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September 12, 1998
La Paz journal, Day 3
Hi everyone. Here's the latest installment of my journal High Plains Backpacker, which covers my September 98 trip to Peru and Bolivia.
This episode: La Paz, Day 3.
And please excuse any typos or minor errors, especially with my Spanish. I'm still editing the text.
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Thursday, Sept 10
La Paz: March of the Cocaleros
Susanne and I both had a hard time sleeping last night thanks to the infections we developed back in Cusco. My sinus infection seemed to be improving, but Susanne's cold still hadn't bottomed out yet. Because there was a good chance our Tiwanaku tour would be cancelled again due to the protester's roadblock of the main road, I let Susanne sleep in while I checked with the hotel front desk. Before I could even get the question out of my mouth, one of the women behind the counter shook her head and said, "I am so sorry... The protesters are still blockading the road to Tiwanaku, so there will be no tour today. I am sure you will be able to go tomorrow - the protests never last this long." If they've never lasted this long, I thought to myself, it seems like they're already breaking new ground. I had a bad feeling tomorrow wouldn't be much better.
Katrina, the freckly faced desk attendent, was also working that morning so I asked her if she could help me out with a trip to the pharmacist. "Your friend isn't feeling well this morning?" she asked. "No problem. Tell me her symptoms and I will write them down. My father is a pharmacist, you know." Katrina then proceeded to walk me through a medical consult: "Is she coughing a lot? Is the cough coming from her throat or from her lungs? How long has she had the cough?" And so on, as she scribbled notes in Spanish on a slip of paper. "Take this to a pharmacy and they will get you what you need. He will probably give you some cough syrup and some Contac."
Armed with the medical confidence supplied by a Bolivian pharmacist's daughter, I walked down the road to the local pharmacy. As I walked in I noticed a man sweeping the floor, with several chairs turned upside down on a counter. The man gave me a stern look and pointed at the clock on the wall; I concluded he wouldn't open until 9 o'clock. That gave me 45 minutes to walk down to a cafe and get some breakfast. The Lonely Planet recommended the Cafe Torino, about a block down the hill from Plaza Murillo. Cafe Torino was a spacious split-level cafe adjacent to the Hotel Torino and its ritzy restaurant. I ate the resident Desayuno Americano, a platter of toast, eggs, coffee and orange juice, as I was serenaded by a radio playing classic 80s pop: The Bangles, Journey, Culture Club. Before I even finished my coffee I knew that the squealing voice of Steve Perry singing "Don't Stop Believing" would haunt me for the rest of the morning.
After cashing a traveler's cheque I stopped at a bakery for some croissants before returning to the hotel. Considering the mediocre experience we had at the Republica's "restaurant" I figured Susanne would appreciate the fresh bread. I stocked up on half a dozen small croissants for three bolivianos. It was now around 9:30am, so that meant I could go to the pharmacy and pick up the cold supplies for Susanne. The old pharmacist who had shooed me off earlier now welcomed me with a bright "Buenos dias, se?or... Como esta?" I handed him the slip of paper that Katrina had written, hoping the note would make him realize I spoke practically no Spanish. Nevertheless he immediately started to quiz me about her symptoms in Spanish. "Uhh.... Yo hablo Espanol solamente poquito," I stuttered, hoping that made sense. I pointed to my throat and made a gutteral noise - a feigned phlegmatic spasm that I hoped would convey some meaning. "Ok, ok," the pharmacist said, thumbing through the drugs on his wall. I continued my theater of the afflicted routine with some wheezes and a sinusoidal snort, to which the man gave me another "Ok," as if he needed no more demonstrations in order to make his diagnosis. Eventually he returned to the counter and handed me a bottle of purple cough syrup and several packets of Contac cold medicine, just as Katrina had originally suggested.
By the time I returned to Hostal Republica Susanne was up and around, sitting by the bed and reviewing her journal. I handed her the pills and the cough medicine, which she swallowed immediately. My stomach twisted as I watched her consume the purple liquid. "Ugh," I said with a grimace, "I don't know how you can drink that stuff so easily." "It tastes pretty good," she replied, licking the spoon clean. The sight of her drinking the syrup put an awful taste in my mouth, so I quickly suggested we get some coffee at the hotel restaurant.
Our bag of croissants sprawled on the table, we enjoyed our coffees as a group of British backpackers settled in for breakfast. Wondering about last night's ceremony at Plaza Murillo, we asked them if they knew if any British VIP was in town. "What'd they look like?" one of them asked. "Middle age, grey hair, overweight," I started to reply. "Well, then," another one of them cut me off, smiling. "Whoever it was, they definitely sound like one of ours."
After nibbling on several of the croissants Susanne and I left the hotel, heading for Plaza Murillo. As we approached the plaza we heard a series of police whistles accompanied by clapping. Down the hill to our left, we saw a procession of some sort making its way down Avenida Potosi, surrounded by a large crowd of pedestrians. Excited about the possibility of witnessing a protest march, I ran down the hill, holding my camera in my right hand to avoid having it swing arbitrarily around my neck. As we reached the crowd we realized it was a student protest - not college students, mind you, but primary and secondary students. Hundreds of uniformed children marched silently down the avenida. Many of them were holding elaborate standards representing their schools, while others carried simple cardboard placards. From what I could figure out, it appeared they were protesting the amount of federal funds (or lack thereof) earmarked for education. Based on this assumption, Susanne and I were both rather surprised: "Can you imagine US students striking for a day to protest the quality of their education?" Susanne remarked. Several well-armed policemen separated the crowd from the protesters, lining the stree with wooden barricades. The whole scene struck me as unusual. Like it or not, "free expression" wasn't the first thing that came to mind when I thought of Bolivia. The recent end of years of military repression had turned the circumstances around, I guess.
After the tail end of the procession passed us Susanne and I returned uphill, arriving at Plaza Murillo before continuing down Calle Commercio's pedestrian mall. Commercio once again was teeming with shoppers, though today it seemed there were many more soldiers than there had been the evening before. In fact, the soldiers were all standing around with large metal barricades stacked up at each street corner. Susanne and I looked at each other: what was going on? Neither of us could tell if these security forces were here under extraordinary circumstances or if this was de rigeur for downtown La Paz. Certainly the local civilians weren't going to give up the secret easily. Apart from the two of us, every other pedestrian ignored the security squads as if they were a pair of street cops noshing on a box of donuts.
I was really struck by this nonchalance, this lack of concern towards the security police. In so many western countries, especially the United States, this show of force would be seen only in an emergency, such as a riot or a terrorist threat. Even in Israel, where armed security forces are common throughout Jerusalem's Old City, there's a palpable tension in the air, a sense of paranoia in which any civilian could actually be a terrorist. But here in La Paz it was different. No one seemed even slightly phased by the heavy police presence. To the uninitiated, the streets of La Paz seemed like martial law, but to the locals it was just the way things were.
As we approached the Avenida Santa Cruz section of the Prado, more police officers were standing around with barricades, though this time the barricades were actually in place to redirect traffic. Perhaps the student protesters had looped around the downtown area and were returning to Plaza San Francisco. Then again, perhaps it was an entirely different protest. Either way we'd soon find out. Once we reached Avenida Santa Cruz it became readily apparent what was going on: hundreds of campesinas and campesinos were staging a sit-in along the Prado! I almost couldn't believe my eyes - the biggest thoroughfare in La Paz was completely shut down by the protest. Susanne and I immediately removed our lens caps from our cameras. "If we get separated I'll meet you in front of the church," I said to Susanne. It was time to play photojournalist.
There were several thousand people scattered along the Prado and Plaza San Francisco. On the avenida itself, small groups of Aymara women squatted on the pavement, chatting with each other, weaving cloth, chewing coca leaves. It was as if a large village market had been magically transported from the countryside into the center of La Paz. Many of the women held checkered rainbow flags - the symbol of the Altiplano's indigenous peoples. Aymara men soon arrived, dumping baskets of dried coca leaves onto the pavement. These were the cocaleros - Bolivia's traditional coca farmers. Coca farming is a sensitive subject in Bolivia, for coca is cultivated for legal, personal use as well as for illegal processing into cocaine. In some parts of Bolivia, like the Yungas region, most of the coca is grown for legal purposes. But in other districts, like Chapare, the vast majority of coca goes into the cocaine trade. These cocaleros had marched hundreds of miles from Chapare to protest President Banzer's coca eradication policies. Because American aid to Bolivia is pegged to Banzer's destruction of illegal coca crops, Banzer has aggressively complied with these conditions.
To the cocaleros, most of whom are dreadfully poor and uneducated, eradication has lead to more suffering. In many cases Bolivian anti-drug raids have destroyed coca crops (and any other crops nearby) without offering any kind of crop replacement assistance to the farmers, leaving the cocaleros destitute. In other cases, crop replacement policies have completely flopped. One reason farmers cultivate coca is because it isn't perishable: once you dry out the leaves they're good for months. However, if you want to farm bananas or other perishable fruit, you've got a limited amount of time in which you can bring your produce to market. Unfortunately, many cocaleros are so poor they can't afford anything more than a donkey cart, so transporting an entire fruit crop to market before it spoils is next to impossible. On top of all this, the cocaleros charge that Banzer's anti-drug squads have used force as a tactic against many farmers, killing some cocaleros in the process. So while the US and the Banzer government view coca eradication as a necessary step in the war on drugs, the Aymara cocaleros see it as a violent attack on the only way of life they've ever known. To date there has been no solution that has proved satisfactory to both sides.
I walked the length of the avenida, observing the campesinas as they settled into their groups along the asphalt. On several occasions I noticed people selling food, drinks and newspapers to the campesinas as if they were hocking beer and peanuts at a baseball game. Apparently the campesinas weren't planning to go away anytime soon. Beyond the Prado, along the upper part of Plaza San Francisco, hundreds of protestors were hanging off a marble wall, unfurling Aymara flags and large placards reading "Banzer=DEATH," "Banzer Stands for the Yankees," "Police Forces: Leave Chapare!" and (literally) "Yanqui Go Home!" It was a different crowd here, largely younger and dressed in jeans instead of traditional Aymara costumes. Perhaps they were students supporting the cocaleros.
I soon spotted Susanne, who was on the plaza just across from the Iglesia San Francisco. Beyond her I could see a column of protesters marching up the Prado, shouting slogans, waving more flags and placards. I got Susanne's attention to let her know where I was before darting into the march, walking backwards to get some pictures. Susanne motioned to me as if to say, "Is that a good idea?," to which I responded with my own wave of the hand to reply, "Don't worry about it." I was positive that I would be fine this time, but Susanne certainly had good reason to worry: less than 20 years earlier at this same spot, Bolivian military helicopters opened fire on a protest, killing hundreds of demonstrators. But things were different now, I hoped; today would not be the day I became collateral damage caught in an accidental crossfire.
I continued to snap pictures of the marchistas. Men held their flags high when they saw I had a camera. I probably could have spent all afternoon here but realized that five rolls of protestor photos would quickly begin to look alike. As I left the march one of the campesinos handed me a leaflet outlining their cause and their demands. On the back of the leaflet I found a series of slogans highlighted in bold, uppercase letters:
LA LUCHA ES DE TODOS! FUERA TROPAS DEL CHAPARE! DIOLOGO CON LOS COCALEROS S?, BRUTALIDAD POLICIAL NO!
MARCHISTAS POR LA VIDA, COCA, SOBERANIA, TIERRA Y TERRITORIO
THE FIGHT IS FOR ALL OF US! GO AWAY, THE TROOPS IN CHAPARE! DIOLOGUE WITH THE COCALEROS YES, POLICE BRUTALITY NO!
MARCHISTAS FOR LIFE, COCA, SOVEREIGNTY, EARTH AND TERRITORY
I soon returned to Susanne's spot along the Prado to see what she wanted to do next. "Let's walk up by the protestors along the marble wall then head back towards the Witches' Market," she suggested. We crossed the plaza and arrived at the upper end of the hill, where the well-dressed college students were staging their support protest. Susanne and I both began to take pictures as one of the students yelled over to us, "Norte Americanos?"
"S?," I replied, "Estados Unidos."
"USA!" he yelled back, smiling and waving us over to take more pictures. The next thing we knew, several of them came up to us and were encouraging us to join them for a group photo. Susanne and I looked at each other grimly, wondering what we were getting ourselves into. "Ah, so what," I said. "I'm sure the DEA won't mind." As we handed them our cameras, the protesters offered us some props - for me, a campesino flag and a large handful of coca leaves. Susanne, to her chagrin, was draped in a large, green plastic coca leaf. Susanne stared back at me, giving me a "what the hell are we getting ourselves into?" look. I could only laugh as she donned the coca costume. Before we could even think of changing our minds they took a group photo of us, surrounded by dozens of protestors holding up signs proclaiming "Todos Somos Cocaleros" - "We Are All Cocaleros." The crowd of protesters roared in approval. One of them handed the camera back to Susanne so she could get a closeup of me with the checkered rainbow flag of the Aymara and the handful of coca. As Susanne removed her coca costume I offered to return the coca to one of the students. "No, no," he said, shaking his head. "Your souvenir." He folded a small Todos Somos Cocaleros sign into an envelope and handed it to me. "Gracias," I replied, stuffing the stash into the paper.
"Remind me to get rid of this before we return to DC," I said to Susanne as we parted company with the protestors. We both shook our heads and laughed.
Posted by acarvin at September 12, 1998 12:59 PM
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