Tomorrow, I will fly to La Paz.
I don’t usually like big cities too much, but with a constant view of the mountains, it may be bearable.
Of course I will visit Tiwanaku
before I will continue to Lake Titicaca for several days of hiking along the coast and on some of the islands.
Zur deutschen Fassung dieses Artikels.
On average, you are awoken by marching bands in Bolivia twice per week and at least once per week you will be prevented from falling asleep at night by a marching band and fireworks. I generally like this, and it’s much better than the songs of the 7th Day Adventists every Friday night or the music that my housemates play.
This Wednesday, I didn’t expect anything extraordinary for lack of any national, religious or international celebration, but as coincidence wanted it, a high school in Potosí was just celebrating its anniversary. Students and teachers had been contemplating for weeks how to celebrate this year and finally came up with a creative idea: a marching band and fireworks.
One school doesn’t like to go to the party alone, so they invited all other schools in Potosí to provide a marching band as well. All together, they wanted to march through the city for at least 12 hours, leaving no street unvisited. No wonder that people were hiding in the mines of Cerro Rico.
As soon as I heard the first drum roll, I quickly finished my dinner and stormed outside in order to film the spectacle for you. Watch for yourself and pay attention to the school uniform, the overly brisk body movements, the insignia on the banners and the name of the school.
Ok, and now honestly: Who, at least among my readers with an interest in German history, was not reminded at least a little bit of an SS march?
Everything in fitting black. Black banners with Germanic eagles. (Bolivia doesn’t have an eagle, but a condor as its national bird.) With the slogan “Honor – Discipline – Work”. The name of the school: Marshal Otto Braun College. That sounded very German, and in a small city at 4,000 meters altitude in the Cordilleras, it aroused my curiosity.
Because I knew from experience that such festivities would go on for hours, I walked to the local library and discovered that my knowledge of history is very much limited, both in temporal and in geographical terms. Otto Philipp Braun, or Otto Felipe Braun as he is called in Bolivia, did come from Germany, but he really had no connection with the SS. Rather, he came as a 20-year old immigrant first to the USA in 1818, then to the Caribbean and finally to South America. From a job as a horse trader, he somehow advanced to become a cavalry officer in the army of Simón Bolívar (by far not the only German or European to do so). During the liberation wars against the Spanish, he proved himself more from battle to battle, was promoted and after the wars became governor of La Paz, supreme commander of the military and ultimately Bolivia’s defense minister.
This shows that swift careers by immigrants are not only possible in North America. But why do we never learn of these stories in Germany?
Marshal Braun died in 1869, so he didn’t have anything to do with the German Reich either, which was not yet in existence by then. So why the German eagle and the black SS uniforms? It’s easy to imagine how this came about. “Hey, in a way, we are a German school. What do we want to wear?” “Leather pants!” “Too cold for that in Potosí.” “Mmhh, I will go to the video store and get some films about Germany.” Well, those films were Schindler’s List and Valkyrie and thus the image of Germany remained frozen in 1945.
The bandmaster was slightly more modern than the costume designer, creating an odd dissonance between repertoire and dress code. A marching band in SS uniforms is playing “They don’t care about us” by Michael Jackson.
It got more bizarre. A smoke grenade was lit, the lead dancer gyrated with his fancy stick in a cloud of green smoke, and then the whole show degenerated into a completely kitschy Las-Vegas-style revue.
That’s when I realized what had been the inspiration: “Springtime for Hitler” from the film The Producers, although I am uncertain if the parody was intended. Searching for more photos of this school band, it turned out that the SS uniforms are relatively new. Three years ago, the musicians in the marching band of Marshal Otto Braun College in Bolivia were still wearing German-Reich-style spiked helmets. (After minute 4:40, you even get some simulated machine-gun fire thrown in.)
If you ever receive Bolivian exchange students in Germany, please take the time to inform them of the progress made since 1945. And maybe advise them carefully that they shouldn’t wear these kind of uniforms when arriving at the airport.
Links:
Because I don’t receive enough donations to support my blog, I have to start working as a lawyer again. Unfortunately, I don’t possess any other skills.
After my long sabbatical of six years, I have to start small. Very small.
This is my new office, right next to the train station in Sucre, Bolivia.
Not only New York has a Statue of Liberty. So does Potosí in Bolivia.
This one is no replica of the famous sister, but an original creation in its own right. Yet sisters they are, for they have the same father: Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was the architect of both Statues of Liberty, and in fact many more around the world. The one in Potosí was erected in 1890, only four years after the one in New York had been inaugurated.
But even the combination of Ladies Liberty and Justice cannot deliver either to the miners still working under inhumane conditions in the mines of Cerro Rico in the background.
Hier könnt Ihr diesen Artikel auf Deutsch lesen.
Oops. My tourist visa expired and I am still in Bolivia.
Well, one more country whose prisons I will experience first-hand. In the case of Bolivia, the prison system is particularly interesting.
Many prisons in Bolivia are only staffed on the outside of the perimeter. Inside, the inmates organize everything themselves. It’s like a small self-governed town, only rarely visited by guards or police.
There is a vibrant market economy because you have to rent or buy your cell. If you don’t have or don’t make the money, you sleep on the floor.
But making money is not a problem because there are plenty of jobs. You can also open a business, anything from a restaurant to a carpentry shop to an internet café. I might finally have no other choice but to earn my living as an English or German teacher. Unless people will pay me to tell stories.
The other interesting aspect of Bolivian prisons is that your family can live with you. The wives and children of many inmates join them in prison, allowing them to stay together as a family in hard times. Obviously, the wife and the children are free to leave whenever they want. They go to work and school and return at night.
Sadly Luckily, I don’t have any family or children. But here come the good news: Friends can visit as well, and you can even bring books and food.
According to this price list for Palmasola prison in Santa Cruz, you can stay overnight for a small fee. For someone from abroad, the monthly rent is not too steep either. And you’ll get Spanish lessons for free.
San Pedro prison in La Paz allegedly even has one or two hotels. Some tourists visit the prison for a tour, others visit to buy drugs because that prison has the best cocaine laboratory in the country.
If you are trying to make up excuses for not visiting me in prison, you have no chance. It’s really easy and it ain’t dangerous. Watch this clip about the former US-American inmate Jacob Ostreicher, for example. Both a TV crew and his wife can visit him and bring him food and – more importantly – books.
In all seriousness now,
I have fallen so much for Bolivia that it’s hard to say what I like most. But the lively political and social debates, the culture of discussion, the broad interest in questions that concern all of society, the readiness to get involved personally, all of that plays a big part. As a homo politicus, I feel very good here.
One interesting aspect of political and social protests are the somewhat ritualized forms, which progress in several stages and in mostly peaceful, friendly and civilized ways. The first stage is the blockade or roadblock (bloqueo). There are roadblocks every day and unless they pop up spontaneously, they are announced in the newspaper below the weather forecast, so that one can prepare for detours and delays.
Today in Cochabamba it looked like this:
Women with beautiful costumes and fancy hats sit down in the middle of the road and occupy the intersections around the building against which the protest is directed, blocking all traffic. They spread out their blankets for the children to play or sleep. Soon, mobile vendors appear, offering food and drinks. Some people hold up handwritten signs. (Today, the protest was about some school.)
This happens every day and it’s widely accepted. The police don’t break up the roadblock, they just regulate the traffic. Today, I only saw one motorcyclist who wanted to cross one of the blocked intersections. The women shouted “No paso! No paso!” (“You can’t pass here.”) and he turned around. I rarely hear anyone complaining about these roadblocks, and if so, they are arrogant snobs (“because the peasants had another stupid protest, my chauffeur couldn’t take me to the manicure today”). Sympathy and solidarity prevail.
Somewhat more serious and consequential are the roadblocks by professionals with big cars: truck and bus drivers.
They block whole highways and thus cut off one part of the country from the rest.
Such protest may well take a few days, meaning that you sometimes have to stay two or three days longer than planned in a city, because there are no buses going out anymore. In 2010, Potosí was blocked off for almost three weeks. Because the city lies in a dry mountain region above 4,000 meters, food became scarce. Locals and tourists were trapped, because the runway of the airport was blocked with stones too.
It wasn’t that bad in Cochabamba today. In front of the building housing the school authority, there was a tightly packed crowd of people. The gate was guarded by soldiers, but the mood was not tense. The protesters simply wait until someone from the government gives in and talks to them or meets their demands. From time to time, loud explosions erupted in the street, but these were only from the fireworks without which no protest in Bolivia would be complete.
Because this is an everyday occurrence in Cochabamba, I didn’t hang around any longer. I wanted to go to the only post office in a city with 600,000 people (a protest for more post offices would find my support) to mail your postcards. The post office was open, but the counters were closed and the staff sat on chairs in a big circle in the hall. A handwritten sign explained the reason for that protest:
The interesting thing was that customers who came into the post office held speeches in support of the protests, received applause from the strikers and then left. Nobody was egoistical enough to believe that their own package or their registered mail was more important than the payment of outstanding salaries.
Just around the corner from the post office, at the Square of 14th September, there was the next protest. For two months, disabled people have been camping and sleeping here, demanding a monthly support of 500 bolivianos (73 dollars) and more wheelchair-friendly city planning.
Because these demands haven’t been met yet, the next step on the ladder of escalation has to be taken: marching to La Paz, a ritual with a long tradition. In August 1994, about 5,000 coca farmers marched from Villa Tunari to La Paz after Evo Morales had been arrested. Once released, he joined the march. In 1998, Morales lead another protest march of the coca farmers from El Chapare to La Paz. Meanwhile, Evo Morales is president and now regularly has to receive marchers from all corners of the country in La Paz. Currently, the wheelchair riders are on the way from Cochabamba. That’s a distance of 350 km, and they have to cross a mountain chain with 4,000 meters of altitude.
The wheelchair faction was also particularly creative and brave and found a new form of protest, which will henceforth be copied with admiration by other groups: They hung themselves from bridges.
Travelers sometimes ask about roadblocks in a worried tone, wondering about the safety of traveling in Bolivia. In fact, Bolivia might well be the safest and most peaceful country in all of Latin America. I would worry much more about a country that has no protests. There is no reason to stay away from these protests either, because these are exactly the events where you get a good impression of the political dynamic. (Violent crackdowns of protests, which used to be the norm, hardly happen nowadays, and the six people who burned to death when the city hall in El Alto was set on fire were a tragic exception.)
You know the movie Wedding Crashers? It’s about two guys whose pick-up strategy consists of attending weddings, even when not invited, because that’s where single women are desperate and in a romantic mood.
I had to think of that when I saw this wedding in a park in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
There was definitely a shortage of men at that wedding. Guys, this is your chance! It’s nothing for me, though, because I hate weddings.
This week I will finally travel to Sucre, the city in Bolivia where I originally wanted to move (although I very much love it here in Cochabamba now). I hope I won’t be completely blinded by the famous whiteness of the old town of Bolivia’s constitutional capital.
And I hope I will find enough time to do some hiking outside of the town, discover dinosaur tracks, wander on Inca roads, visit traditional villages and climb Cerro Obispo or another mountain.
Then, I will take the train from Sucre to Potosí. The funny thing is that even most people in Sucre don’t know that this train exists. Ever since I have announced this plan, Bolivians have been telling me “there is no train”. But I read about it in a book (ok, maybe it was from two centuries ago) and I even found a photo of it:
Anyway, when I come back I’ll be able to tell you if the famous train is still running or not.
Potosí: Ever since I read the book “1493”, I have wanted to visit this town which not many people outside of South America know about, but which was once – at the same time – the highest (at 4,090 meters) major city in the world, the richest city in the world, the most populous city in the Americas and the most brutal city in the world. All of this was due to one mountain, Cerro Rico, filled with enough silver to finance the Spanish Empire and the Spanish wars in Europe.
The big silver boom is over, the town no longer fuels the world economy, but the mining continues. That there is still some silver (and tin ore) to be found after 470 years of mining gives you an idea of the size of the deposit. And the mining is just as tough and as dangerous as it was 400 years ago. Maybe even more so because of the number of shafts that have been drilled into the mountain, which might collapse any day.
Obviously, I want to both climb the mountain (4,782 meters, which would be a new altitude record for me) and to go into the mines. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the possibility of being as high as I have ever been (Cerro Rico is almost as high as Mont Blanc) and being deep in a pitch-dark mine at the same time. Bolivia, the country of crazy records.
If you want a postcard, let me know. I will try to send it before going into the mine, just in case.
I am not sure if this is normal for this kind of tree or if it’s sick. The bark came off in several layers, revealing red wood underneath.
(Photographed on the hike from Laguna Wara Wara to Cochabamba in Bolivia.)
All photos were taken on Plaza 14 de Septiembre in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Obviously, anyone with a tripod could do a better job. If you want to know when the next full moon is, just ask one of the Incas. They know this stuff.
The Happy Hermit 