We're in the news again

I reported on Tuesday that my company had been mentioned on the TV news cast Monday night and Tuesday morning (on Bolivision only) regarding the looting of our warehouse in Caranavi. That news report was initiated by our insurance agent who was trying to incite some response from the government. And then yesterday, on Wednesday morning, I saw on the TV news cast essentially the same report with the addition that the government officials were stating that they’d only learned of the situation from the news cast and hadn’t received or read the letters that we and the US embassy had been sending.

Then this morning, Thursday, our story was printed in one of the local newspapers (La Razón: http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20060518_005546/nota_256_287842.htm.) This article was again initiated by our insurance agent. The article incorrectly states that we are now considering whether or not to abandon Caranavi all together; whereas the reality is that we’ve already been instructed to leave and, according to our CTO, it’s extremely unlikely that we will ever feel like returning to Caranavi. This latest article correctly adds the fact that our employees in Caranavi have been threatened with death and aren’t allowed to even come close to our former warehouse. In this article they quote the Viceminister of Internal Government as saying that: “Bolivia is not a secure state; security here is just a label. In the whole area of Caranavi the capacity of the police is restricted.” They also quote the executive secretary of the neighborhood association, Rosendo Vargas, the Evo Morales of the Yungas and ring leader of the mobs stealing our poles and threatening to kill our employees, as denying stealing our poles. He does admit, however, that they took over our warehouse because, he says, the poles had come in the name of the people of Caranavi. He's wrong of course - the poles aren't for him or anyone else - they belong to the US government and would have gone to benefit somewhere in rural Bolivia. Now they'll just turn into mulch in someone's front yard.

In the same newspaper on the very next page they report that Evo will be going to Caranavi on Saturday the 20th to sign an agreement with the coca farmers of Caranavi (http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20060518_005546/nota_256_287844.htm.) The agreement will supposedly reduce the coca plantations in Caranavi. Why they’ve decided to take this step AFTER the Alternative Development program has left the area is not yet clear to me. It is clear, however, that the Alternative Development program won’t be coming back, so I doubt that any reduction in coca production will be sustainable since they won’t have the infrastructure (electricity, roads, processing plants, etc.) to do anything else.

The photo at the top of this log entry is of a pair of Nazca/Masked Boobies; I took it during our Spring Break trip to the Galapagos this year.