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I’ve probably never been so full of preconceptions about what I would find in a town as I was when the bus brought me into Santa Cruz. From the Che sites the bus had lumbered ever downhill into overgrown, tropical lands where the clothing got scantier as the foliage got denser, until we reached the big smoke that I’d heard so much about.
From a tourist perspective it would be easy to overlook Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s largest city in terms of population and of urban sprawl. From a holistic, wanting-to-see-both-sides perspective, though, the city is impossible to ignore. Even if there is really nothing to see here.
La Paz is high and dense, crammed into a canyon, full of old traditions, and fanatically loyal to Evo. Santa Cruz is flat, low and tropical, sprawling over the by turns muddy and dusty flats, full of SUVs and American brands, and rabidly, rabidly anti-Evo.
None of this is any secret; Santa Cruz is billed as more Miami than Bolivia, and it has often erupted into violence and confrontation with Evo and his loyal factions. I was expecting to finds signs of all this, but on the other hand I’ve met great cruzeñas (one in particular) in other parts of the country, and these people testified to the friendliness and casual openess of the city. It is a world far removed from the hard stoicism of the mountains.
Walking the streets, Santa Cruz struck me as a weird cross between Houston and Manila, although the locals of either city would have good reason to consider Santa Cruz as small-fry in comparison with their own metropolises. None the less the similarities are there; Santa Cruz has grown out of a colonial Spanish outpost, and in its centre traces of this are still visible. Until a few years ago sloths hung from the trees in the leafy central plaza. The city has really only become significant in the last 60 years, though, as highways and railways have linked it with the rest of Bolivia, and more importantly with Brazil and Argentina. These allowed bargain-hunters in and agricultural produce out. Although how much more beef and fruit do Argentina and Brazil need? The rise of cocaine and the rise of Santa Cruz may form a far more important correspondence.
More important still was the discovery of grand gas reserves in Santa Cruz department. Thus came Houston to Santa Cruz, a city now of opportunistic businesspeople, of the nouveau riche, of urban sprawl, and of gaz-guzzling vehicles. Nobody is anybody without a car in Santa Cruz; how else would the world know what music you like to play?
I had no idea what to do in Santa Cruz. I wandered the city centre looking for guidebook-recommended restaurants, but most had moved on. Time and again I returned to the pretty central plaza, where old men gathered to play chess, and dignified, jacketed vendors sold steaming cups of coffee with rapidly-forming skins. Nuns flitted by and dogs attired in far more expensive clothes than mine strained on their leashes. Still, the most surprising thing about this place was how Bolivian it felt.
No true cruzeña would want to hear this. The woman I stayed with, among others, sang the praises of Santa Cruz, a modern, cosmopolitan city without the problems of the poor mountain pueblos. But the salons and boutiques of the centre quickly give way to familiar crumbling facades and dirt streets. The people here are whiter, many are taller and slimmer than the mountain-dwellers, but they are still filled with caution and curiosity and need to stare a bit when they spy a gringo. There are still people begging, people selling whatever they can to earn a crust, people sleeping on crushed cardboard in doorways. In Santa Cruz everyone can work if they want to, my hostess told me, but the city is known for its crime too, and even immediatly beyond the high walls and gates of the hostess’s house there are decrepit hovels, and streets that are little more than thick bogs of mud.
On my Saturday night in Santa Cruz the city gathered around any public screen to watch featherweight Venezuela beat the Bolivian national team in a world cup qualifier.Anguished faces and fists slamming on tables – just like those in every other city in the country – showed that beneath all the vitriol of regionalism these people are Bolivian, just like their highland rivals.
Why so much hatred then? Why the photographic exhibits proudly showing cruzeñas attacking police, storming government buildings, humiliating indigenous people? The uniformity of the bile on the tip of every tongue here makes me throw questioning glances at the media, which makes no attempt at objectivitiy, and is (of course) owned by the powerful and wealthy of the region. These people have reason to hate Evo; Santa Cruz has risen as a haven of semi-legal business, of tax evasion and of getting unmarked packages across the border. Evo wants to redistribute land, ensure the government receives its share of all profits; he wants to centralise and legislate, and hamper the freedoms these remote jungle traders enjoy. And from these people, I can only assume, spreads all the fascistic claptrap about the need to defend ‘liberty’, to fight Evo and his indigenous, pagan hordes. The same old, tired story of the cunning and the influential tapping into the credulities, ignorances and vanities of those propping them up.
Three days in Santa Cruz was more than enough. I grew tired of all the pro-Santa Cruz babble and the anti-Evo drivel; for all its wealth Santa Cruz is a dull city, low on art, low on prettiness or curiosity, low on traditions and culture, high on shopping and gas. The sad truth, I suspect, is that those making all the money know that this ia a temporary thing, and are just trying to make what they can while they can. The gas supplies will deplete, the tax and border regulations will tighten, and they will be forced to take their rackets elsewhere. There is thus little reason for them to invest in the city; SUVs are a safer investment, and will allow them to flee the scuppered city all the more quickly when the time comes.
For as long as I have been in Sucre the city has been fixated on its impending bicentennial. On May 25th the city would celebrate what the giant posters festooning the churches and plazas have advertised as the two hundredth anniversary of the ‘first cry of freedom in the Americas’. In preparation for this grand date the central plaza was fenced off for three months so that its perfectly fine paving could be uprooted and replaced. Buildings all over town were obscured by scaffolding as fresh coats of paint were thrown at every slightly off-white edifice. Other stranger changes occurred; previously blank and chaotic roads received confusing lane markings and other arcane symbols; bright orange trash cans appeared in every street; on the eve of the bicentennial electronic walk/don’t walk signs appeared around the central plaza, twittering and flashing conflicting signals and bewildering the locals.
The bicentennial was to be Sucre’s finest hour; which other South American city could boast of having electronic cross walk signs? Along with everything else, in the lead-up to May the city was bedecked in flags. Bolivian flags hung from balconies in every street, and with them hung the provincial flag – a barbed and medieval red cross on a white field. It was in Sucre in 1809 that Bolivia – then known as ‘Upper Peru’ and little more than a mineral-rich territory caught in the crossfire of the Lima vs. Buenos Aires rivalry – first declared independence. It would take another sixteen years to actually achieve independence.
A sort of historic sleight of hand is involved in this claim to the first cry of freedom in the Americas. By 1809 the American Revolution had already taken place, Haiti had gained independence and early independence movements had already risen (and fallen) in Venezuela. Still, claiming 1809 as the anniversary allows Bolivia to leapfrog all its South American neighbours, whose bicentennaries all fall between 2009 and 2025. Where Bolivia should be the last to celebrate its independence, it has become the first.
The weeks leading up to May 25th were a jumble of concerts at shifting venues, food fairs and semi-celebrity sightings. The Ms. Bolivia contestants arrived en masse, all of them about two feet taller than the average Bolivian. There was a Ms. for every city and province, and one from the phantom Litoral province, which Bolivia lost to Chile in the War of the Pacific over a hundred years ago. I’m not sure who she was or where she actually came from, but she looked too frail to reclaim the province she was representing. Ms. Chuquisaca (Sucre’s province) unsurprisingly won the title of Ms Bolivia, and Sucre was firmly back in the spotlight. It may have lost two of the three branches of government, it may have very few significant industries or businesses (apart from a cement factory that sponsored many of the celebrations), it may no longer be at the fore of progressive American thought, but Sucre had Ms. Bolivia, and it had the bicentennial.
The celebrity Bolivian most conspicuously absent from the bicentennial was polarising president Evo Morales. He made an appearance at Ravelo, a town close to but not within the boundaries of Chuquisaca, before returning to fortress La Paz. Sucre’s days as one of the progressive centres of the Americas are well and truly over. Nowadays conservatism characterises this city of lawyers and dentists. When Evo was elected the idea of an indigenous president, especially one fixated on reform and wealth redistribution, sat very uncomfortably with Sucre’s white and wealthy. As Evo has shifted power away from Sucre (official capital) and to La Paz (de facto capital), he has earned the ire of not just the elite, but just about every one in Sucre. The hot-blooded spirit of independence no longer means Sucre wants freedom from oppressive colonial powers, but rather from the most radical president in Bolivia’s history (that’s not to say he isn’t at times oppressive…). When those red crossed flags waved and fluttered, they were declaring as much as anything that this was Sucre, not Bolivia.
Officially Evo was boycotting the bicentennial, because one year ago racist thugs in Sucre had beat up indigenous people attending May 25th celebrations. The real reason is more likely that Evo is so hated here that had he turned up, the violence would have repeated, albeit on a much larger scale. As it was, the long long bicentennial weekend was largely peaceful, all the aggression being worked out in long processions of furious flag-waving.
Bolivia is a nation of marchers and music-lovers, and all its festivities are characterised by these activities. At all hours in the days before the bicentennial, groups would take to the streets, keeping loose time with their drums and horns, chanting their slogans and waving their flags. Representatives from the outlying barrios made the many-kilometered dance-march in full and elaborate costume, flinging fireworks about them. Military bands in elaborate regalia were more formal and subdued. For the first time since I have been here, skirts became common sights on the streets of Sucre, as any woman with a pair of legs was wrapped in one and given a banner to hold.
Among the concerts, the flourishes of amateur fireworks and the endless processions, the highlight of the festivities came on sleepy Sunday morning. Sucre is usually at its most catatonic at this time, but on this particular morning the city awoke to the sound of many many drums and voices. The city was being invaded by campesinos, country-folk of predominantly indigenous heritage. Thousands upon thousands of them marched into town, bearing their banners and their instruments. There were a few red crosses in the crowd, but far more prevalent were the three-coloured flag of Bolivia and the rainbow forty-nine chequers of the indigenous flag. The marchers shouted pro-Evo messages, held placards declaring ‘no to racism’, and cheered for Bolivia (rather than for Sucre) while the sleepy Sucreñas looked on in disbelief. Would this end in violence? It would not; it was a show of strength and unity by the people that had been brutalised one year before. They filled the streets, occupied the central plaza, and then melted away to let the dazed city folk get on with their suddenly miniscule-seeming processions.
By the Monday of the actual bicentennial the celebrations were losing momentum. The midnight ban on alcohol that temporarily came into force with the beginning of the 25th may have had something to do with this. Still, fireworks were launched, and an enactment of the cry of freedom was enthusiastically followed on the steps of the house in which Bolivian independence was finally ratified in 1825.
Concerts continued to break out from time to time in the ensuing days, but by the 26th the bicentennial had passed and Sucre was once again its tranquil self. The whole long march to the 25th had gone off with barely a violent incident. My favourite images from the celebrations come courtesy of some clever or careless vendor who instead of red crosses sold red heart balloons, which hovered over the passionate crowds wherever they gathered around the city.
It’s very hard to draw a defining line between work and play in Bolivia. There is none of the stoic solemnity surrounding work that seems to be the norm in the west. Most of the time the attitude towards work is frustratingly casual, while leisure is taken very, very seriously. Nothing is observed as fastidiously as the long lunch break, or the long night out.
Given the difficulties we gringos face in distinguishing work from play, it is very helpful to find one of Bolivia’s largest festivals, celebrated in and around Tarabuco, a town not far from Sucre, is named Pujllay, or ‘Play’ in Quechua.
Confusing matters slightly was the fact that I was sort of attending Pujllay in a work capacity. Although Condortrekkers is still not quite legally registered, we its representatives found ourselves taking a group of backpackers along to the festivities. This was never meant to constitute more than sharing transport, but somehow things got mixed up, and we ended up more or less as guides for the weekend.
The weekend was scorchingly hot, and the first to really feel the heat was the truck that was to take us to Tarabuco, which ran out of drive on a hill, and could go no further. We were forced to find another ride, and ended up perched in the back of a much larger truck, watching the green valleys roll by.
Tarabuco was its usual tranquil self on Saturday; the real festivities started out in the countryside in the tiny pueblos, and would only converge on the town on the following morning. We had a contact in the nearby pueblo of Pisily, and so with our group – who had turned out to be a rather excellent mix of open-minded and enthusiastic travellers – we hiked out of Tarabuco and up a long valley of flocks and fields. On the occasions when I make it out into the countryside I am always struck by its simple loveliness; the tiny stands of crops (who knew that potatoes grew such pretty purple flowers?), the lonely, elderly shepherds, the adobe houses and the steep hills and valleys.
On our route we passed a couple of other groups already returning, and when eventually we reached Pisily the sun was casting long sideways planes of gold across the land, and the people were resting after the festivities. Still, before the sun went down and the multitude of stars and satellites took to the sky, there was time to share the best meal of the weekend, and some very local firewater, as well as to see the men dance and play their hoarse pipes and flutes.
The Tarabuco region is famous for its handicrafts, and for this weekend the men were assembled in their finest gear. Leather hats styled upon the helmets of the conquistadores, and wide ponchos of deep red and black. When they danced they danced in thick-soled wooden shoes and enormous, clamouring spurs.
Despite our untimely arrival we were met with great warmth by the tiny pueblo. We numbered twelve and this was a huge number to make space for, and yet the only hesitation was that of the shy children, who hid among mothers’ skirts and could barely find a word to say to us.
We trekked back in the dark, the night cool on faces tinged poncho-red by sun and moonshine. All of Tarabuco turned out for a concert that evening, but few of us saw this through to the end. We were no match for the seriousness of local merrymaking.
Sunday was fiercely hot, and before our patio breakfast was done skin was burning and the Australians amongst us were scampering for sunscreen, hats and scarves. Overnight Tarabuco had transformed, with every street crammed with stalls selling handicrafts or snacks.
As we left the hostel a helicopter buzzed overhead, lowering itself over the fairground. Word surged through the streets that Evo had come, and instantly there were running, shouting forms everywhere as the whole town turned out to greet their president. Sucre may be anti-Evo, but this province as whole is pro-Evo, and this is particularly true in indigenous Tarabuco. By the time we reached the fairground people were already leaving, their heads hung low; it wasn’t their hero Evo, it was only the vice-president Alvaro Linares, a former guerilla turned intellectual. His motorcade stormed through the narrow streets and was well-greeted, but the momentary fervour aroused by the possibility of Evo had dissipated.
With Linares seated on a pavilion in the main plaza, the dances and processions and music began. They would continue almost unceasingly for the rest of the day.
Pujllay commemorates a battle during the struggle for independence, in which Tarabuco essentially won its freedom by beating back a Spanish contingent. Every year on the main fairground a giant Pukhara (a tall, decorated scaffold of wood) is erected, and offerings of fruit, cheese, beer, jars of olives, bottles of mayonnaise, and other wares are hung from this. At the top of the Pukhara the fresh carcass of a cow presides over the events, while down below the dance troops circle and cavort, until eventually some men climb the Pukhara to collect and distribute all its bounty to the waiting throngs below.
By the early afternoon the fairground was filled with people. Clouds of dust were kicked up by the shuffling, stomping feet of the indefatigable dancers, and thin skeins of bluish smoke drifted about the hundreds of hotplates and barbeques. The drink of choice during Pujllay is chicha, a local brew made of fermented corn and almost anything else. Traditionally the process is started by chewing the corn, though this is less common today. Under tents great buckets, barrels and vats of chicha were opened, and communal cups were dipped and passed, every drinker offering a brief libation to Pachamama, or mother earth, before throwing back the draughts that tasted of peach or orange or corn or foot.
We passed the entire day under the Pukhara, passing cups of chicha and chasing the shade. The dance groups continued relentlessly, the media descended upon the vice-president, and when he left he was farewelled warmly, the disappointment of his arrival forgotten. This was no doubt aided by the huge volumes of chicha consumed. As the day progressed the number of people stumbling into the river beds and arroyos to vent bursting bladders increased, as did the number of scuffles, the number of amorous intertwinings, the number of comatose forms lying in the dust, and the number of locals eager to talk to gringos, and to share yet more chicha with them.
As shade re-took the field men scrambled up and onto the Pukhara, and soon the grounds were flooded with celebratory breads and sausages and cheese and fruit and bottle of beer and mayonnaise. The cow remained nobly mounted at the top of the tower, and was still there when we left, cramming ourselves into a mini-bus, which surged into the twilight and towards Sucre, racing and dodging the other speeding buses, vans and trucks filled with dozy revellers. There is nothing as exhausting as play in Bolivia, and I would welcome the return of the week, of the working days, so I could get some rest before the next weekend bout of play.
My well-connected host in La Paz had emphatically described Tiahuanaco, the mysterious name of a lost civilisation, and of their grand ceremonial centre, now a ruin on the route from La Paz to Titicaca. He was even good enough to check the operating hours of the nearby Peruvian border for me, by phoning his friend the mayor of Tiahuanaco. Off I went.
The day was glorious, the mini-van hummed along, out of the city and into the rich green farmland, all tethered cows and adobe houses. When the driver called for Tiahuanaco I leapt from the van and into the sunny emptiness of the Bolivian countryside.
I wandered along the disused train tracks, past the half finished hotels, and ducked into a café for the usual sandwich and fries – the unimaginative staples of the vegetarian in Bolivia. By the time I finished eating and re-emerged dark clouds had blown over the town, and quavering columns of rain could be seen drifting in from the mountains.
There was nothing else to be done; I was at Tiahuanaco, but I had to be in Peru before 7pm (6pm Peruvian time). I passed through the gate and into the ruin complex as the first fists of rain thudded into the clay.
The Tiahuanaco culture flourished for millennia, rising in power and importance until about 900 A.D. By the year 1200 the civilisation had basically disappeared. The lake that had reached to the fringes of the ceremonial complex receded away, and mud and weeds accumulated over the carefully sculpted stone; later the Spanish came marauding through, exorcising the demons in stone monoliths, and appropriating stone and sacred objects for their own ceremonial centres in the old and new worlds.
Today Tiahuanaco is something of a rallying point for indigenous Bolivian culture. When he was elected, Evo staged a ‘traditional’ inauguration ceremony at the site. The ceremony was an Aymara ceremony, but the ancient Aymara were enemies of Tiahuanaco and may have contributed to their downfall. These details are less important than the emerging pride Bolivia feels in its premier pre-Colombian site.
The Tiahuanaco I visited resembled a quarry; the ancient capital being once again constructed out of the same materials, the same old stone being dug out of the mud and re-fitted to the same old walls. It is an incredible slow process, and most of the grand pyramid presiding over the site is still buried under mud. Other sites bear names like the Palace of the Sarcophaguses, but are essentially piles of exhumed stone, and the vague outline of an ancient wall.
Still, the place is impressive, and as the storm groaned overhead the place felt profoundly forlorn and once again abandoned. The gutters and irrigation still work, funnelling muddy water out of the main temple and into troughs below. A few lonely monolithic figures, one bearing the etched mark of Spanish exorcism stood tall against the deluge, their carved details still distinct. In the semi-subterranean temple distressed and worn faces leered out of the moistening stone, expressing ancient concern at the speed with which a storm can be formed in these lands. The storm that overtook the civilisation must have come on scarcely less fast.
By the time I left, heading for the border, the sun was back out and the impressive stone gates of Tiahuanaco were standing grand and regal against a blue background. As more of the civilisation is uncovered and its treasures restored the site will regain its old grandeur. But the layers of history have settled thick over Tiahuanaco, and much will remain lost and mysterious and forlorn forever.
This week Hugo Chavez celebrated his tenth anniversary as president of Venezuela. This may not fall directly within the sphere of Bolivian topics that I have been blogging on and on about, but given how much Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution has influenced Evo Morales’s three years in office, it seems fitting to pay some respects.
So, Hugo, congratulations on ten years in office. This achievement is considerable given that when you came into office the president of Venezuela could only serve one five year term. If you have your way and manage to further amend the constitution, you may well realise your goal of staying in office for twenty five years.
Congratulations are in order for bringing affordable or free health care and education to more Venezuelans, as well as opening a chain of subsidised staples supermarkets, lavishly adorned with pro-Hugo messages.
Congratulations are in order, Hugo, for bringing Cuban doctors to the slums of Caracas, and for empowering the impoverished to vote (usually for you).
Congratulations are in order for the successful nationalisation of your country’s oil wealth, and for the ambitious campaigns you have put this wealth towards. The Bolivians who have become literate thanks to programs you sponsored no doubt also send congratulations, as do those from the North East of the USA who have received cheap fuel from you.
Congratulations are in order for surviving a coup attempt, which may or may not have had US backing. Congratulations are in order for the courage with which you have stood up to your neo-liberal, capitalist rival and client to the north. You have succeeded in blaming nearly all your problems on them, and for cooking up endless conspiracies involving American assassination attempts.
Congratulations for standing up and decrying the violence perpetrated by Israel, more so than for the occasional anti-semitic comments you let slip or insert into official speeches.
Congratulations for maintaining your accessibility, for your weekly TV show where citizens can call in to ask you questions and air their concerns. If only the respect you showed here for the media extended to enforcing freedom of press. If only you allowed other people to air their opinions as you air yours, without fear of reprisals. If only the infringing upon the freedom of the press wasn’t such a terribly slippery slope towards despotism.
Congratulations on the number of votes and elections you have won, and on your democratic approach to such matters as constitutional amendments. It is a shame these are so often beleaguered by claims of voting irregularities. Surely, with your massive popular support, you have no need to fiddle with electoral results. It’s also a shame you lost the vote that would have allowed you to stay in power for longer. Congratulations on pushing forward anyway and finding loopholes which might allow you to re-contest the matter again and again.
And if you do succeed in having the constitution amended again no doubt I will be able to congratulate you in fifteen years time when you celebrate your twenty-fifth anniversary as president. Although who knows what could happen in that long interim, and what you may have become, and which of the many paths you seem set upon you will have marched down. Right now I just don’t know what to make of you and your revolution. So congratulations and let’s see what happens.
