shambles, illegal coca export earning equalled or exceeded all legal export earnings combined. Two-thirds of all cocaine snorted by yuppies stateside came from Bolivia. Cash from coca crops kept thousands of campesino families from starvation. By all accounts, Bolivian governments, democratically elected and authoritarian alike, benefited from their blind eye to the coca boom. The city of Santa Cruz was by and large built with drug money by cronies of President Banzer.

In the late 1980s, under pressure from the Regan administration to fight the War on Drugs, the Bolivian government made an abrupt about face, and began going after coca growers. Originally, they paid the cocaleros to eliminate their crops, but the policy had little effect, as people replanted their crops. Alternative development projects have been equally unsuccessful. The government began eradication without compensation under the paradoxically named Plan Dignidad. In response, cocaleros organized to defend their meagre livelihoods. They organized mass protests and blockades, paralyzing the region. A number of unarmed cocaleros were killed in clashes at blockades in blatant violations of human rights. As such, some cocaleros have become more militant, killing a number of DEA agents with booby traps. The situation has improved somewhat with the election of cocalero Evo Morales, evidence of their influence. The Bolivian army and DEA agents have backed down a bit, and are now uprooting coca crops by hand. It's a particularly painful example of the stupidity of supply-side economics.

After my run in with the Aymara militants, I was concerned about meeting cocaleros while hiking in the isolated Parque Nacional Carrasco, which is also a popular coca smuggling corridor. However, the cocaleros’ syndicato was kind enough to write me a letter, affirming that I was not a DEA agent and stating that I was friend to all campesinos and cocaleros, which they signed and stamped with their official seal. I never needed to show it, but it makes an excellent souvenir.

I did see some more obvious signs of the coca conflict, like the highway checkpoints. There the police search for precursor chemicals for cocaine coming into the Chapare and unauthorized coca coming out. They make everyone get off the bus and show identification, while they search it top to bottom with absolutely un-Bolivian thoroughness.

The next sign I was in coca country were the blockades. While blockades in the Chapare have been scenes of violent standoffs between cocaleros and police in the past, the one we ran into was not a big deal. The protesters had left for lunch, so all the passengers helped remove the rocks and tree trunks from the road, and on our way we went. The driver assured me that after a siesta, the protesters and their blockade would be back, which was very Bolivian.

The effects of the coca boom were especially apparent when I arrived in Villa Tunari. The town has seen better days, before the eradication campaign. Most of the people in the outlying areas are desperately poor, living in small shacks, subsisting on small kitchen gardens and sporadic hunting. In town there are huge houses, built in a narco-baroque style, which have since been abandoned. All the fancy hotels and nice restaurants, which used to cater to narcotraficantes, now depend on DEA agents and occasional tourists for their due. The residents are trying to turn Villa Tunari into a tourism destination, but with the incredible political instability, it seems unlikely. All they have to show are a bunch of signs proclaiming Villa Tunari a Pariso Ethnoecoturistico.

For more information about the coca conflict, please check out the Acción Andina website. It’s run by my amazing boss, Theo Roncken, who has filled books on the subject.

Swingin'

Bolivians don't do Valentines Day, but in honor of the occasion, I though give a little anthropological account of another courtship ritual, La Festival del la Wallunk'a. Wallunk'a marks the commencement of the rainy season, celebrating fertility of the fields and the vitality of the community. It's commonly associated with the Day of the Dead, since they coincide in early November.

Wallunk'a means swing in Quechua. Giant swings are are constructed of eucalyptus trees and cured leather straps. Entire indigenous communities come together to construct them, with pre-Colombian engineering. They're blessed and bedecked with wreathes of flowers.

Young Quechua women from the Cochabamba Valley take turns showing their daring and prowess on the swings, soaring twenty to twenty-five feet off the ground at their apex. Bunches of flowers and baskets of food and other prizes are put just out of reach, forcing the women to swing higher and higher. With short skirts and long braids flying, it makes for quite a sight.

Suitors stand below, serenading the women. One ballad starts with "Sobre mi sombrero, ay palomitay, una flor rojita, por vos viditay," or "Over my hat, little dove, a little red flower, for you I live." The suitors encourage the women to swing higher, until they can't stand it and they scream stop. Then they're received by their suitors, and the courting and celebrating continues with abundant chicha.

Thanks to Arnd for the photo of a more modern Wallunk'a

Political Participation, Bolivian Style

Missing Super Tuesday and the Washington State Caucuses made me a little sad. Instead, I've been participating in Bolivian politics, which is almost better. Besides, Barack didn't need my vote.

Political participation here borders on pathological. Everyone, from taxistas to campesinos, priests to professors, is endlessly discussing Evo, the constituent assembly and the Santa Cruz autonomy movement. While Bolivians love to talk politics, but they're even more disposed to participate, as the 2000 Water War , the 2003 Gas War and the current conflict aptly illustrate. While the protests are striking, they're actually less impressive than the local popular participation.

Bolivians are very well organized, out of necessity. Historically, indigenous communities were organized into kinship-based ayllus, and all land was held and labored communally. After the republican revolution labor unions played an important roles providing for families and protesting for change. The 1994 Ley de Participation Popular formally decentralized planning power, transferring 20% of the government budget to over 15,000 Organizaciones Teritoriales de Base. Still, in the outlying urban and rural regions, if you want something done, you need to do it yourself. Neighborhood groups dig ditches for pipe, put up light posts and pave their own streets.

Attendance at the weekly block meetings is mandatory. Absentees are fined about $1.50, a day or half-day’s pay for poorer people. Most meetings start at 7am on Sunday mornings. In many communities they're held in the street, rain or shine. There are also emergency meetings, summoned with gunshots. We don't have to go to our block meetings because we rent. Instead, I go to the block meetings in our informant barrios. At the meetings, they organize community events and work projects. When they have more pressing issues they appeal to the president in personal letters. If that fails they plan protests, often storming the municipal buildings a thousand strong.

The meetings can become somewhat militant. In one of our communities there’s been a clash over leadership. They had a vote of no-confidence and kicked out their dirigente, but they’ve been unable to elect a new one. They’ve been discussing it for weeks now. Most meetings degenerate into arguments in Quechua and one evening fistfights even broke out between rival factions. Ironically, the factions are almost idegoligically identical. Most everyone in our barrios are MASistas, or Morales supporters. Some of them also identify themselves as Trotskyites or Anarcho-Syndicalists. They refer to me as Compañera Allison, the equivalent of Comrade Allison, which amuses me to no end.

This mural was painted by the Marxist Front of Universidad Mayor San Simon, a lovely reminder that we are living in a revolution.

El Milagro de Mira

I finally put up some photos up on Picasa. I just couldn't do Carnaval justice describing it. There are just a few favorites because my dial-up is super slow. Again, after all, this is Bolivia.

Fire for the People

I had an amazing experience today. A moment where my time here in Bolivia, if not on earth, made complete sense.

I was sitting in a cafe, working on my laptop, listening to some Seattle hip-hop, the Blue Scholars. A lustrebote approached me and asked to shine my shoes. I declined, but he stuck around, trying to strike up a conversation, as they often do. After chatting for a bit he pointed to my laptop and demanded "Let me listen”. He put on the headphones, listening tentatively at first, then smiling at the strange words, slowly swaying back and forth. ”What does it mean?” he asked when it was finished. So I translated:

50k deep, and it sounds like thunder when our feet pound streets. ● Cincuenta mil profundo, y suena como trueno cuando nuestros pies golpean las calles. ● Still demanding a share, refrigerator’s bare, they wanna see trade get free and not fair. But we are not far, we are not there, we don't got time left to spare, to not care.

His face lit up. “Are they talking about El Alto?” he asked. “What?” I replied, a little taken aback. As it turns out he was referring to the 2003 Gas War, and the overthrow of Goni, the hated neo-liberal puppet president.

A bit more background:

Like the Water War before it, the Gas War was by and large about neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, especially privatization. In 1996 President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, or Goni, privatized YPFB, the state hydrocarbons authority. It was broken up and auctioned off to private investors, who were required to pay 50% royalties. In the late 1990s he renegotiated many of these contracts by reclassifying them, lowering royalty rates to 18%. The cost of finding and developing a barrel of gas averaged $8.58 worldwide, $5.66 in Latin America, and just 40¢ in Bolivia. Gas revenues, the primary government revenue, decreased seven-fold. Paradoxically, privatization and structural adjustment widened budget deficits in Bolivia.

In 2003 Goni supported a $6 billon plan to build a pipeline through Chile, where the gas would be processed and shipped to California. There is a lot of bad blood between Bolivia and Chile because Chile permanently annexed Bolivia’s only coastline in the 1880 War of the Pacific.

Anger over petroleum privatization, the pipeline, US imposed coca eradication policies, the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), the suspension of community justice and representation systems, the absolute poverty and inequality and other injustices came to a head in October 2003.

My small friend and his family, along with thousands of other campesinos, industrial and mining unions members, indigenous ayllu members, urban alteños and university students marched on La Paz, demanding the repeal of the 1996 Hydrocarbons Law, a popular referendum on hydrocarbon revenues, and the convocation of a constitutional assembly. When Goni refused to negotiate with their leadership, they escalated the situation.

Blockading the roads to the south in El Alto and the north in Villa Fatima, they besieged the La Paz. In one instance, hundreds of men, women and children dragged train cars several kilometers, before shoving them off the tracks and onto the main La Paz’s-El Alto arterial. Not even tanks could get through. The uprising spread to the countryside. In the altiplano Aymara community militias, armed with slingshots and guns from the 1952 National Revolution drove the army and police out of Sorata, Achacachi and Warisata. Eventually, over 300,000 people marched on La Paz, and hunger strikes numbered in the hundreds. In a country of only eight million people (and four million llamas) this is astounding.

In response, Goni declared a state of siege. In El Alto twenty-eight unarmed civilians, including a number of children, were massacred. In the ensuing protests, another thirty-nine were martyred, on civilian and state sides.

Eventually the protests became so large and state control so small that the security forces refused to suppress the populace. The Vice President, most of the cabinet and all of the neighbouring countries withdrew their support. With the US as his only ally, Goni was forced to resign and flee to Miami, where he still lives in impunity.

My new friend, Calixto, was just a little kid during the 2003 protests, six or seven years old. But he remembered the experience so vividly, and recounted his role passing out cups of coffee with so proudly.

Eventually, I explained that the song was about a protest in Seattle, in solidarity with Bolivia. "People in America care about Bolivia?" He asked, amazed. I was so pleased that I could honestly answer that some of us care. I even found a photo of the WTO protests. "It looks a lot like El Alto" he told me. And while Seattle is usually a world apart from El Alto, they sure felt close together today, while we sat, listening to the Blue Scholars, having lunch and talking about our lives.

This famous photo was borrowed from Reuters.

Caray for Carnaval!

I didn’t think holidays could get any cooler than Alasitas, and then along came Carnaval. A UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, it mixes tradition, religion, humor, heavy drinking and indiscriminate water fighting into one crazy fiesta.

It’s held in Oruro. Oruro is usually a miserable, cold and gray altiplano mining town, but once a year its population triples and it’s transformed into a riotous, rollicking party city. Steve and I, and thousands of others, made the five hour pilgrimage by bus to sleep on someone’s floor in subzero weather. And it was well worth it.

Oruro Carnaval is a reincarnation of the Pre-Columbian Ito festival, celebrated by the Uru people. When the Spanish outlawed Ito, the indigenous people co-opted Carnival, mixing indigenous traditions and Catholic spirituality. Today the parade is dedicated to the Virgin del Socavón, patron saint of the mineshafts. Dancing in the entrada is considered a religious duty and requires a commitment of three years and thousands of Bolivianos.

While Carnaval festivities began months ago, and continue for another week, the main event is the entrada, or parade, held on the Saturday before Lent. The entrada includes upwards of a hundred of floats festooned with silverware, over 20,000 elaborately costumed dancers and more than 10,000 musicians, spread over four kilometers and eighteen hours. All of the troupes do one of the same six or so dances, each interlacing myth and tradition, imbued plenty of satire and snark. A little about them:

Las Diabladas wear huge masks with bright bulging eyes, twisted horns and long hair tangled with serpents. Temptresses with lascivious masks and short skirts dance alongside them. They represent the Christian struggle between good and evil, as well as the Pre-Colombian god of the underworld, known as Huari or El Tio.

Los Doctorcitos wear silver masks with hooked noses, warts and long white hair, glasses and pipes, tailcoats and tophats. They satirize Spanish mine owners, bowing and shaking hands as they dance.

Los Caporales wear bright velvet and sequined suits, knee-high boots with bells up the side and carry a whip in one hand and a hat in the other. Alongside them there are young women in equally bright and bouncy skirts, thigh-high boots, evening gloves braids and feathered hats. They represent the Spanish overseers, stomping, clapping and cracking their whips as they dance.

Las Morenadas and Los Negritos, pictured above, wear grotesquely exaggerated masks with big bug eyes, huge lips, and bushy black beards. They are encumbered by huge costumes, which force them to stumble stupidly down the parade route. They are the stereotype of African slaves brought over by the Spanish.

Los Tinkus wear long rainbow colored robes, adorened with sashes and capes. The men wear raw cowhide hats, shaped like the Spanish Conquistadores’ helmets, and adorned with feathers and bells. The women wear bowlers with feathers sticking straight up, like some sort of avian fountain. They act out ritual combat that still occurs between rival altiplano communities.

Los Suri Sicuris wear gigantic hats-halos of feathers, three to five feet in diameter. They wear equally oversized breastplates, which makes them look like birds. The do less dancing, more bowing and dipping their heads, barely able to right themselves.

Las Llamaderas wear traditional altiplano costumes, including polleras, bowler hats, sashes and carry slingshots. They do a very traditional altiplano dance, accompanied by little llamas.

Las Tobas wear brightly painted faces, huge, elaborate feathered headdresses, fur cuffs and ankle adornments, bare chests and midriff baring outfits, and carry spears and slingshots. They are supposedly the indigenous peoples of the orient.

The entrada is about as well organized as the Fremont Solstice Parade. There are gigantic gaps in the parade, during which huge water fights break out. The madness, which has been mounting for weeks now, included water balloons, supersoakers, buckets, and spray foam. Unfortunately, about halfway through the parade Mira, my Canon Rebel and constant companion, was hit by a water balloon and stopped working.

I felt a little like I had been shot. I was standing on the sidelines, struggling not to sob, when one of the dancers saw my expression. She invited me to dance with her troupe to cheer me up. Having watched different incarnations of the same dance for the past six hours, I had it down and was feeling better in no time. However, I did not have the awesome outfit, as pictured below. I’m planning to buy myself one when we get back to Cochabamba.

The parade continues into the wee hours of Sunday morning, when some of the dancers breathe fire, and most of the spectators are so drunk they can no longer sit in their seats, jeering at the dancers, singing and dancing in the streets, fighting and peeing everywhere.

On Sunday afternoon the dancers do the entire parade over again, hung over or still drunk. They stagger and stumble along the parade route, half-costumed, leaning on one another, occasionally dropping out to throw up.

Update: After drying out, Mira is fine. After drying out, Ally has an incredible headache.

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.