Cambio Climático en La Paz

Es de conocimiento general que nuestro planeta se está calentando rápidamente debido a una mayor emisión de gases de efecto invernadero, lo que implica la alteración de todos los fenómenos climáticos. Esta situación se vuelve problemática cuando nos damos cuenta que todos los seres humanos hemos ingresado a una nueva etapa histórica jamás antes vivida. Como dice Dirk Hoffman, ´´estamos viviendo en un mundo de ciencia ficción´´.

El aumento de temperatura a nivel mundial es de 1 grado centígrado, desde la época preindustrial, pero se calcula que habrá un aumento promedio de 2 a 4 grados hasta fin de siglo. Aunque no parezca mucho, esto tiene implicaciones locales, ya que el cambio climático no es uniforme. En La Paz, que es parte de la región andina, se prevee que el aumento de temperatura sea mayor, debido a la altitud y a otras variables (entre 4 a 10 centígrados hasta fin de siglo).

Los fenómenos climáticos que están siendo alterados son: aumento de temperaturas; cambios de régimen de precipitaciones y del ciclo hídrico; cambios en biodiversidad y bofedales; retroceso de glaciares; entre otros. Esto tiene consecuencias directas a la población, como por ejemplo: nuevas pestes y enfermedades; posibilidades de agricultura en lugares más altos; menos disponibilidad de fuentes de agua, etc.

Como en todo el mundo, el cambio climático se manifestará sin lugar a duda y debemos estar preparados y preparadas, tanto a nivel social como político, para enfrentar los nuevos retos que plantea. A esto se llama adaptación, que es una palabra cada vez más utilizada por la comunidad científica y por los gobernantes. No se trata de una moda pasajera, sino de una necesidad básica para sobrevivir como especie y como civilización.

Interculturalidad en La Paz

La Paz es un escenario donde confluyen y chocan diversos actores sociales, económicos y políticos. Ya sea porque es la ciudad con más concentración poblacional de Bolivia (alberga al 17,6% del total de la población según el último Informe Nacional de Desarrollo Humano del PNUD), o porque es el centro político del país (contiene al 3 de los 4 poderes del Estado, es decir al poder ejecutivo, legislativo y electoral). 

Este escenario se presta fácilmente a la conflictividad, como se puede ver actualmente a través de las protestas, bloqueos y paros de distintos actores socioeconómicos. Como paceña, puedo notar que las demandas se están acumulando, frente a un sistema político que es incapaz de atenderlas eficazmente. Después de un periodo de relativa estabilidad, parece que hay sectores de la sociedad que reclaman al gobierno central la atención oportuna a distintos problemas, como por ejemplo la seguridad laboral y el derecho al trabajo; o la mejora de la calidad de vida.

Es en este contexto, donde los paceños y las paceñas aplicamos una relación de alteridad con los demás bolivianos y bolivianas. En una ciudad rica en diversidad étnica y cultural, estamos acostumbrados y acostumbradas a convivir con los ´´otros´´. Es cierto que aún mantenemos la tradición colonial de ocultamiento de las minorías. Sin embargo, se están rompiendo las imágenes preestablecidas y se está generando una consciencia ética de visibilizar e internalizar las demandas de todos los actores sociales al sistema político.

Es criticable que estas acciones estén partiendo de la sociedad civil y no del gobierno central, que parece mantener la lógica de legitimar la dominación a partir de la dicotomía (apoyas al partido oficialista o eres opositor). Sin embargo, la vida cotidiana nos demuestra una práctica de interculturalidad constante, es decir un reconocimiento recíproco a través de la interacción participativa de las personas. 

On machismo

It's my first weekend in La Paz, and I'm reunited with two of my girlfriends who have been here for one month already. So, of course, they have to show me the hottest Bolivian discotecas!  Already, I've prepared myself to deal with Bolivian men. I have the phrase memorized if anyone gives me trouble, Déjenme en paz. I know the harassment is coming though. I've learned about machismo in my Latin American studies classes and I know how men here view American women. I'm not naive, You have to take precaution.

So we get to the club, get our drinks, and within 10 minutes are greeted by our lovely new Bolivian friends. The first question they ask us is, "De dónde son?" (Where are ya'll from?) "Los estados unidos." Here we go, I thought. "Quieres bailar conmigo??" one of them asks me. "No puedo bailar" (I can't dance,) I lie. I make it very clear I do not want to be messed with. This guy was drunk, spitting, and very confused as to why I wouldn't dance with him. I continue to ignore him and talk to my girlfriend, but he keeps persisting, "Me gustas a tu mucho, solo tu, eres tan bonita, yada, yada, yada" Mind you, when he's not talking to me I see him in my peripherals-- I kid you not, I cannot make this up-- licking his lips, staring, and pacing. Shit. What am I supposed to do? I can't leave my friend and go wandering by myself. He would surely follow me. But I can't keep putting up with this much longer. So I tell him I have a boyfriend, hoping that'd make him back off. HAHAHA. He grabs my face and kisses me on the mouth so aggressively he bites part of my lip. I push him away, grab my friend's arm, and run to the bathroom, tears already starting to run down my face.

What the fuck? Did that really just happen? I was so in shock I couldn't say or do anything but get away. And the fact that my resistance caused him to be even more aggressive is the most bothersome part of this interaction. Never in my life have I been so disrespected, so objectified, so humiliated. A complete stranger just violated me while I was in mid-conversation and then tried to pull my purse off of me as I ran away. What? No entiendo, I really don't.

He wasn't looking to have a conversation, to learn about my life, or take me out on a date. He wanted to say he had been with una americana. He wanted to tell his friends how wild we were, how much more loose and confident we were in bed. I was playing hard to get, he thought. This must be part of the game. I was exotic, and I owed him this experience.

But now I'm left wondering... How often do Latin American women deal with aggressive machismo behavior? Does this happen on a weekly basis? Or would this have even happened to me if I weren't a gringa? Could this have happened in the United States?  I don't know if this would have happened if I were Latina.  But this guy felt entitled because I'm American, and that's all I know for sure. I remember saying to my friend in the bathroom of the club, "So I guess this is the norm from now on. I guess we're supposed to expect this as long as we're in Bolivia." But why does it have to be? Why does wearing an undershirt to hide your chest have to be a norm?  I want so badly to fix this. To find answers to questions I don't know. And now that I've experienced machismo first-hand, I understand why there's such a vocal Latin American feminist movement. One that's arguably more united and thriving than American feminism.

I think the silver lining of this experience is that it happened in La Paz while I'm taking a class in Social Science Research and Ethnography--> a class to teach me how to conduct research and prepare me for my thesis. So what better way to handle being assaulted than to research machismo and gender in Bolivia? This incident speaks to the larger problem of being a woman in Latin America. Now I'm on mission. I have to figure out what we need to do and how we need to do it... Until I figure that out I'll be asking, watching, and observing. Conducting research in the name of women.

Gringos en La Paz

I've been in La Paz for a little over a week now and all I can say is WOW. So much to take in in so little time. There's the minibus system where passengers greet each other with "buenos días" as they hop on. There's the cholita women who sell anything from Fanta to Bolivian phone chips on almost every street corner, in every part of town.  There's feeling like an outsider, but being greeted by a kiss on the cheek anytime you meet someone new.

The only way I know how to describe La Paz is as a city of paradoxes.  My favorite place to observe this is on the minibuses. And on the minibus, you see a LOT. You have indigenous women dressed in traditional Aymara garb sitting next to European/Mestizo businessmen talking on their smart phones. There's people who are surprised to see a gringa get in, but say "buen día" anyway. On your route, you pass hole-in-the-wall houses, as well as mansions guarded by tall walls and barbed-wire in La Zona Sur.  There are children wearing fancy private school uniforms and children sitting at their grandmothers street-side shops. And looking out of the windows, you see the voice of paceños in the street art and grafitti that colors any open space. A few phrases include, "Evo" (with the colors of the Bolivian flag painted above), "Esta autonomía no es mía, " usually with "Es de todos" written underneath it.  The passions of Paceños and government propaganda is splattered all over the city. 

Then, little by little you start to understand Bolivia. And after that, you realize your own privilege. You start to ask the cholita woman who sold you candy about her day. You start to realize how loud Americans really are when we talk, and get used to people being surprised when you can talk in Spanish. So, thank you La Paz. I'm humbled and grateful for you. Here's to the next three weeks that I get to exist and pretend to be a Paceña. 

Vicepresidencia del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia

Tuesday June 28, 2016

            As the table began to speak in Spanish, I realized the next few hours would likely be over my head. I did my very best to understand, but I could only pick out occasional words, most of which were of course only the basics that didn’t give away any context.  I still persisted, earnestly trying to understand, hoping that holding my eyes on him would help shed light on the conversation that was spurring questions all around me. I sipped my coca té and listened intently. Eventually, realizing my method was not as effective as I had naively hoped, I decided to try my eye at the exercises we had practiced the day before. I studied the man who spoke to us.

            We sit in a simple and bare room. The cream walls have a tall wooden base that stretches midway up the wall. A wooden coatrack stands in the corner by the door, a small space heater on the near wall. A whiteboard is propped on one of the wooden panels. An empty wooden display cabinet is in the back corner, opposite a chair whose void was filled with folded posters. We are at a table that comfortably sits us all.

The man who speaks to us sits across from me and seems to me fit for the cold, and perhaps I associate this look with an adventurous spirit. He has a mélange of gray and white hairs, a scruffy haircut and stubbly beard of the same color. He wears a colorful scarf of earthy tones interrupted by bright oranges and reds. It wraps a few times close to his neck and ties to drape in the front. The scarf sits atop his blue-green pullover, over which he wears a black leather jacket with simple lapels.

He has a pair of blue eyes that I have to study to be sure of. It may simply be my lack of looking, but I wonder if blue eyes are hard to come by here, in a place with such strong, penetrating sun. Beyond his appearance, he speaks in such a way that even I cannot lose focus on the conversation. I like to listen to this type of speaker. His voice is inviting, low and soft but with a rough edge that makes you want to listen. He speaks with his hands in a manner that makes the conversation relaxed. He places one hand palm down on the royal blue tablecloth. He moves his hands together, interlocking fingers to demonstrate a concept that I do not need to hear the words to understand. He continues to speak and straightens the short pile of books in front of him. His two forefingers approach one another and meet at the tips to demonstrate two conflicting ideas. His tea remains full as he answers complicated questions with long explanations. As I take large sips of my hot tea, I find myself breathing deeply. The altitude and the easiness to lose my breath are new realities that I still haven’t quite gotten used to.

            I can honestly say that I do not know exactly who this man is. I didn’t understand his explanation of his position in the vice-president’s office, and I indubitably do not know his stance on the government, his understanding of Bolivia’s history, or hopes for its future. Perhaps, this lack of understanding, however, the elimination of one sense, enabled me to enhance another.

Walking Amidst History

June 29-30 2016 

When I visit a new place, I am always eager to discover its history. There are some places that are indubitably richer in history than others. Since I arrived just over a week ago, I have been struck by La Paz’s rich history and I am drawn to it.

When we visited La Basílica de San Francisco, someone pointed out to me the marks on the walls. When the indigenous people built this grand, elaborate stone church by hand, they had to meet quotas. In order to receive credit for their work, they carved their marks into the stones, marks that remain etched in the walls of the church still today. 

On the way to Calle Jean, I stopped at the Plaza Murillo. I was immediately taken by the colors of the buildings and the beautiful architecture. When we moved on to Calle Jean for the museums, the same sense of awe struck me again. This historic district drew me in as we learned of some of the older history of La Paz. I was particularly interested in the Guerra del Pacífico and its lasting impressions even in today’s society. I was asking my host father about it in the car and he said about it, “it’s terrible, but it’s over.” Yet, I understand many people do not share these sentiments. I am eager to learn more about this clash and its lasting implications. 

 

And finally, perhaps most ubiquitous, is the fascinating history of the cholitos and cholitas. Every day I pass them, I engage with them, we look at each other. I see the cholitas working at their stands on the streets, or accompanying their children to school on the bus, or carrying their children in bundles on their backs. They are silent and stoic, or outgoing and gregarious. I want to learn more of their culture. They are evidently integrated into the society today, but to what extent do they want to take part in the modern culture? I saw a woman follow her husband off the minibus one day and wondered about the relationship between husband and wife. And careful not to generalize, how do different men and women view their heritage and its role in modern life?

 

I love considering that I am standing in the exact spot where history has happened, where men and women stood before me and built the city with their hands, or fought for the things in which they believed. I cannot wait to learn more about these aspects of Bolivian history and I look forward to learning of even more aspects in our discussion in class.  

Behind The Center Of El Prado

On the first afternoon excursion, our class participated in a walking tour of La Paz. We began the tour in El Prado where upon arrival we continued as a class walking along its center and observing our surroundings. The center of El Prado is clearly identifiable as a park with benches, beautiful well-kept greenery, and numerous monuments symbolizing important events within Bolivia’s history. For Bolivian standards and even my own, this center is extremely clean illustrating a vast amount of time and effort that is daily exhausted for this appearance to remain.

 While there is few to none pieces of trash on the ground in the center of El Prado, there too lacks the presence of the Cholita’s, the booths of items for sale, and the young boys shining shoes, all making up a majority of Bolivia's culture, which can be seen lining the long sidewalks of El Prado. The fast, steady traffic of a four-lane street is the only thing separating the picturesque center of El Prado to the real life illustration of the actual day to day shuffle of La Paz. It is clear that although these two areas are so close, being only a few feet away from each other, they are vastly different. While some may think this difference is only trivial, I believe it present’s a much deeper issue – not only within the city of La Paz but also within Bolivia as a whole.

In my first few days in Bolivia I have come to learn that the Bolivian government plays a major role in all aspects of Bolivian life such as through television, newspapers, and magazines. With that being said, it is obvious that the center of El Prado is so nicely kept because it is seen as an area holding great governmental importance, which is visualized, by the monuments. Yet, it steadily brings up the question of how much the government truly cares about its people. Within feet from the center there are starving mothers and children, homeless men, native Bolivian’s - working their hardest to make ends meet. Why is their so much money, time, and effort placed within a park in the center of La Paz, but not in it’s people? For now, I don’t know, but this is a question in which I hope to discover an answer.

Who Are The Heroes?

Since coming to La Paz around four weeks ago, I have become used to the stark contrasts that are encapsulated everywhere within this city.  In the minibuses, which make up the main component  of the city’s public transportation system, it is far from unusual to see indigenous Amaryan women in full traditional garb sitting next to executive directors in expensive business suits.  I am no longer surprised when I see local artisans or vendors selling their homemade products in front of upscale restaurants or boutiques. All of this is now a “new normal” that has mostly lost its shock value.

Despite the fact that the culture clash no longer grabs my attention in daily life like it once did, I still marvel at how it coexists in the country’s national identity. Walking along one of the main downtown streets “El Prado” one is treated to the sight of the statue of Christopher Columbus, the explorer and colonizer for the Spanish Crown, a mere couple of hundred meters away from that of Símon Bolivar, the independence fighter and famed liberator of South America.  To me, the very presence of a Columbus statue is questionable given the fact that his voyages led to the first lasting European contact with the “New World”, inciting a period of  conquest, exploitation, and colonization that lasted for several centuries and whose harmful effects linger to the present day. He is also seen as a major player in the transatlantic slave trade and has been accused by several historians of initiating the genocide of native populations on the island of Hispaniola. A statue honoring this man, in a country that suffered significantly under foreign exploitation and colonization, seems absurd. Even more so given that the native inhabitants constitute a majority in Bolivia. This sentiment becomes even more staggering when one considers that the homage to Símon Bolivar, whose military campaign finally enabled  Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama to become sovereign states and free themselves of Spanish rule, is located on the same street.

Both of these statues enjoy the same effect of social recognition through their presence in a very popular and busy public space, and yet their effect on Bolivian history could hardly be more divergent. This is only one of the many juxtapositions that one encounters while visiting La Paz, but for me this is definitely one of the most striking.

La Paz: An Indigenous City

An aspect of life in Bolivia that has been somewhat disorienting for me as a visitor is the unexpected level of indigenous presence and influence in the city. Even though I was aware that Bolivia was a country proud of its indigenous heritage, I did not expect to see so many native Bolivians in a major urban area, riding the public transportation in traditional garb and walking out of upscale stores with fine new bowler hats. In the United States, less than 1% of the population is of Native American heritage, and almost all of these citizens live in reservations in rural areas of the Great Plains or the Southwest. Even in the small town I hail from, which proudly announces to visitors its connections to historic tribes that lived in the area, there is no aspect of our city’s culture that speaks to its first inhabitants. Even those citizens of Native American descent are indistinguishable from their neighbors. In La Paz, on the other hand, there seems to be a continuous and deeply-seated desire to preserve their roots and traditional heritage, not only as a means of constructing one’s personal identity-a tactic employed to some degree by people of every ethnic stripe-but also as a political statement and an act of defiance that rejects previous societal models that have marginalized this group.

Likewise, most of the Latin American cities I have either seen or read of have emphasized the amount of Spanish influence that remains in the cities, not only through architecture and other physical remnants of the colonial era, but also in the manners and presentation of the population. In various Latin American countries (such as Argentina and Uruguay), this is certainly true, and the public espouses a vision and outlook that is thoroughly more European than those of their neighbors. However, in La Paz, the public attitudes possess some marked differences. Though the city certainly bears the tangible markers of Spanish ownership, the public seems to have definitely focused its cultural energies inward, to the indigenous heritages and histories of its past. Being used to a society that is definitely European in its history and practices, coming to Bolivia has been an informative experience about a crystallizing indigenous identity in a former colony.

Catholicism and Indigenous Custom

When I was preparing to travel to Bolivia, I was aware that I was going from a largely Protestant society (especially in the Deep South) to an almost-universally Catholic one. Having had Catholic family members and friends in the past, I thought that I had a fairly solid understanding of how Catholicism is practiced, here in the Americas at any rate. However, only a few days in the country have shown that I was greatly unaware of the lifestyles and the beliefs of the Bolivian faithful, and the degree to which these practices are influenced and informed by indigenous traditions and culture. Likewise, the level of religious sentiment and presence of Catholicism in daily life were unexpected and initially a bit disorienting for a visitor from the publicly secular West.

            When our group visited the church of San Francisco, a historic and impressive basilica, a feature pointed out to us was the extensive use of indigenous iconography in the outer carvings of the structure, features that would have been out of place in a cathedral in the United States or Europe, whose Catholic churches draw their cultural cues largely from the Irish, Italian, or Polish backgrounds of their parishioners. One carving on the church of San Francisco displayed biblical figures communing with animals native to Bolivia, not the Near East. Another showed a visibly pregnant woman giving birth, a reminder of both the lack of sensitivity about one’s body that the native peoples possessed, as well as the indigenous exaltation of women as symbols of fertility. This historic mindset could explain why the Virgin Mary holds places of prominence in so many homes to this very day.

            Indeed, coming from the United States, and even the highly faithful state of Mississippi, it has been surprising to note the great amount of religious iconography and practice present in public life. In my Bolivian family, for example, elaborate prayers are said at the beginning of each meal, Mass is a family event, each room boasts at least one picture of a saint, and an upcoming first Communion is looked forward to with great anticipation. The beliefs of the public are clearly and deeply sincere, and form a vital part of the social fabric. Catholicism was an emphasis of the colonizers, as well as many political leaders up to the present, and so it seems that being Catholic is an integral part of being Bolivian (especially with the election of the first Latin American pope, Francis). In short, Bolivian Catholicism has been a far cry from its American counterpart, and the vivid presence of the religion in ordinary people’s daily lives has been an entirely new experience for a foreigner from a country in which one’s beliefs are far more often a private affair.