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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.
For a country of jagged mountains, sweltering swamps and jungles, and very little in between, Bolivia is criss-crossed by a surprising number of train tracks. They cut through the lowlands and are lie coiled up over the highlands; they loop through every major city and many tiny towns; they are everywhere, but they are almost all in a state of disuse.
This is the sad truth of Bolivian railways. The maps in Lonely Planet Bolivia are sutured with dotted train lines, and punctuated by the sad refrain ‘Former Train Station’. La Paz has a train station but no train services. Cochabamba has a train station but no train services. Sucre and Potosi have train stations and were almost but are currently not linked by a train service. For now the only train in Sucre is disappearing into the long grass behind the station. In the yards around it chickens are raised, and the guard dog cavorts with her puppy.
There was a time when train travel was the only way to get about in Bolivia. There were virtually no highways, and two networks – one in the highlands and one in the lowlands – sprawled across the country, carrying most of the country’s people, visitors and freight. La Paz was linked with Peru, Chile and Argentina; Santa Cruz – at the time little more than an agricultural backwater unable to imagine that it would one day become Bolivia’s biggest city – was connected to Brazil.
One of the causes behind the war that cost Bolivia its coastline was its taxing of the railway line between the mountains and the coast. Once Chile had taken the coast, leaving Bolivia landlocked, it offered a compensation of sorts in the form of rail connections between Bolivia and the Pacific, allowing Bolivia to export is mineral wealth. The connection still exists today, but is nothing more than a pair of rails over which the occasional freight train runs. There is no passenger service, and the tiny stations and stops along the way are derelict.
Trains-as-compensation are a recurring theme of Bolivian history. When Brazil annexed most of Bolivia’s rubber-rich jungles (and proceeded to ruthlessly deforest these), it offered a train line as compensation that could eventually link Bolivia with the Atlantic. This was to be the third attempt to connect Bolivia’s north with Brazilian lines, but the tracks never reached Bolivian soil.
The latter half of the twentieth century saw the gradual dismantling of the Bolivian rail system. In 1964 Bolivia had about 100 train engines and 3000 kilometres of road. By the turn of the millennium it had 50 engines and 40,000 kilometres of road. As the road networks expanded the two rail networks, which have never been connected, fell out of popularity. In the 70s and 80s Bolivia’s economic situation saw railways and other public services starved of funding and rapidly deteriorating. In the early 90s a study found that $40 billion would be needed to completely upgrade the rail system. Needless to say this money did not and does not exist. In the mid 90s at the urging of the World Bank most of Bolivia’s industries were privatised, including the rail system. The aging system was not profitable and passenger services were soon discontinued, leaving only a limited freight system.
Today there are a few passenger services in Bolivia. The so-called ‘Death Train’ (what is it about Bolivia and such epithets?) runs passengers, cargo and contraband from Santa Cruz to the Brazilian border, a vital link for the city’s economy. Another more touristed line runs from Oruro to Uyuni to Tupiza to the Argentine border. It still retains some of the faded grandeur of the old rail services, in the uniforms of the conductors and the rattling place settings in the dining car. The rails and cars though have seen better days; when I trained from Uyuni to Oruro there was a seven hour delay because the train in front of ours had de-railed.
There are no real prospects for the revival of Bolivia’s rail network. Buses, vans and trucks – both official and unofficial – are the transportation of choice, and the lonely rails embedded across the country are slowly disappearing. In 2007 thieves stole 100 metres of track; this is perhaps one of the few remaining uses for the tracks, unless huge amounts of money miraculously appear to rehabilitate the system.
One of the main tourist attractions in Uyuni is the train cemetery, where long links of rusting locomotives slowly crumple and collapse into the desert. They serve as a sad reminder of another of Bolivia’s lost institutions, another lost opportunity to progress.
I passed Sábado de Pasión and Domingo de Ramos camping by lonely, abandoned churches in the countryside, and returned to Sucre as Semana Santa – Holy Week – was beginning.
Holy as the week was supposed to be, Sucre did no celebrate in a big way. It is too peaceful, and perhaps to self-focused to go in for the truly rapturous celebrations. Other cities in Bolivia, cities more unabashedly indigenous and traditional, held bigger, longer, more frequent processions and festivities. The first half of Sucre’s Semana Santa passed for me in Spanish classes, surprise Champions League results, and hours spent at the computer.
Holy Thursday came around and the bars filled ahead of the midnight alcohol prohibition. It was a beautiful evening to be on the streets, as every church in the town threw its immense doors open, and a steady flow of pilgrims streamed in through and out of the portals, the same faces appearing by every shrine or altar I visited. This one of the rare chances to see the treasures of all those colonial churches accessible to the public without having to pay an entrance fee.
Down by the central market at la Iglesia de San Francisco – one of Sucre’s oldest and most important churches – the scaffolds and tarpaulins were cleared away and the restoration process was put on hold for the night. Inside the impressive carved ceiling and gilded altars contrasted with the coarse, sanded walls, the regal saints looking down on the murmuring congregation from behind sheets of protective plastic.
In la Iglesia de Santo Domingo mass was taking place, but the priest could barely be heard over the chuckling children and greetings of families and neighbours. People knelt by the statues of a bloodied Jesus while the young and the old dozed in the pews. It was a lovely scene; the church opened up as a public place and filled not with solemnity but vivacity. A hymn rippled through the crowd, softly sung without accompaniment.
At midnight a veil of rain trembled over the city, but this didn’t the stop the customary procession up to one of the hills overlooking the city. The hill has no special importance – it is just the one that isn’t festooned with broadcasting antennae – but this in no way deterred the crowd from praying by the stations of the cross and lighting candles.
For the remainder of the long weekend the streets emptied and houses filled with parties and dinners. The occasional procession was ushered through the streets by bands and banners, but the more important business this weekend was food and family. Gringos assembled to meld their own Easter customs with Bolivian tradition. On Good Friday evening I sat down to a typical seven-course meatless meal that was made up of various signature gringo dishes – lasagne, pizza, humus, fried things. The local ban on alcohol could not be reconciled to the need for wine though, and red flowed freely. On Sunday I sat down to a Dutch brunch heavy on cheese and chocolate. It was a weekend of great ease and satisfaction, Sucre at its prettiest and most sociable.
The alcohol ban lifted, the bars filled, and by Sunday evening meat and booze were back on every table. The brief hush and mumble of another Semana Santa passed, and cars retook the streets. The figures of wounded Jesus and pious Maria were cast back into shadows and cobwebs as the churches closed the doors and the holy places were shut up, and life carried on as before.
The end of March was the grand despedida season, with farewell after farewell event filling the nights, and overlapping and competing for patronage. I, however, was going nowhere. I had already made my return to the immigration office.
The office in Sucre is far less chaotic or complicated than the one in Cochabamba. There are less foreign residents here. Instead of the long, crowded corridor and many rooms and desks of Cochabamba, the office in Sucre has only a few rooms. It is hard to get lost in the bureaucracy.
Even so, every time I step into one of these offices I am filled with a sense of unease. I find myself trying to look more presentable and respectable, and I find myself fumbling for a more polite, formal Spanish that I have never learned.
What is it about these places? I have never had a problem with extending my visa, and this time was no exception. The offices could even be comical, with many of the documents still banged out excruciatingly slowly on clamouring typewriters. None the less, when my documents are scrutinised, and old ones I had forgotten about resurface, and when I am asked the inevitable question ‘what are you doing in Bolivia?’, I feel an awful shudder of dread deep within me, which I must fight to suppress.
If this I what I feel, in the brief two minutes of my interview, what must the many Bolivians feel who must jump through innumerable hoops if they want to travel or live abroad? The stern faces and endless files of the Sucre immigration office are a pale imitation of the far greater apparatuses that watch over visitors to Australia, the US and Europe. The concern officials show here for gringos spending much time within their borders are borrowed from the far greater paranoia that western cultures feel towards the idea of strangers and foreigners in their midst. A friend of mine is, for instance, torn between her desire to finish her degree, and her desire to travel. As long as her degree is incomplete she has a better chance of gaining a tourist visa to the US, since she will have to return to Bolivia to finish her studies. She won’t become part of that great and fluid migrant mass that is so reviled and needed.
When I visit the office I take two copies from my passport – of my face and my entry stamp. In the past I had to take 200Bs ($30US), and had to surrender my passport for the night. This is nothing compared to the tests and checks and scrutinies that Bolivians face when and if they are able to travel. My passport opens endless doors to me; theirs narrows down their options enormously.
When I was delivered the question ‘what are you doing in Bolivia?’, I answered that I am writing articles about travel in the country. I had better make sure that is true, and that the articles are worth the silly sense of dread.
Thanks to the wonderful resident gringos of Sucre, and to their personal libraries, I’ve somehow managed – in a city where the bookstores only sell stationery and in which the only people who read in the plazas or the cafes or on buses are foreigners – to keep myself entrenched in the realm of the highbrow and the literary. I’ve even been able to choose the direction my readings have taken, which is how I have returned to the world of Jose Saramago.
Please note, I’m about to completely spoil the plot for anyone who hasn’t read this book.
All the Names bears a number of similarities to The Double, which I’ve already blogged about. Both narratives see a very bored and single man becoming fixated on the search for another person whom he has never met. Both men delve into phone books and other types of catalogues, though in The Double the catalogue is a video store, while in All the Names it is – among other places – a cemetery.
All the Namesis a meditation on death and memory. At the centre of the novel is the question of what we do with the dead, and of where we go when we die. Saramago’s approach is humanist, though; there is no suggestion of afterlives here. At the most basic level, when we die we go to the cemetery and become a grave, and we go into the Central Registry and become a death certificate.
The protagonist, Senhor Jose, works in the Central Registry, where the all the names of the living are separated from those of the dead by an archaic filing system. Every life and every name is, in the Central Registry, reduced to dates of birth, marriage, divorce and death, and to the names of spouses and direct family. It is a reductive way of remembering the dead. It is also a way of forgetting them, of shelving them away in the dust and gloom of the registry.
Senhor Jose spends almost the entire novel searching for a woman he will never meet. In doing so he is trying to give detail to her life, to make it more than just the recorded dates of birth, death, etc. This is no easy task; the woman disappears and leaves few clues about her life or death. Before he reaches the end of his quest Senhor Jose knows he is approaching an impassable wall, a cul-de-sac which is the obscurity death casts over life.
A building sense of melancholy hangs over the narrative; Saramago is not seeking to cheat the simple, hard facts of death and of the cemetery and the registry. As a result the book is poignantly, hauntingly sad at times, and leaves an unnerving sense of loss which brought itching tears to my eyes. This is as much because of the loneliness that Senhor Jose never escapes as because of his musings on death.
Still, with Senhor Jose’s quest, Saramago depicts some of the small, dedicated efforts we make to ensure that we keep the dead in more than just the catalogues of cemetery and registry. A concern of the book is the keeping or intrusion of the dead among the living. The walls of the registry and cemetery are continually knocked down and expanded to make room for and contain all of the dead. Eventually the cemetery grows too big for walls, and the graves of the dead begin to overlap with the land of living.
The final act of Senhor Jose, aided by the authoritarian Registrar who provides a wonderful sub-plot, is to de-register the death of the woman, to destroy any recorded signs of her death, to place her file back amongst the living. It is a gesture that changes nothing, but which is about as much as can be done to give dignity to the dead, to ensure they never become just file and headstone. Even human memory is fickle, Saramago notes; there is much about a person that is irretrievably lost when they die; the the cul-de-sac that we, like Senhor Jose, arrive at in our remembering.
This is a sad book for one as vivacious as Saramago. He does nothing to try to evade or deny the cold inevitability of death, but his idea that the names of the dead belong alongside the names of the living, and not off in the dark repositories where lives are diminished and then forgotten has a sweet note to it. Life and death are, after all, close companions that one way or another belong side by side.
