El Diario, July 1969

            Looking through the archived El Diario papers from the summer of 1969, one international news story was a constant presence along with the daily happenings of La Paz. The manned mission to space and the Apollo 11 astronauts were covered in intense detail, with practically a story printed every day leading up to the day of the landing. Interviews with astronauts and NASA employees, a step-by-step introduction to the science of rocketry, and a South American tour of the astronauts were all covered in exhaustive detail by the paper’s journalists. While I was aware that the moon landings are, by some accounts, the most-reported and most-widely viewed events in history, it seemed as though this Bolivian paper was covering the moon mission to an even larger degree than what I had read in American newspapers of the same time.

            Seeing this, I was expecting huge coverage of the landing itself on July 20, possibly even occupying the whole paper. However, when I turned to this date, the coverage of the successful lunar mission only merited a few paragraphs and front-page attention was also given to a potential Soviet moon landing that appeared to be in the offing. Naturally, this was confusing, given how much focus had been placed on the American expedition in the preceding weeks. However, what was explained to me was that Bolivia as a nation was not particularly inclined to either the American or Soviet side of the Space Race, or the Cold War in general. The greatest threat of the space race was the possible weaponization of space travel, and Bolivia could do little but sit back and report the events of the two superpowers with baited breath. During the Cold War, Bolivia was neither a part of the first world, a privileged circle of developed and democratic nations that supported the United States, nor was it a part of the “second world,” the developing Communist nations that aligned themselves with the Soviet Union. Bolivia was, as it is today, part of the third world, a largely undeveloped nation without strong ties to either communism or capitalism. What the newspapers hint at, however, is still an unanswered question. How does Bolivia see itself and its future on the global stage? Are Bolivians content to be a passive observer, being moved rather than moving, or do ordinary Bolivians anticipate and hope for a bigger piece of the global pie?