La Paz - Part 2

Merry Christmas (as I'm writing this, it's Christmas here in Buenos Aires although the date on this entry is earlier because that's when I loaded the pictures). I'm back from the Uruguayan beaches and it's a hot and summery Christmas here in BsAs, plus the city is almost completely shut down... something I've never seen before. Anyway, back to the happenings in La Paz, Bolivia. The city sits in the shadow of a huge mountain and I was there for the rainy season so it was rare for it to peek through the clouds, which you can see on the left.

The population of Bolivia is mostly of indian descent, primarily two tribes (or groups or whatever the terminology is) -- the Aymara and Quechua indians, plus the white descendants from Spain. If you look at the detail on the church to the right (from the 1700s maybe?), it shows an interesting mix of the indigenous population integrated into traditional Catholic themes. At least I found it interesting... art appreciation class finally pays off. There's a lot of other stuff going on in the details as well, coca leaves (of course), llamas and local animals, and who knows what all else.

Now, on to the political happenings in Bolivia... and there's A LOT happening nowadays. Like I mentioned last time, Evo Morales is now the president. Last election, the two "main" candidates split the bulk of the votes but the remaining votes that went to Evo were enough to make him the first "indigenous president" (Aymara) ever elected to the office. The interesting thing that I learned -- and that the CNN's, BBC's, etc, of the news world fail to tell you -- is that all is not well amongst the Aymara and Quechua indians of Bolivia. The Quechuas think he's a racist... which is contrary to everything CNN tells me! I was led to believe that everyone was celebrating the first indigenous president of Bolivia while holding hands and singing Kumbaya around the camp fire. Not so much.

The photo on the right is Bolivia's version of the White House, in Plaza Murillo, where the president addresses the nation and historically where all the political protests happen. Although when I was there, all the action was 442 miles away in the city of Sucre. Here's the situation as explained to me by the locals...

Given the flukey way that Evo landed in office and since the opportunity may not come again, he and his political party MAS (which stands for Movement Towards Socialism and the acronym cleverly means "more") are attempting to move the nation's capitol from La Paz to Sucre and rewrite the country's constitution. Officially, the capitol ALREADY is Sucre but all the offices, infrastructure, etc, exist in La Paz and that's the way it's always been... Evo just has more political support in Sucre. Don't ask me how all this happened -- IT'S BOLIVIA!

Since MAS has a majority in the congress, the group went to Sucre to vote and approve a replacement of the old constitution with their new one... at midnight. And without the opposition present while in CLOSED session! Yes, all kinds of wonderful things happen when a government operates in "closed session". The funny thing is that I saw some interviews with the congress afterwards and none of them could tell the reporters what was actually in the bills that they approved! They also had to do it from a military bunker for personal protection from the local citizenery and university students who don't want the capitol moved or the new constitution. And this is when things got violent...

The protestors started out burning tires and throwing sticks of dynamite (there's a lot of mining in the area) and so the police and military, being nearby at the bunker, fired tear gas and bullets at the crowds... although the government claims the military only had rubber bullets "so it was the crowd using the live ammo." Since then, four of the wealthiest Bolivian provinces have refused to recognize the new constitution and approved autonomy from the capitol -- or half way to secesion from the country, but not all the way. Then later on, the mayor/governor of Sucre (a MAS member who coordinated all the midnight voting magic) had his house burned down and his family threatened, so they all went into hiding in Peru. And the same thing is happening to other MAS politicians living in Sucre.

Anyway, the short of it is that three people died in the protests and hundreds went to the hospital. And things have worsened in the past month since it's all dribbling back to La Paz. I'm glad to be back since the protests are spreading and it looks like things will be sketchy for a while.

But it wasn't as bad as the experience some people had (that I went to Uruguay with) when they were in Bolivia last July. They told me that as they were leaving for dinner, a bunch of protestors running from the police rushed into their hotel lobby and everyone got maced and tear gassed... including them! They had to wash out their eyes and hair to get rid of the sting. Good story tho.

While reading the local Bolivian newspapers, I noticed that a lot of the local writers think that the situation with Morales as president plus all the racial tension along with the autonomy attempts of the various provinces make the country look a lot like Honduras and El Salvador did in the 1980s. In other words, civil war is imminent. I don't know if that's solid analysis or just lots of hype to sell newspapers, but it was a fairly common view. Anyway, I don't want to scare anyone off from going there, but that's the situation at the end of 2007. So I guess I'll end this cheery little summary with a photo of the rare but fascinating Bolivian Mountain Crocodile that I saw feeding in the hills surrounding the city. Enjoy.

And that pretty much sums up the trek through Peru and Bolivia. I also was able to fly down the Pacific coast to make a connection in Santiago, Chile over to Buenos Aires (mostly because LAN sent me there and I had no choice). But it was a nice tour of the coastline... no pictures, alas. So, that's pretty much it in South America for me in 2007. I fly back to the USA tomorrow night so maybe I'll post some photos of the Punta del Este beach happenings once I've been back awhile. Adios!