La Paz, Bolivia July 4-8, 1979
July 4, 1979: Sue has taken wing and I’m now here in La Paz on my own. Well, not quite. Just before she left we met a couple of British guys – so they all got along famously of course, making hilarious jokes about life in jolly olde. Andrew and David are in South America on a ‘gap year’ – a distinctly British custom of taking a year off before ‘uni’, or at some point during ‘uni’, to round out one’s education by traveling. What a great idea! They actually started their trip in Canada in June, crossing from east to west, and then came down through the western USA and Mexico. We all compared notes about the places we’ve been – our favourites, our least favourites, and our ‘I’ll never go back there agains’. They’re in the same hotel, in a room on the same floor as me, which last night turned out to be most fortuitous.
Because... last night, at around 2 am, I had another nocturnal ‘visit’ by the Bolivian police. They call themselves ‘Interpol’, and act the part – well armed, nasty and threatening. There were four of them, and after hammering on my door, demanding I ‘open up’, barged into my room and started looking through my things. What I was most afraid of, apart from just their presence, was that they would plant drugs in my belongings. It’s a well-known tactic – both here and in several other countries – Guatemala and Columbia in particular. So I started yelling, which resulted in several gringos, including David and Andrew coming to my rescue. They helped keep an eye on what the ‘Interpol’ guys were doing, and provided very welcome moral support.
It’s become pretty clear that the Bolivian government does not want us gringos here. And for my part, I have to admit I am finding it more and more difficult to enjoy being here. Between the macho-male harassment – cat-calling, whistling, suggestive gestures, etc. – and the police surveillance, I am feeling oppressed. The hardships and inconveniences of traveling seem to be outnumbering the wonders and joys. I am no longer really enjoying being a traveler in this land. This morning as I was walking downtown, I passed by a store with big plate glass windows. And I saw my reflection in them. What I saw – a woman hunched over, folded in on herself, her head and eyes downcast – made me feel unspeakably sad. What had happened to that bold, self-confident, adventure-seeking woman? That reflection, that image, galvanized in a decision that I have already acted upon – I have booked a ticket home. It’s time to rest, recover, rejuvenate and reclaim the self I was and want to be.
I know I will miss the many-coloured, many-skirted, fantastically hatted, waddling indigenous women carrying god only knows what all on their backs in their day-glo stripey mantas, and attended by at least one little dark-eyed doll-child, just as colourfully dressed. They are like a sprinkling of wild-flowers amidst the fields and fields of sombre-suited La Pazian business men, and women. I will miss being able to hop a bus, truck or train to travel, albeit usually not very comfortably, to those little towns where live these amazing people with their always smiles and their utterly incomprehensible lives. I will even miss being pestered by vendadores, young and old, like the little boy today, who managed to sell me, because he was so damn cute, a hand-carved chess set, who fairly glowed when I gave him a hundred pesos after we’d agreed on eighty.
But at the same time I am aware, sometimes more painfully than at other times, of how distorted my perception, my appreciation, of all of this is. Most of these Indios would give their souls to live as I do, to have what I have. So many live with poverty, hunger, sickness, and the always and forever unfulfillable dreams and aspirations gnawing away at their hearts and minds. And there is also something about being one of the gringo travelers here that makes me feel uneasy. In a way we are no better than voyeurs, collecting sights and experiences just so we can say ‘we saw that, we did that, we’ve been there.’ So many of the young gringo travelers here are so lost, living in a marijuana or cocaine haze, oblivious to the culture, the history, the incredible landscapes… . I may not be one of them, but does that make me any ‘better’? What are they, what am I, giving back to these people? What benefits can we claim to bestow upon them? And at what cost?
Ah, the music’s blaring again, reminding me of one more reason I look forward to going home. I long to be somewhere quiet, somewhere where I have a little more control over my own environment. Somewhere less chaotic, more peaceful.
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July 5, 1979: Hopped a bus to Potolo today – a town renowned for its weavings, which are almost always just two colours: black and red. That in itself is not so unusual here, but it is the fantastical nature of the creatures depicted – the birds, cats, and dragons all with long, feathery wings, like flames. They melt and drift into one another, with little space between them. The weavings are so dramatic and powerful. I couldn’t resist buying one – a black awayu with a red and black border of these fabulous creatures. Creatures of the fire, perhaps created in the imaginations of those who sit so often by fires, perhaps helped just a bit by magical mushrooms, herbs and potions.... . They speak to me – messengers from a more primal, elemental, fire-and-brimstone time.
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July 6, 1979: I took a final trip to the Camacho market today. Bought five pounds of coffee, ten sublimes (they are the best chocolate bars I have ever had), and ten nut-crunch bars. I was glad to have gone back, just to be in touch again with my favourite people. The vendadoras, sitting in the midst of their carrots and cabbages, a white apron-frock and sometimes even a white cap concealing what I know is underneath – the vivid, day-glo colours of their skirts and mantas. “Comprame! Comprame! Comprame zanahorias!” The thin rag-clad men, chewing coca, eyes a little dazed, carrying great loads of corn about in bundles on their backs held tight with llama or alpaca hide ropes, walk-running through the tangle of shoppers, vendadoras, children, dogs, vegetables and refuse. Friday noon action – stocking up for the week-end. Great vats of olives, mixed pickled vegetables, bags full of grains, seeds, flours; precariously balanced tacks of creamy white rounds of cheese; trays full of dates, figs and nuts nuts nuts; and rows upon rows of all sorts of fruits, vegetables, dry goods, meats, fishes… a REAL MARKET.
And as always the children, dirty and ragged, munching on a piece of bread, an empanada, a banana, tending to one another with all the care and affection of a mother – pulling up pants after a quick gutter-pee, tying up a shoe-lace, replacing a fallen hat, soothing sobs of hunger, pain or loneliness. A white-aproned vendadora-mother, looking almost like some backwoods nurse, bending over a wee and wide-eyed babe, re-wrapping the outer manta and, in the process, exposing the trussed-up bundle, the tightly-bound arms and legs of the baby. I wonder if my eyes, behind my smile, betrayed my spirit’s wincing, crying, and crying out: ‘please don’t bind so tight’. And wondering if the passivity of these people is learned early: don’t move, don’t cry, don’t make a fuss.
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July 7, 1979: my last day in Bolivia. I wandered up through the market above the hotel. Streets filled with canopied wooden stands, chock-a-block with nylon and rayon chompas and pantalones, cosmetics, plastic and enameled tin kitchen ware (some of it very colourful), and other assorted odds and ends – the peoples’ market.
Found a herbal stand where I hoped to find some anise. I waited there for a woman who was ordering an assortment of herbs from a very young girl who was weighing out each item carefully, using those wonderful hand-held balancing scales (the scales of justice), and then tipping the contents into pieces of newsprint that looked far too small, but which she folded and rolled just perfectly, making a neat little packet. She placed each packet on a bigger sheet of newsprint, and folded it around the whole to make another neat package.
Then an even tinier girl, likely her little sister, with long black braids, a pretty blue dress and a smiling face that seemed somehow to express all the warmth, all the light-heartedness, all the tremendous love that these people hold in their hearts, came running around to the front of the stand to deliver this package to the customer, saying ‘Senora, ya esta!’ Incredible. On her third trip around the wooden stand to deliver yet another package I reached into my bag for some crayons and showed them to her, saying ‘Para ti, lapices de colores, para ti.’ She took them very hesitantly, like she wasn’t sure I was actually giving them to her, but then the light bulb went on, and she flashed a big smile, took the crayons, and ran to her sister to show her. I hope she will enjoy using them. I hope they will brighten her life, just a little.
I stumbled upon another branch-street of the market where brightly coloured materials, mantas, shawls and skirts were being sold. Also a stacks of slipper shoes that all the indigenous women wear here – very colourful – marbled, speckled, glittered, day-glowed. And a shop of more elegantly embroidered silk (or nylon, rayon?) shawls in bright bright colours with beautiful patterned borders and long silken fringes. Next to that a bridal shop with the most amazing synthetic silk-look jackets styled after the plush velvet ones I’ve seen in some of the artesenia shops – tight-waisted, full-hipped, broad-shouldered, puff-sleeved, and absolutely covered with gold ribbon, flounces and frills, and an ornate gold and glitter collar. In the display window a lovely bride dressed in a very traditional looking white gown, all ribbon and lace, and sporting two very long black braids.
The passing colours almost like an Easter parade, pastels and day-glos, ribbons and bows, everything crackling and rustling as women and children bustle along…and the colour of their cheeks, bruised almost blue-black from the relentless never-ending wind and sun….
Huge stacks of coca and the white ‘rocks’ of calcium(?) they chew with it; mountains of manis (peanuts), herbs, spices. More brightly coloured skirts. And everywhere my favourite people. Brown-hatted women, babes suckling away persistently at their breasts, engulfed in colourful layers of blouse, chompa, manta, shawl; the women chatting away to one another in earnest undertones or, more often giggling with one another in their endearingly innocent little-girl way. Little girls sprawled around their mamas, sometimes playing in their idle half-attentive way with a bit of coloured wool, a plastic toy or bauble, but more often just sitting, watching the world pass by them… endlessly.
Thin-thin-thin campesinos snaking double-bent under their loads, trodding up the uneven surfaces of the steep cobble-stone streets, plodding, plodding, plodding on, and almost always up. Wandering mestizo vendadores, dripping handkerchiefs, long plastic ropes of yellow and green shampoo-titos, safety pins and razor blades, hangers and cassette tapes, weaving in and out among the crowds. The odd beggar presenting first his mangled hand, his limbless torso, struggling to keep from being overwhelmed by the crowd, or sitting, head bowed, against the cement wall of a church, palm upturned, waiting, waiting, waiting… .
Frequent glimpses of women hiding their faces under or behind their hats, blowing their noses, coughing – there is so much blood on the streets in the messes of spits – so many people with lung disease here – likely TB. Sometimes when their hats are over their faces they are just taking a quick nap, getting away from it all, as it were. I wonder what they dream of....
The lunch-time ritual of hot soup or noodles and rice with a little meat, taken in a leisurely, if very public, fashion, as they sit in the midst of their wares, or sometimes in a group eating together, all within eyeshot of their stands, or having left a trusted child to ‘mind the shop’. The littlest children thus left may simply say ‘no esta la duena’, and watch as the potential customer goes to another seller. Older kids – still some as young as 6 or 7, step into the role they’ve watched their mamas perform day after day, and become mini-vendadores, expertly interacting with customers, handling the merchandise, negotiating prices, and making the sales. I wonder will this be their future? A street-market vendador in La Paz, Bolivia...
Later on, over a cup of tea, I read the ‘Esperanza’ newspaper. The government (ie. the military junta) still doesn’t know who has won the election or who will be president but promises that it will, as it ALWAYS has, respect the constitution and the new government, duly elected by the people, and hopes that if the UDP is elected it will respect the constitution, and the armed forces. Right. I believe there is going to be more trouble here, perhaps another coup.
But it won’t matter much to me. I am on my way ‘home.’
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