On the edge of the Salar

Dark and stinkin’ early Thursday (the 30th of March) morning, Percy (the local engineer whom I am grooming to take my place when I leave Bolivia) picked me up from my house in the company Land Cruiser. Even though we were only planning to be gone for two days and one night, we loaded enough gear into the back of the vehicle to camp for a week – our sleeping bags, camp cots, suitcases, laptops, and my field bag complete with binoculars, Leatherman (the original – accept no substitutes), GPS, digital camera, toilet paper, compass, flashlight, rain poncho, sunscreen, insect repellant, baseball cap, and most importantly, Dramamine. On our way out of town we needed to fill the tank – I had to direct Percy to the nearest gas station since we were down in my neighborhood. After scooting down what passes for a major highway in Bolivia (a narrow two lane road) for three hours and 240km we arrived in Oruro right on schedule. There we were supposed to hook up with the electrical department employees of the Prefecturas of both Potosi and Oruro, to visit a rural electrification project that starts in Oruro and ends in Potosi. Unfortunately for us, the hometown boys were in meetings rather than getting ready to go so we had to cool our heels for a couple of hours. But that gave us time to stock up on provisions – so we drove over to the market and loaded up on groceries – a loaf of wheat bread, a can of sausages, and a can of corned beef – and a flashlight and baseball cap for Percy. Finally the Oruro boys showed up and we headed out of town.

At the end of the pavement we stopped for lunch – it was that late in the day already – in a little lunch dive that one of the guys knew. While we ate we saw on the noon news that the pilots and workers of the Bolivian airline were not only still on strike, but they’d taken over the runways of the three major airports of Bolivia – La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz – shutting down all air traffic in and out of the country. Before dessert Evo sent in the army to clear the runways and restore air traffic in Bolivia. At one point on the live news broadcast, the head of the protestors looked straight into the camera and told Evo that “You taught us to blockade and so here we are.” After lunch we hit the road and drove for another 300km, over hill and dale, through amber (and purple, red, orange, and green) waves of quinoa, herds of llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas, and past the lost city of Atlantis (see http://www.geocities.com/webatlantis/.) The road we took was well traveled even though it was a bumpy dusty dirt road – according to my Bolivian companions it’s the major ingress for all of the stolen cars that are brought in from Chile. At kilometer 468 from La Paz, we came across a huge meteor crater – now filled with a lake in the bottom and the sides of the bowl all cultivated in quinoa. Eventually we got to the end of the line, where our project was to start. One of our traveling companions, who is a bureaucrat from the new MAS government of Oruro, a real party man, was from the area and wanted to convince us to re-route our power lines through his home village of Jirira. It is a “very important” tourist center, he told us. We actually got there very late – at around 8PM – well after dark, but from the state of the roads I could tell that there weren’t too many tourists that have ever passed through there (even our homeboy guide got lost in the dark once.) We checked into our guide’s family’s hotel and were shown to our rooms – small rustic cells with two beds and a toilet (no shower) – they sure beat sleeping outside. At 9:00 we were invited to dinner of broth and a piece of bread – the aunt/owner of the hotel said that she would have killed us a llama if she’d known when we were coming. At 10:00 we were told that our guide had convoked a town meeting, in which he hoped the town’s people would convince us that we should re-route our line through their community. I told him I wasn’t very interested in going to a community meeting right at bedtime, just when I’m at my crankiest – “it’ll only last a half hour” he lied. We stumbled in the pitch dark to the small community center – with the nearest electric lights a world away, the star show was awesome. Inside the black cave of the community center, lit by only one candle, I could just make out approximately 25 non-descript shadows lining the walls of the small room. The only people I could really see were Percy, sitting next to me, and a couple of ladies sitting on the other side of the candle, dipping into bags of dried coca leaves, and the two representatives from the two prefecturas sitting at the head table. As they spoke, one of the ladies generously shared a pile of coca leaves with our two dignitaries. The bureaucrat who had brought us to this town repeatedly stated that now that “we’re in power” things would start to get accomplished, not like when all of the corrupt politicians were in power and plundering everything. After about an hour of assuring the people that we didn’t have the necessary funding to divert our power lines through their community, Percy, bless his heart, excused ourselves and we headed back through the dark to our hotel. We both had tiny pocket flashlights and managed not to fall into any wells, but we had a dickens of a time finding the hotel again since our guide had stayed behind to chat with his family and neighbors. The bed was a bit like sleeping in a hammock, but by then I was so tired and beat from the long journey I think I could have slept on the floor.

The next morning, after a cold spit bath, we enjoyed a breakfast of a piece of fried bread (just like the Navajos fix) and a cup of coffee or tea. I mentioned that I didn’t drink either coffee or tea, so they offered me an herb tea. Aunt so-and-so brought me out a little sprig of leaves and twigs which actually smelled really good – I couldn’t tell you what they were or even describe what they smelled like – and so I steeped them in my cup of hot water, which I drank with a healthy dressing of sugar. After “breakfast” our guides from the prefectura abandoned us – they finally caught on that they were wasting their time – and so Percy and I went on our way to survey the rest of towns in the area to see if they warranted a future line extension. By the light of day the place was still very rocky and dusty, but we were right alongside the edge of the “Salar” – one of Bolivia’s prime tourist destinations. The Salar in Bolivia is this huge salt flat, 100km wide by 140km long, and we were sandwiched between the Salar and this huge extinct volcano. We circumnavigated the volcano, checking out the three little towns between where we had camped out and where our current project ends – we found that the towns were mostly ghost towns, with more ruins than inhabited houses – I think we’d have a hard time justifying a new electrification project in that area. So we turned our sites toward home – stopping only to eat our loaf of bread and can of sausages and corned beef. Once, about halfway home, we were overflown by a migrating flock of neon pink flamingos headed north for the winter – now that was truly a site to behold.

I dropped Percy off at the bus station in Oruro so he could take the bus home to Cochabamba, and then drove the last three hours home alone. Fortunately, foreseeing just such an eventuality, I had brought along some suitable CDs to drive to – Ray Charles and Hit the Road Jack and the Cars and Let the Good Times Roll. I hadn’t broken out my music earlier in the trip, because my American music makes the Bolivians crazy and theirs drives me insane, so it’s better not to have any music. Anyway, late that night, after a trip of over 1000km, I made it back to La Paz safe and sound. No road blocks, no flat tires, and no running out of gas – overall it was a good trip. Whew. Next stop: The Galapagos.

Bolivia news March 28, 2006

Here's some of our local news that you probably haven't heard:

1. According to the local news this morning, the Bolivian national airline, LAB, lost their leases on both aircraft that they used for international flights due to non-payment, which will eliminate their flights to the US and to Spain. Also, they’ve been cut off from their supplier of jet fuel for non payment. The government of Bolivia, after briefly trying to intervene in the airline, has turned it back over to its owners. This has prompted a hunger strike among the airline’s employees who are pushing to have the airline re-nationalized. Evo has said that the owner/manager of the airline is a “corrupt mafioso” and that he must have paid off the auditing firm who found that the company had not broken any laws in their current path to bankruptcy. Why do we even need auditing firms when Evo can just decide who's right and who's a corrupt mafioso?
2. They finally found the real identity of the man who bombed those hotels around the bus station last week – I don’t remember his name just now – but with his real identity in hand they’ve been able to determine that he’s a psychopath wanted in the United States on terrorism charges, has been deported from nearly every country in Latin America, and entered Bolivia illegally. What happens to him now has yet to be determined. But, the US is still unhappy with Evo for having accused George Bush of sending the bomber to Bolivia. In fact, the US Ambassador has been boycotting meetings with the Bolivian government for the past few days, including a diplomatic reception for Evo and a donor’s meeting to see about funding to help the flooded areas of Bolivia. Evo continues to insist that relations with the US are “normal”, but just this morning on the news the vice-president admitted that relations with the US government are at an “all time low.” But, the vice-president is still hoping to make a trip to the US to see if the US will cancel its Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, which has caused Bolivia to lose its sale of soy beans to Colombia.
3. In the newspaper this morning it was announced that the US and Europe-financed Alternative Development program is abandoning the Chapare and is refocusing all of their resources on the Yungas. I would be more enthusiastic about this announcement if it weren’t for the fact that relations between Bolivia and the US are at an all time low, which directly influences the amount of aid dollars to be spent in Bolivia. If things proceed in this direction, we could see donor funding for Bolivia dry up until after Evo’s term in office.
4. The MAS (the socialist narcotrafficking party that preys on the illiterate) has admitted to setting up multiple shell political parties in addition to their own party, the MAS, to send delegates to the upcoming Constitutional Convention in August. In light of this news, the two main opposition parties – PODEMOS and UN – have visibly stepped up their campaigns to send delegates to the convention. They have stated that they’re attempting to stem the MAS’s attempts to establish a single party dictatorship in Bolivia. Also, it’s been reported that both the Catholic Church and a coalition of the protestant churches are preparing delegates to send to the constitution convention, to prevent the atheistic MAS from confiscating church buildings to be converted to public schools, as per the rampant rumors around Bolivia.
5. Multiple blockades and strikes are currently underway around Bolivia, besides the LAB strike. Most notorious are the blockade of the Yungas by the city of Coroico who are demanding that the road construction contractor pay the city $1M for sand taken from nearby river beds, and the strike by the transportation workers' union who are protesting the government's decision to legalize ownership of stolen vehicles. This decision was taken by the government after a different transportation workers' union strike to demand the legalization of owning stolen vehicles - and the MAS caved, as has every previous administration in recent years .

Mad Bomber in La Paz

Here is a bit of our local news that probably didn’t make your local news:

Last night, as I was walking home from church I walked past the Chilean consulate just around the block from my house, and I couldn’t help but notice a larger than usual contingent of heavily armed policemen guarding the consulate. I wondered what was going on. This morning as I watched the morning news report on TV I found out what: they’ve captured the bomber from yesterday and he said that his next target would have been the Chilean consulate. Turns out that our mad bomber is a 22-year-old kid married to a 40-something woman from Uruguay. According to the police report on the news, this kid has a Saudi father and a Bolivian mother with US citizenship, so he has three passports. In his American identity he uses the same Lestat name as the main character in Anne Rice’s “Interview with a Vampire” novel, and listed his occupation as a “Pagan Priest.” In his Saudi identity he’s supposedly a 30-something lawyer. In his Bolivian identity he sells explosives. His Uruguayan wife even posed nude holding a box of dynamite in an advertisement for their explosive business. Also according to the news, this guy has been kicked out of both Uruguay and Argentina for terrorism and was reportedly the one behind all of the ATM bombings in Buenos Aires last year. Of course, since one of his three citizenships is from the United States, Evito is all over it like stink on a dog. Evo had claimed publicly that the US government in general and W Bush in particular sent this Lestat creature to Bolivia specifically to destabilize the country and sow terror. The new Bolivian chancellor/court jester said that Bush had sent this clown to assassinate Evito himself. Now that’s responsible statesmanship. My Bolivian friends have said that now that Evo and his crew have accused Bush of sending an assassin to kill them, that he really should send an assassin to do the job right. “Please” they said. But in all seriousness, so far there’s no apparent motive for these bombings in La Paz – no political agenda, no potential for income. I figure insanity can be his only cause. Leslie figures that with the whole killing people by bomb modus operandi, the kid must have been auditioning to be Bolivia’s next vicepresident, since that’s how our current vicepresident got the job – by bombing the American Embassy, killing the marine guards, back before the embassy was the fortress that it is today.

Also today in the news, we here in Bolivia are commemorating 127 years of having lost our sea coast to Chile. For some reason, Bolivia feels that they’re closer than ever to getting the sea back now that Chile and Bolivia both have socialist presidents. I don’t know – I’ve lived and worked in Chile and I know that they’re pretty proud of the fact that they whipped both Bolivia and Peru in that Pacific War of 1879 and I don’t believe that they’d give back any territory willingly. Plus, I’m pretty sure that the residents of Arica would not appreciate switching from being citizens of the richest, most developed country in South America to being citizens of the poorest and least developed. Further, it’s not clear to me, or to anyone with whom I speak, just which territory with a sea coast Bolivia might acquire from Chile. I hear them pushing for Arica – but Arica was Peruvian territory before the war. Would Chile give to Bolivia what used to be Peru’s? How would Peru feel about that? Or should Chile give Bolivia back Antofagasta, a chunk out of the middle of Chile, cutting Chile in two pieces? Then would Chile give Arica back to Peru also, just to tidy things up? And if Chile gave all that territory back to Peru and Bolivia, should they demand that Argentina give Chile back the territory on the other side of the Andes that Argentina annexed way back when? Is the goal to get back to the original configuration of the South American countries as originally drawn up at independence from Spain? But if that did happen, Bolivia would more than double in size, having lost over 50% of its original territory to various wars with all of their neighbors over the past couple hundred years.

Speaking of Chile and Argentina, attached is a photo that I took along the border between southern Chile and Argentina, that I took during our family's Christmas trip to the Chilean and Argentine patagonias. Amazing, isn't it?

Bolivia news March 22, 2006

Let me catch you up on some of our local news that probably didn’t make your local news:

This morning (Wednesday, March 22) I heard a large explosion at 7AM – I thought that maybe the Lost-the-Sea-to-Chile Day celebrations had kicked off a day early (the anniversary is the 23rd of March), but just in case I turned on the morning TV news report where I saw they were reporting on two huge bomb explosions last night in small local hotels around the bus station – the first explosion at 9:30PM last night which completely destroyed that hotel, and the second at 2AM this morning that only partially destroyed that hotel but broke out the windows of all the buildings on the block. The images on the TV and in the morning newspaper looked like Beirut in the 80’s. The different news reports on different channels have different stories – either an Arab man and a Uruguayan woman were arrested for the bombings, or it was a North American man and a Uruguayan woman. Why someone would bomb these poor little hotels is beyond me. On my way to work this morning I looked to see what had exploded in our neighborhood, but both the Hotel Calacoto and the Casa Grande were intact.

In the electric industry news, yesterday Evo approved the new “Dignity Tariffs” for electrical retail rates. These tariffs were first proposed by Carlos Mesa and offer nearly wholesale rates for everyone with a consumption of less than 75kWh/month, which means that nearly everyone in Bolivia except myself will be paying considerably less for their electricity. I’ve already run the financial analysis on our projects in Potosi at these rates and have determined that the utilities won’t be able to pay for more than 10% of their O&M costs, never mind anything for administration costs or even send out bills. I don’t know if the government is planning on subsidizing the utility’s operations out of the national treasury or what. Will the last person to leave the country please turn out the lights?

Also yesterday, Evo kicked off a new literacy campaign, utilizing Cuban instructors and instructional materials. I can see the materials now: “Look Dick, see Spot run. See Spot run from the evil capitalist. See how democracy has repressed Jane. See the evil democratic government exploit the workers through capitalism. See how Dick and Jane will be much happier once the socialist dictator has re-nationalized all of the industries privatized in the 90’s.” According to Evito, only Cuba and Venezuela have 100% literate populations, as opposed to the United States where they have some huge, unspecified percentage of illiterates. Now, I don’t argue that the US has its fair share of illiterate people, but I’d be willing to bet dollars to donuts that our percentage is a good deal lower than either Cuba or Venezuela. Speaking of Venezuela, the attached photo is of the Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez, with his wanna-be, Evo Morales. You'll note that Evito is sporting his infamous sweater that he wore to meet all of the heads of state on his pre-inaugural "Rainbow Tour" earlier this year.

Also this week, the government decreed a doubling of the minimum wage. According to the local captains of industry they will now be shutting down production and laying people off. And, according to my Bolivian friends who make more than the minimum wage, this increase also means that everyone’s income taxes will be significantly reduced because the tax rate is tied to the minimum wage, thereby reducing the income to the national treasury.

A little earlier this month, on the local political front here in Bolivia, the divide between the east and west got deeper and deeper. Evo and company wanted to convoke a constitutional convention but the folks from down east in Santa Cruz, Tarija, and Beni didn’t want the socialists to write the next constitution, so they wouldn’t support the convention. Without the eastern block, known locally as the crescent moon, Evo couldn’t rouse enough votes in congress to call the convention, so then he threatened to convoke street protests (as the president?) Meanwhile, the eastern block wanted a referendum on departmental (departments in Bolivia are like States) autonomy, but Evo said that those issues needed to be corrected in the constitution itself. So then, the eastern section of the country threatened to secede from the union if they didn’t get their way. And then, all of a sudden, one Monday morning congress announced that they’d come to an agreement on everything – they’re going to hold the referendum AND hold a constitutional convention next August 6th – just like that. Everyone agreed and everyone got their way. I’m so surprised that I almost don’t know what to think.

But then Bolivia lost their huge income from selling soy beans to Colombia because Colombia just signed the TLC (Free Trade Agreement) with the USA, so they’ll now be buying their soy beans from the USA for a much better price than Bolivia was offering. Bolivia, under this new government, so far has refused to even discuss never mind sign the TLC with the US government. In fact, since the US refused to issue visas to some of the newly elected MAS politicians because of their ties to terrorism, the Bolivian government officials refused to attend a reception that the US Ambassador held when some dignitary from the US was in town (I don’t know which – I was in Florida at the time.) So then the US was the only country not represented when the combined diplomatic corps held a reception in honor of Evo’s new presidency. So, the further we go along this year, the further apart the US and Bolivia become. And since the US has been Bolivia’s biggest financial supporter, over $150,000,000 last year, it’s going to hurt eventually. I’ll tell you, after watching Bolivian evening news for four years now, it’s always a shock to see the bad guys waving to the masses out the window of the presidential offices – for the past four years these guys were on the streets inciting riots and now for the past three months they’re on the inside. And speaking of having the bad guys in the presidential offices, this month I avoided a meeting with the new murdering terrorist vice-president – I begged off a meeting that Fernando arranged telling him that I thought that the presence of a gringo at the meeting would not help our company's future in Bolivia – after careful consideration he agreed.

And then, as if to underscore the widening divide between the US and Bolivia, Evito picked a fight with the US military. Apparently there was an anti-terrorist unit within the Bolivian military that was secretly formed after 9-11-2001 in which the US provided weapons, munitions, uniforms, training, etc, in exchange for getting to hand pick the leaders of the special unit – and was kept a secret until earlier this month when it was exposed by Evo himself. I assume that this type of deal is probably in place in most of our allied countries. Anyway, the US pulled the plug on this $500,000/year in funding when Evo changed the commander of the unit for one of his guys – one of his rabid anti-American guys. What’s more, according to my friend the military attaché, all of the new generals under this government are at least professing an anti-American stance – even the guys who were our friends under the former government – just to keep their jobs. What I’ve seen in the various ministries with which we deal is that all of Evo’s boys are anti-American. Anyway, the high-tech arms provided to the anti-terrorist unit were only loaned to Bolivia by the US, who has asked for their return, to which Evo has responded that he’s not giving them back and if the US tries to come and get them then Big Brother Hugo Chavez will protect us, since the Venezuelan army is constantly training to repel just such an American invasion.

On the bright side of the news, Bolivia’s new Chancellor continues to make us all laugh. His latest antics include:

1. A statement that the average life expectancy in Bolivia is 200 years. Boy, I’m never leaving Bolivia again.
2. A statement that coca is more healthy than milk and a recommendation that the school breakfasts make the switch. Unfortunately the Minister of Education declined the suggestion.
3. A rule that the qualification for being a diplomat from Bolivia is that the diplomat speaks Aymara. That should really help out the ambassadors from Bolivia to places like Germany, France, and the United States.

Work trips around Bolivia March 2006

On the work front this month, I made several trips around Bolivia, including trips to Trinidad, Oruro, Potosí, Sucre, and Cochabamba, to hold meetings with the newly elected governors (Prefectos) to verify that they were on-board with our on-going jointly funded rural electrification projects. We were curious because the new governors hadn’t made any payments toward the projects since taking office. Anyway, on our trip to Trinidad we had to fly Amazon Airlines since the national carrier, LAB, went out of business. Amazon is not my favorite airline since it only flies in fair weather, only has non-pressurized airplanes, and has crashed a couple of planes just since I’ve lived in Bolivia. This trip we flew on a Fairchild “Metro”, locally called the “cigarette” or “pencil” because it’s so skinny. I had to stoop over to walk down aisle and as I sat in my seat my head was right up against the roof (and I’m only 5'-6"); this plane has one seat on each side of the aisle, and is nine seats long. But we made the flights to and from Trinidad without incident. I was leery of this trip, since we’d been forewarned by our friends that it was a trap – we’d been advised that the governor didn’t just want to be informed about the status of our current on-going projects, but that there was a group of angry beneficiaries from a former project from back in the 90’s congregated and laying in wait to pressure us into forgiving the million dollars in counterpart payments that they never made (now we require that counterpart payments be made prior to initiating projects.) And sure enough, after we’d made our presentation to update the governor and departmental council on the status of our current project, in they came to yell and deride and criticize Fernando and I about some ancient projects that were executed before our time. After they were done we just left, letting them know that they’d wasted their time on us. And of course, since we were down in the tropics, I came home the next day with itchy puss-oozing bug bites up and down my legs. I just love working in the tropics.

For our trip to Potosí the next week we decided to travel overland – Potosí is too high and windy for airplanes to land there comfortably, so you have to fly to Sucre and drive to Potosí anyway. I was a little worried about the drive because the day before we traveled there had been three different blockades on the road between La Paz and Potosí – one demanding the release of the community leaders who stoned and then burned their mayor last year, one protesting a comment that the fish in Lake Titicaca are contaminated, and one demanding supplies for a local kindergarten. But according to the evening news report all of the conflicts were resolved so we decided to risk the trip. It was a very long and winding road, over 500km across the altiplano, but without event, until just 45km away from Potosí when we hit a major blockade. This blockade was to demand the replacement of their non-MAS party mayor with someone from the MAS. At the end of the line, just ahead of us, were the support vehicles for the US Ambassador and the head of USAID – but the diplomats themselves were nowhere to be seen. After hanging out for a while at the end of the several kilometer long line of stopped vehicles, we decided to drive up to the front of the blockade to see if we could find a way across – the time for our meeting was fast approaching. So we threaded our way between the stopped buses and trucks who parked so haphazardly that it seemed like they were part of the blockade until we got to the blockade itself. At the blockade, the campesinos were so thick that they not only massed on the road, but they were also spread out around the edges of the surrounding canyon walls so that they looked Sitting Bull’s braves surrounding Little Big Horn. Just as we got to the front of the line of stopped traffic, at the blockade itself, the blockaders let us through – as they waved us through it looked like they were laughing at us for having fallen into their trap.

There in Potosi we headed directly to the governor’s palace on the main plaza downtown. As we unpacked our laptops, data projector, and documents from our vehicle parked across the plaza from the governor’s palace, a big herd of protestors came marching past the front of the palace, complete with exploding sticks of dynamite. It turned out that they were teachers’ college students asking the governor to buy furniture for their college. After the march went past the front door and rounded the plaza, we took our chance to go in but found the palace locked up tight like the old Spanish fort that it is. Fortunately someone came along and showed us the emergency entrance around back where we had to wind our way into the palace through the narrow back passages, more like a crack in the wall. Inside the courtyard of the palace we passed a troop of heavily armored riot police – I guess in case the protestors succeeded in blasting open the front gates. Eventually we were shown in to the governor’s office. This US-educated newly elected governor is a member of the MAS party but was very cordial and accommodating in spite of my being a gringo and was very receptive to our presentation on our joint project. It was, however, somewhat distracting during our meeting to have the marchers congregated outside and chanting and yelling at us. That night, after our meetings, Fernando and I tried to leave town and drive to Oruro, where we had a meeting scheduled with that governor the next day, so we wouldn’t get stuck in any more blockades, but the blockade that had let us through earlier that day was back in place – apparently they had only opened the road for thirty minutes – so we had to turn around and sleep in Potosí.

We got up dark and early the next morning to see if we could run the blockade in the dark, by the light of a gorgeous full moon – but no such luck. The blockade was well manned all through the night with 500 campesinos and another 500 in reserve just off the hill. This darn blockade was strategically placed on the road through a canyon, so that the shortest detour around it would have taken over 12 hours to get to the next nearest city to La Paz (Cochabamba.) The blockaders in this area all wore their local uniform of either black or white pants, black jacket, red woven poncho, and these funky hats that you almost have to see to believe. The hats came in two layers – the bottom layer looked like a knit cap in the shape of a pointy dunce cap with ear flaps with little dingle balls hanging off the ears. On top of the knit cap was perched a white straw bowler style hat with a black ribbon hat band. And whereas Fernando and I shared a chuckle at the funny chapeaus, being stuck in the blockade was no fun. After sun up we decided to go forage for food, the benefit of being in a private vehicle instead of being stuck on a parked bus – we found a little store down the road a ways (back toward Potosí) that sold us some buns, a can of pâté, and a bottle of orange drink. When we drove back to the blockade we found the area hopping with pedestrians – people were getting off the buses, walking through the blockade, and then getting on the buses on the other side. As the buses filled up with their new passengers they turned around and went back to their points of origin, now destination. Some local boys were showing their entrepreneurial spirit by carting luggage back and forth in their wheelbarrows. After several hours of waiting, at around 10AM, the people still stuck behind the blockade started getting restless and started shouting at the blockaders to let us all through. A while later the blockaders got the party started in earnest by setting off a series of dynamite explosions – the blasts really reverberated off those canyon walls.

Several times over the course of the day Fernando walked up to the site of the blockaders to see what was happening – I chose to stay in the car since I didn’t think that I could pass for anything other than a gringo and I didn’t want to become a permanent “guest” of the blockaders, to be used as a bargaining chip later. Even so, Fernando tells me that I wasn’t invisible to blockaders who walked by – he said that there was a stir among the blockaders about the gringo sitting in a car working on a laptop. Fernando carried my camera with him and acted like a press photographer and took a few photos of the blockade and blockaders. At around 11:00 a host of blockaders came storming up to our car – that was a bit disconcerting, but I didn’t let it show. As it turned out they weren’t coming for me – they were coming for the taxis that were picking up passengers who had walked across the blockades. First they chased away most of the taxis, brandishing big sticks – Fernando, who got up close to where he could hear what they were saying, reported that they were berating the taxi drivers for gouging the passengers crossing the blockade on foot. Then they took one taxi driver (who was rumored to be the brother of one of the local politicians) and his car prisoner – we didn’t see him again. At noon we observed a pickup drive up to the blockade and serve the blockaders a nice lunch of soup and bread and then a dessert of coca and alcohol.

The scariest event in the day was just after I’d used up the batteries in my laptop and was reading the Old Testament when all of a sudden I heard shouting and running and looked up and saw the blockaders stationed up on the hill throwing rocks down at the people walking across the blockade. As the rocks rained down, the people were running and shouting – I saw at least four people with bloody head wounds run by. Since Fernando was out scouting just then, I started scooting over to the driver’s seat so I could drive the car out of the way of the flying rocks. But just then I looked up through the windshield and saw this huge rock flying straight for me. Too late, I thought. Fortunately, Bolivians are all soccer players and not baseball players and the rock fell a couple of feet short of the car – it shattered on impact with the pavement and fragments bounced up and rattled around on the windshield and hood of the car, but without enough force to break anything. Then the blockaders came running after everyone, chasing them with big sticks. One young guy stuck his head into my window and cursed at me – I couldn’t understand him through his thick Aymara accent except for the cuss words. Shortly after the dust settled Fernando came back and told me that the blockaders were mad because some of the women pedestrians had given them a good cussing, which prompted the hail of stones.

After waiting a few hours more (there was a rumor that the blockade would be lifted by 2:00PM) we decided to head back the opposite direction, back to Potosí, and from there to Sucre, and then on to Cochabamba. Between Potosí and Sucre we noticed a large congregation of campesinos along the road and jokingly commented that they were probably getting ready to set up another roadblock, hence totally isolating the city of Potosí. Ha ha. But we made it to Sucre without incident. For the next leg, the road between Sucre and Cochabamba was under construction/repair, so it was only open after 5:00 in the evening, so there was no sense in trying that route any earlier. The mostly unpaved road was very long, winding, dusty, bumpy, and boy did I get car sick – the Dramamine that I had taken at 4AM that morning was well and truly worn off before we got anywhere near Cochabamba. It was also over 600km to Cochabamba – we finally arrived to our hotel at about 12:30AM. I was still so sick even the next morning that I couldn’t even eat breakfast (which is my favorite meal of the day.) Since we had a meeting with the Prefecto of Cochabamba that evening, we took advantage of working there that day. I worked with my local engineer, Percy, who lives there while Fernando had a series of meetings. Percy told us that we were lucky to get out Potosí when we did since the campesinos set up a blockade of the road between Potosí and Sucre right after we made that drive. Whew.

After working in Cochabamba all day we had our meeting with the Prefecto at 6:30 that evening. We introduced ourselves and explained several ideas for projects to which the Prefecto was very receptive. Finally, at about 8:30 that evening we headed for La Paz. It was all smooth sailing until just over halfway back to La Paz we ran into a major blockade on the highway. Fortunately we could observe that several trucks were making their way cross-country around the blockade, so we followed them. But just a couple of miles up the hill we ran into another blockade which had been set up to catch those who were going around the main one. Fortunately, Fernando was able to negotiate a price with these guys and we bought our way through – we were told that we had to drive with our lights off – thank heavens for the full moon. A few miles later, when we got to a bridge on the little road, we found a gaggle of campesinos blockading there too – they said that they had built that bridge and needed to take care of it. Fernando asked them if 10Bs ($1.25) would help maintain that bridge – they said yes – and we rolled on our way. Our little detour around the blockaded highway took us to Oruro, at least two hours out of our way, so we ended up getting home at 2AM this morning, after making a trek of over 1600km. The next day we learned that the miners from Oruro blockaded the highway to La Paz, so we narrowly avoided being stranded in Oruro, which, like Potosi, doesn’t have a commercial airport.

Word from people who know is that these blockades are being organized and funded by the MAS party, in order to pressure the recently elected non-MAS mayors into resigning their posts in favor of a successor from the MAS party. Also, it’s interesting to note that Evito has proposed a law that would allow him to appoint any new Prefecto in the case that one of the elected Prefectos were to die or resign. I think it’s obvious that the MAS is working in an organized and concerted fashion to consolidate all of the power in their party. When that is complete I look for a new law allowing Evo to stay in office indefinitely, ala Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

Flashback: Carnaval 2006 in Cochabamba

Cochabamba is in central Bolivia and is famous for its eternal spring weather – and it was certainly nice for us during our three days and three nights there. We’ve been meaning to visit Cochabamba for four years now, but something has always come up – usually road blockades – so we decided to just fly there this time before we missed it permanently. Since it was a holiday weekend all of the museums were closed, which made Les and me sad and the kids happy. ?! So we had to content ourselves with lounging around the pool and watching cable TV at the hotel and frequenting the bowling alley (the only one in Bolivia) across the street from the hotel (I’m sad to report that my bowling scores are only about half of what they were about 20 years ago when I used to bowl once in a while.) And, since it was Carnaval, all of the kids in town were out throwing water balloons at each other, passing vehicles, and innocent pedestrians. The boys especially targeted cute girls, and my little blondies felt particularly picked on – so it was hard to walk anywhere – we ended up taking a lot of taxis where we normally would have just walked. One of the local sites that was not closed for the holiday was the 33-meter-high (plus a “little bit”) statue of Jesus on a hill overlooking Cochabamba (the “little bit” was to trump the 33-meter tall statue in Rio.) We were able to bypass climbing the 1250 steps up the hill by taking the cable car up to the top. We went on Sunday morning, after church, so we could take advantage of the fact that on Sunday they open the statue so that you can go up inside it and climb to the top for an extra high view of the city. Finally, we came home on Tuesday night – we count this as another successful trip because we all made it home with all of our luggage.

On the political front here in Bolivia, our new president, Evito, has established a work pace that even he can’t maintain. Convinced that politicians are lazy and don’t work hard enough (I really can’t argue with him there) he started his term by working from 6AM until 8PM every day, and most of the government agencies have tried to keep pace. But finally he broke down and got sick – it turns out that his body needs rest just like the rest of us. Maybe this experience will help him gain a little wisdom and he’ll learn that an 8-10 hour work day should be sufficient if he’s just a little bit efficient in his work practices. In fact, that’s been one of my biggest irritants while working here in Bolivia – the locals who think that a good worker has to work until all hours of the night instead of working efficiently through the day. I know that at my office I get more work done between the hours of 8 and 5 than the rest of the crew together gets done even though they stay at the office late into the evening. Everyone here needs to learn that working late doesn’t mean you’re working smart. Anyway, it’s also been interesting to see all of the Cuban and Venezuelan “advisors” that have been placed in all of the governmental agencies with this new government. Remind me – what country is this? And what decade is this? Does no one remember the collapse of communism and the exposure of its complete failure as an economic system? Does no one realize that the former Soviet States are all worse off than Bolivia is and that they’re nothing to be emulated? And speaking of which, it’s been interesting to see how vogue it has become to have gotten your engineering degree in the USSR or in Cuba – engineers who have hidden that fact in the past are bringing it out now as if it were something of which to be proud. Of course, I never miss an opportunity to remind them of the sorry state of the former Soviet power systems – my company has been called upon to sort out more than one (Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and now Tajikistan.)