Open veins

Colonial backlash

Through the grainy print, I could just make out three men in suits and hats haughtily bristling their guns. At their feet were a line of indigenous men and women on their knees, heads bowed, the gaunt look of humiliation etched on their faces. Beneath the photo the caption: “Capture of savages in Santiago de Chiquitos,1883.”

I meant to challenge the gentle motherly museum owner in the small village in the eastern region of Bolivia about the inscription, but shamefully didn’t. My silence scratched at my conscience for a few days like an infected insect bite.
 
What I never expected though was to see a similar image live on TV a month later. Yet three nights ago, I sat sickened and disturbed as I watched a line of campesinos kneeling, their shirts stripped off, forced into mumbling chants against Evo and in favour of Sucre whilst a gang of students deliriously shouted racist insults.

Colonialism in the UN

“A special reference must be made to another well-known doctor in Cuzco who was most sincerely convinced that coca-chewing was disastrous to the Indian…. He explained the habit in the following way: ´The Indian is racially an oligophrenic [mentally deficient]… coca leaf makes him forget his difficulties, but at the same time damages his moral personality. He becomes dirty, smelly, negligent. This closes him out of society and he is looked down upon by mestizos and whites.” (United Nations Commission of Enquiry on the coca leaf, 1950 )

Now you could perhaps dismiss this quote approvingly noted in the report of the UN commission on coca in 1950 as typical of that time. Coca as you will probably know is chewed daily by millions of people in the Andes and is considered a sacred leaf in indigenous cultures.

But did you know that these quotes are still the main theoretical basis for a report by the UN’s International Narcotics Drugs Board’s (INCB) annual report released today in which it called on “the Governments of Bolivia and Peru to initiate action without delay with a view to eliminating uses of coca leaf, including coca leaf chewing and production of coca tea”?

Social catharsis

The man, his dark lined skin contrasting with the brightness of his multicoloured andean hat, swayed treacherously. The room span. I put out my hands to catch him as he slumped onto me.  A woman in a velvet-red pollera (basket like skirt) shouted in Quechua and started to push him as he got to his feet. He seemed to be trying to gather a little clarity in a drunken swirl to push her back.

A couple of people rushed forward to try and separate them but found themselves caught up in the spinning alcoholic blur, falling into two distinct piles of rubbled clothing. Strangely next to them, two pretty women with long black plaits, beautiful polleras and embroidered blouses seemed completely unruffled by the incident, not losing a step as they continued dancing, their shiny shoes changing colour to merge with the mud on the floor.

Alcohol as you can might have gathered from this blog is a very present part of Andean culture here. And most of all it can be guaranteed at any festival, which in Bolivia are very plentiful. Of course for most cultures, the dependence on alcohol is true, something my mum can attest to in her work with people (mainly young men) with alcohol abuse problems in Birmingham. In fact I can guarantee an email of concern from her anytime I even mention alcohol on this blog. I think she has some kind of cross atlantic empathy with my liver that I don't even have.

So the alcohol fuelled sprawl perhaps could be seen as not much different to a punch-up as pubs spill out in most British cities. Alcohol universally can become cover-ups for empty lives, for boredom and frustration, for a desire for escapism that can then descend into addiction, violence and destruction of peoples' lives.

Yet the drunken squall I witnessed took place at one of the most important annual festivals in a stunningly beautiful agricultural-based village  in the hills above Cochabamba. Undoubtedly tough and at times precarious lives lead to drink, but I can't help wondering whether alcohol and festivals also have other social purposes that go far beyond a good time that sometimes gets out of control.

Learning to listen II

I am reading a book transcribed from interviews with Don Policarpio Flores Apaza, an Amawt'a (a traditional Andean spiritual leader) whose knowledge and understanding of the cosmos, agriculture, medicines and living fully is much richer than you could get from any formal education. Maybe he has never even heard the words global warming, but his depth of listening doesn't depend on reports by the International Panel on Climate Change.

"The ayllu (Andean community) is the meeting place of many people with a feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood; the ayllu is also union with Pacha mama (mother earth), with the plants and animals, it therefore doesn't depend on politics or religion, just a big heart. Our grandparents had a big heart and used to walk with a sure step because they talked with Pacha mama, with the stars, with the flowers, that's why they didn't make mistakes…

"But today Pacha mama is crying. The cars, airplanes are contaminating the earth and the air, are destroying the earth and if we don't listen to the stars, the river, the mountains and all Pacha Mama's messages, we will have nothing to eat. Even the birds are talking to us, the flowers, the insects, the plants. Today we have to listen to them."

Unravelling racism

"So how are you?" I asked the gently wrinkled man, in brown suit and 80s style NHS-style glasses, who was sat next to me on the bench in the central square of Sucre.
"I am okay, but things are changing," he muttered darkly. "The Indians are rising up."
"I know it's great, isn't it," I replied chirpily.
"No it isn't," he almost spat. "They should know their place."
"But aren't we all equal," I protested.
"That's a communist idea," he retorted.

He hurriedly left the bench, afraid perhaps of contaminating himself with dangerously-subversive ideas. Sadly it gave me no time to ask whether he did not have indigenous roots as most Bolivians do and his dark-coloured skin indeed suggested.

His comment reminded me of my visit the night before to the Constituent Assembly where I watched a debate on whether the Constitution should be "originario" or not (ie start from scratch or be derivative based on existing powers). As I listened to the debate, I was struck by the marked division between the mainly-indigenous make-up of the parties of the left and the suited, more mestizo (mixed-race) representatives of the right.

But in a starker mirror image, the division was even clearer in the public galleries. Crammed together on the left side of the gallery, stood a large group of  indigenous campesinos who have arrived from across the country to monitor whether the Assembly is delivering on their demands. They stood sullenly chewing coca and intensely focused on the speeches. Opposite them as if from a different world, a group of young white-skinned politics students from Santa Cruz lounged around in the latest European and American fashions only half-listening to the debate and more than half-flirting with each other.

Both seemed to keep the maximum distance between themselves. Below in the chamber as the clock reached midnight and I headed back to my hotel, the debate seemed equally stuck in starkly different positions.

Patrimony

"I notice you keep talking about patrimony and common goods. What do you actually mean?" said the lanky floppy-haired man at the back of the packed dimly-lit room in the centre of Leeds. It was a good question.

I had been translating the words "patrimonio" and "bienes comunes" for several days and hadn't really thought that they are hardly everyday expressions in England.

The question came on Day Five of a tour of Britain by Oscar Olivera, a Bolivian social movement leader who successfully helped lead resistance against privatisation of water in Cochabamba in 2000.  A small quietly-spoken man in his forties with a now trademark mao-style hat, Oscar nevertheless conveys with great passion the desire for radical economic and social change in Bolivia.

Oscar Olivera is something of an icon in the alternative-globalisation movement due to his identification with one of the first successful reversal of privatisations in the world. I hardly knew him in Bolivia, but after six days on the road together helping to translate, I came to admire Oscar for his humbleness, thoughtful reflections, gentle sense of humour and his tireless commitment to raising awareness of Bolivia in my mother-country, Britain. Over a week, we spent most of the time constantly on the move, sleeping in lots of different beds, finishing at 1am and up at 7am, eating crap food far away from his home and family and yet he never looked even mildly pissed off.

I hadn't thought about the translation I did of patrimony and common goods, because they are words I have constantly heard in Bolivia. Oscar was speaking a language that you hear on the streets whenever resources like gas or water are mentioned.  They can certainly be easily translated literally but to really understand them you need to understand the context in which those words have become part of people's language here. For the fact they are words that have disappeared from our language but are vibrant in Bolivia tells you more about both countries then you would first imagine.

Basilia

Her shower-wet hair spread out like a black curtain. "I am practicing for when I am in Spain," Basilia smiled. "You are not allowed to wear your hair in plaits there or wear the pollera, blouse or shawl." My friend Bill protested: "Where did you hear that? That's not true. You can wear what you like..." I tried hard to imagine Basilia without her two long dark plaits, pleated basket-like skirt (polera) and colourful blouses.

Two weeks ago, 25-year-old Basilia told me that she was going to Spain. She had been promised a good job working with a family in Madrid. Her round face, which seems to always bear an infectious smile, beamed as she talked of the new opportunities, the friends and family she already knows there, the chance to make more money then she could ever make in Bolivia. For someone who has never been out of Bolivia, she seemed remarkably unafraid. "I can save some money and then come back," she said.

Basilia will be joining the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people who uproot from their countries to seek new opportunities abroad. She gave a face to the waves of moving humanity whose stories are nearly always lost in newspaper headlines of "immigration floods."

Thankfully, unlike many, she won't be crossing perilous sea strips in precarious fragile boats or trying to steal across barbed-wire hostile frontiers designed to protect the unjust wealth of the rich.

However as I thought about what she had said about supposed laws against certain clothes, it made me realise her friends were no doubt referring to the unwritten laws of racism where prejudice feeds on cultural differences, where a beautiful pollera becomes an excuse for suspicion and hatred.

I asked her what she thought about not wearing the traditional indigenous dress. "All right," she said. "I like it because it's comfortable but I can get used to not wearing it." I kept quiet, hoping that Spain would not unravel her identity and return her safely back to Bolivia still full of her lightness of spirit.

Presente

“I never dreamed that I would be here,” said Evo Morales as he wore his Presidential sash and gazed out over tens of thousands of celebrating indigenous peoples, throngs of foreign journalists, and over-the-moon MAS party activists.

When he cried as the sash was put on, you believed him too – as did many in the crowds and even hardened hacks in the press centre as a few of them wept (or at least snivelled) too.

“We have waited for more than 500 years. But the suffering and the struggles were not in vain. We are now present. We have shown that indigenous people too can be Presidents. We are now here to change our history,” he cried out as the nation turned to listen and watch.

Bridge apart

Well, I am glad to say that the overwhelming response from my poll is that you would like me to write more about Bolivia's indigenous people.  Ok, so it wasn't, but bad luck... that's what I am going to write about. I will probably write about my love-life soon :)

It's almost the first place you end up as a tourist here. An old colonial church backed onto a cobbled street full of divey, musty-mattressed hostels, dreadlocked gringos wearing silly hats and elderly men shiftily trying to sell you fossils.

It's a church bound to the history of La Paz. It was built in 1548, a year before the city of La Paz was formally set up. The city was given a religious name, Nuestra Señora de La Paz, and was established on the site of an Aymaran village in order to access gold found in the Choqueapu river which ran alongside the church. Religion and greed as ever combined unashamedly.

San Francisco church now looks slightly out of place, its brickwork and jumble of statues visibly greying with the exhaust thrown up by hundreds of minibuses racing past. Outside the front courtyard of the church, indigenous women cram the pavement selling finger-puppets, peach-juice and bowls with large bones floating unappetisingly above an unquantifiable soup.

Rewind the clock back a few centuries, and the view would have been slightly different. The church of San Francisco at the time backed onto the indigenous part of La Paz. In front, instead of a packed dual carriage-way crammed with beeping minibuses, it had a bridge that stretched out across a now hidden-river into the Spanish quarter of La Paz.

But this wasn't a bridge bringing together two cultures. It was more like an an escape route in and out of indigenous Bolivia for the Spanish elite. Because strangely the church, which was exclusively for Spanish worshippers, had been built in the indigenous quarter. Indigenous people who had built the church were not even allowed through the main door, let alone permitted to freely cross the bridge.

Bringing Internet back down to earth

Naranjito village had clearly changed little since it was founded over 80 years ago. Its straw and mud houses lay scattered amongst dry brushland, dogs and pigs scratched around in the dust next to a small school, charcoal-black pans swung in the wind next to kerosene lamps.

I was here to help put a documentary together on the role of the Internet in land conflicts, but this village didn't even have electricity let alone instant messenger. What relevance could the Internet have here?

My initial impressions were confirmed when I started talking to Don Agustin, a young man of my age who showed us around. His large sweater depicting a giant cartoon pooh bear eating honey, seemed to contradict his eminent position as village leader. When I asked him about the Internet during a filmed interview in a small glade, he was quite threatened and defensive. He stumbled out words about people who try and confuse them by using technical phrases. I felt awkward and embarrassed as if I had deliberately humiliated him.

But then I turned to Felipe (pictured above), who came from the village and had been trained in use of computers and the difference was remarkable. Initially he looked a bit puzzled too when I said my name, before we both realised that he had heard NIT rather than Nick. NIT is the national tax reference number and has caused a few people to think I am a tax officer in gringo disguise.

However when I asked about his experience of training, his face lit up. "It was amazing," he beamed. "I suddenly had access to all this information from all over the world. I could even read newspapers online." The internet had opened up a window onto a world.