Anyone who has been to La Paz in Bolivia will notice that some things haven’t changed all that much since 1943, for example how food is sold at the market, the fashion and smiles all around.
Links:
On the plain you see the so-called valley sheep, while the mountain sheep are grazing halfway up on the side of the mountains. Now in winter they are slowly making their way down where they will set up camp close to the valley sheep, but they will keep their distance from each other.
Right next to the road live the sheep who think of themselves as more civilized. They get run over by cars more often.
Because only a small number of experts can tell these different kinds of sheep apart, we simply use the generic term “sheep” for all three and further groups of sheep.
In a way, it’s the same with humans, which are all pretty similar, but who decide to focus on tiny differences and to delimit themselves in national, regional or religious groups.
(Photographed on the road from Cluj-Napoca to Târgu Mureș in Romania.)
Persecution of lawyers has a long history in South America.
From Marie Arana’s biography Bolívar – American Liberator:
Bolívar was handed an agitated letter from Páez, reporting the miserable state of affairs in Venezuela. “Your cannot imagine how ruinous the intrigues have been in this country,” Páez told him. “Morillo was right when he said he did you a favor when he killed all the lawyers.” But according to Páez, the Spaniards hadn’t killed enough of them. It was men of laws, he insisted, who were crippling the republic.
Apparently, too many people had read Shakespeare’s Henry VI.
“This has nothing to do with an inferiority complex because I didn’t study law myself. Or go to university at all, for that matter.”
Isla del Sol in Lake Titicaca has not only the famous Bay of Pigs, but also a secret Bay of Sheep.
With a view like this, I bet the wool produced by these sheep is extra cozy.
Nepomuk was the main attraction of the party, as if he had been the reason for the gathering in the first place. All the ladies’ eyes were on him, while the men’s eyes flickered back and forth between their wives or girlfriends and Nepomuk, disturbed to see the deep bond that had been established so quickly. If that was the effect of their first encounter, one had to be wary of the charm that the young man could develop over time.
The ladies were so taken in that they forgot all manners and etiquette. They interrupted each other, vying for Nepomuk’s attention. They babbled unintelligibly. They repeated their questions over and over. They didn’t even notice that Nepomuk was not the brightest man at the table and that his conversational skills were below par. The ladies took photos of him as if he was a pop star and only took their eyes off him when they needed to refill their glasses, getting ever more tipsy and dreamy as the evening progressed.
Nepomuk was not even one year old. He had been born in February and this was the first Christmas that Lisa and John had introduced him to his uncles and aunts, grandparents and cousins. The family had spread out from Tennessee to pursue careers, jobs without careers and relationships in different parts of the country. Each Christmas they returned and got together. Every couple of years, they met for a funeral in between. In 2003, grandpa Sam had died on 19 December. That had been very practical for those who had a long way to drive.
John was a distant second in popularity after Nepomuk. But he was second. After all, he was the father. He had produced this little thing, and although Lisa was the one who had carried him inside of her, John was family and she was not. They weren’t married (yet) and that was strange, suspicious even. Or it had been until Nepomuk had shown up. Now they were kind of a family. Still, it was wrong. Grandma wondered “what Grandpa would have said about folks doing things the wrong way round,” thus discounting, as she always did, the possibility that Sam might have changed his mind between 2003 and now, had he still been alive. John had to fend off questions about any impeding engagement and at the same time he had to defend Lisa, for his family of course blamed her for this immoral state of affairs. She was from New Orleans and everyone knew that people down there committed more sins than those in the other 49 states combined.
“It’s not a priority for us.” The more he repeated that sentence, the more John stressed the “for us” part.
“It won’t change anything.”
“It’s too expensive.” Practical reasons resonated most.
“At least we do have a child.” John knew he had gone too far in defending his decisions when all eyes turned on his sister Sandra. “Ouch,” Sandra thought, saying nothing. “Sorry,” John indicated towards her. But it was too late. She was the only adult at the table who had never had a child. Heck, even some of the teenagers in the family had children already.
Sandra was 29 and worked as a receptionist at a hospital in Nashville. She saw enough sick children every day not to want any of her own, she saw enough pregnant women not to idolize that messy biological state, and she frankly had no time for a relationship. She worked different shifts each week and slept most of the time in between.
“How old are you, Sandra?” Had she been more alert, she could have pointed out that with an ever increasing life expectancy it’s not necessary to have children as early in life as it was in the 18th century.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Why not?”
“Aren’t there any attractive doctors at work?” Ever since she had found the job at the hospital, her parents’ dream had been for her to marry a doctor. In her family’s eyes, this was much more prestigious than going to medical school herself.
“Don’t you think Nepomuk is cute?” Not when he’ll throw up tonight.
“It would be nice if he had a cousin.”
“You shouldn’t wait too long or the age difference will be too great.” Not to speak of the different places that they would grow up in, making it rather unlikely that Nepomuk would see much of his hypothetical cousin.
“You don’t look too bad, you know.” Thanks. “I think you could find someone if you tried.”
If Sandra had studied European history, she would have realized there and then that like a fascist society, her family would never respect her until she reproduced. Not having studied anything and being put into a corner by her relatives, she decided that she would surprise them next Christmas.
The following September, a girl was born. It was an ugly child.
(This story also appeared on Medium. – Hier gibt es diese Geschichte auf Deutsch.)
It seems to be that time of the year again when, according to ancient calendars, the world will come to an end. Not as dramatically as in the misinterpreted Maya calendar. I am referring to the calendars that only extend to 12 months and then force you to buy a new one. The company that chose 31 December as the end date for its calendars seems to have a particularly large number of customers, because these days I receive the question “What are you going to do for New Year’s Eve?” more often than usual.
But I never understood what is supposed to make that day special. The next day, there will be another day, just as long or short, just as cold or hot as the day before.
How confined does a life have to be when you need to postpone what you want to do until the last day of the year? Or is it rather a sign of how boring life is? In a half-hearted attempt to escape boredom, people who do the same for 364 days believe that they need to do something special on the 365th day. These extraordinary activities are highly thrilling things like meeting friends or going to a restaurant. Wow, how creative! We have never heard of that before.
Maybe the way people spend New Year’s Eve is quite a good symbol for their lives. The same people meet the same friends at the same place for the same activities, year after year. A year of routine fades out in routine, only to continue with more routine the next day. When you will get together with your friends this New Year’s Eve, don’t forget to take your calendars for 2017 and 2018 to set the date for the coming identical get-togethers.
So what will I do for New Year’s Eve 2016? I only know that I will be at Lake Titicaca, but it’s impossible to say what exactly I will do in two weeks. After all, I don’t know how the weather is going to be that day; let alone what I will feel like. Maybe I will even miss the alleged end of the year because I often fail to check the calendar or my watch for days. At midnight, when everyone else will smash themselves and other things, I am often already asleep.
Not only do I take issue with the absurdity of having one’s life governed by a date that was set arbitrarily centuries ago. I am much more worried about the concept of society that is propagandized by celebrating the New Year. Giving up one’s individuality, blindly following the masses, always doing the same things as everyone else – that’s how it begins. Those who party today because everyone is partying, will mindlessly participate in a genocide tomorrow. Today it’s New Year’s, tomorrow it will be fascism.
Principiis obsta!
By the way, there is also no point in making New Year’s resolutions.
(This article also appeared on Medium. – Hier geht es zur deutschen Fassung.)
Zur deutschen Fassung dieses Artikels.
In every country in South America, there is one specific topic with which you can interrupt the logorrhea of even the most verbose person. In Brazil, mentioning the numbers 7-1 is enough to make people cry. In Bolivia, you praise the beauty of the country, the diversity of nature from the Andes to the Amazon, before adding innocently: “Just sad that you don’t have the sea anymore.” Depending on his character, the Bolivian will break out in tears, in deep pondering or in torrents of hatred against Chile.
Even young Bolivians, who can’t possibly have any personal memory of losing the sea, talk about the War of the Pacific as if access to the Pacific had been wrested from their own hands. In that war, Chile fought against Bolivia and Peru. Chile won the war and gobbled up some nice pieces of land from both losers. Peru became smaller and Bolivia lost its Pacific coast.
Oh by the way, all of this happened already between 1879 and 1884.
With Lake Titicaca, Bolivia actually has far more beautiful waters than the broth that washes up dead fish and plastic waste on the shores of the continent’s other countries. But for the purposes of ex- and importing, a common sea with China would be more important. Bolivia does indeed suffer from its position as a landlocked country, the only one on both American continents (Paraguay can access the Atlantic via the Paraná River). Every export of minerals requires that treaties be negotiated with the neighbors, who use their position to suppress prices, divert part of the profits and make everything more complicated. Switzerland and Austria can be lucky that they don’t need to export anything, but that tourists and black money flock to them naturally.
The distance from the world’s seas weighs especially hard on Bolivia because the country lives from selling gas, ores and precious minerals to China. These goods are hard to transport by plane. The cocaine producers would prefer a coast with ports for submarines, too, which would be more comfortable than carrying the precious substance through zika- and malaria-infested jungles.
Visually, Bolivia does not suffer from the absence of the sea because the shore around Lake Titicaca is one of the most beautiful sceneries in South America. That it’s not attractive to stoned surfers isn’t necessarily negative. I even dare to establish the theory that Bolivia is more intellectual than most of the neighboring countries exactly because it doesn’t have the coast anymore. Without sandy beaches, Bolivians don’t constantly need to think about their appearance in swimsuits, leaving more time for literature and the arts. Brazil has boobs and bikinis, Bolivia has brains and books.
Nonetheless, every 23rd of March all of Bolivia finds itself in collective lamenting. On the Day of the Sea (Dia del Mar) the national flag is replaced by a maritime version. Replicas of sunk ships are being carried though the streets like an ostensorium.
Military marching bands play sad songs like ”Vaya, vaya, aqui no hay playa. Vamos a La Haya!“ (“Oh no, oh no, we don’t have a beach. Let’s go to The Hague!”). All day long, films related to the sea are being shown on TV (The Perfect Storm, Titanic, Pirates of the Caribbean, Vicky the Viking).
Irredentism has constitutional status in Bolivia. Article 267 elevates full sovereignty over the Pacific coast as a national objective – without any geographical limitations. When President Morales receives or visits foreign heads of state, he gives them a book that explains Bolivia’s claim to access to the Pacific. The present then probably ends up where the brochures of the similarly insisting Jehovah’s Witnesses are discarded.
To underline its claims, Bolivia maintains a navy. Not just any navy, but the largest naval forces of any landlocked country in the world. Because there is no sea, the 60 boats need to chug in circles on Lake Titicaca, from where nobody knows how they would reach the Pacific if there was ever a war again. Maybe they can be dismantled, transported by train and then put together again?
This arsenal may seem exaggerated, but it’s the reaction to a strategic mistake during the War of the Pacific: back then, Bolivia had no navy at all.
With having a big-ass navy come martial threats. This mural by Lake Titicaca depicts a Bolivian soldier ramming his bayonet into the neck of a Chilean soldier. The inscription says “What was once ours will be ours again”.
I wonder how Chilean tourists react to this.
But I don’t think there will be a war. So far, President Morales is content with delivering speeches along the line of “The whole world hears the legitimate cry of the Bolivian people against the injustice perpetrated by the imperialists”, and so on, because in Mr Morales’ worldview, anyone who doesn’t agree with him or do what he wants is imperialistic.
My Bolivian lawyer friends are quite happy that Bolivia wages judicial instead of naval battles. First, Bolivia filed a case with the League of Nations, and now with the International Court of Justice (the real one, not the one re-enacted by cute children). The obsession with the Pacific coast means that in Bolivia as a landlocked country, there are more master and doctoral theses about maritime law than in all other countries of South America combined.
To me, all of this looks as if the Bolivian government is trying to distract from real issues and wants to blame “imperialist Chileans” from the 19th century for the current lack of drinking water, infrastructure, housing and schooling. (My Hungarian readers know this concept from the tirades against Trianon, and the older German readers will remember when the Treaty of Versailles was blamed for any and all problems.) But the wish for access to the sea has indeed been ingrained in many Bolivians.
Books about the War of the Pacific are bestsellers. Particularly popular is the theory that the peace treaty was “unfair” and that the country was betrayed by Bolivian politicians; something like the Bolivian Dolchstoßlegende.
When Bolivians go on holiday in Chile, they take flags with them and walk through the sea which was once “theirs”. This ritual is the Bolivian equivalent to the pilgrimage to Mecca. Once in a lifetime, you need to do it.
If I have given you the impression that all of Bolivia is in an irredentist rage, that would be wrong. As I have been trying to convey over the past year, Bolivia is a highly likable and personable country with a sense of humor. When you talk about this subject a bit longer, most Bolivians will concede that it would be impractical to rescind all wars. “Otherwise, the Spanish could come and claim that South America used to be theirs.”
And don’t you just have to love a country where naval officers are being paraded around in a ship made of painted bed sheets?
Links:
Two cities walk into a bar.
Says Srebrenica: “I was so unlucky that my massacre already took place in 1995. A few years later, and the internet would have saved us. My people could have alerted the world about the siege and the threat of genocide via Twitter and Facebook. Surely, the global community would have come to our help. And if that hadn’t worked, we would have held our children and cats into the camera and uploaded the videos on YouTube. That might seem a bit desperate, even cheesy, but nobody would have remained untouched. Too bad that these social media came too late for us. We could all still be alive.”
Answers Aleppo: “Oh, you naive …”
They are interrupted by the sound of bombs, explosions, screams for help. Analog, digital, multimedia.
But nobody listens. The world is celebrating Christmas, twittering photos of mulled wine and of presents.
“I am sorry, boys. We have lost our internet connection. Now, nobody can care about us anymore.”
The Happy Hermit 