Oranges and Avocado

In the NY Times

I'm in the NY Times today. Strange/funny/embarrasing?

The ESB

Smith and 9th

Smith/9th is the highest subway station in NYC

Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn

Ned Lamont

I was at the Lamont victory party last night after a day spent flyering cars in parking lots and waving signs at passing commuters at the exit 43 off-ramp on Park Road in West Hartford. It felt great to see Lamont win, and to feel the excitement in the room -- not only for having created change in the "land of steady habits," as CT is affectionately known, but for potentially having started something much bigger than a single senate seat or even the Democratic Party. Change is abrewin'.

I Heart SF

Montgomery Street Muni Station, July 2006.

Moving Onward

From Lima to Hartford to New York to San Francisco to Seattle to Hartford and back to New York since I last posted here.

This blog will no longer be a regular outlet for thoughts and ramblings and observations, but I'll try to keep posting the occasional photo or snippet from my soon-to-be-very-busy law school life in New York.

Photo above is the view from Noah and Linda's wedding on Orcas Island in the San Juans this weekend.

Time

Today's my last day in South America and so I've been thinking a lot about time. Five months kinda just evaporated right before my eyes, but what's weird is that they also unfolded excrutiatingly slowly, lots of days turning into the next day and the next... with no schedule, nothing to do, no one to call or see or be accountable to for anything. It's crazy how time can feel so full and so empty at once, like each moment has the potential to contain lots and lots of stuff, but also is basically nothing, fleeting, gone. I guess I've been doing a lot of meditating without even realizing it during all my time traveling.

City Boy

Growing up I never thought I'd be a city lover... but I've figured out that am. I've loved every day of my rapidly-diminishing 5 months in South America, including all the time out in the sticks on Chiloé Island, in the Bolivian Altiplano, the Peruvian Rainforest, etc. But I seem to be happiest amid the hustle-and-bustle of cities like Buenos Aires, Santiago, La Paz, and Lima and I've wound up spending way longer in each of them than I originally thought I had wanted to, drawn in by the ease of exploring an essentially endless and foreign urban landscape with no agenda, no idea of what hidden gem or jaw dropping sight I might find around the next corner. Outside of cities, I found it much more challenging to just wander... the logistics of buses and roads and huge distances, the poverty and lack of "tourist" resources in the countryside, the quiet: for lots of reasons, just heading off on my own for the day with a backpack and a few bucks has been much easier when I'm in cities than out of them.

And maybe my city-love is just my subconscious preparing me for three years of life as a New Yorker. Maybe it's all the amazing street art and the constant swirl of stimuli and sensations. Whatever. I just know I like aimless foggy days wandering around noisy neighborhoods and having random adventures and interactions that make me smile and remember how good it is to be alive and human and in the world with other beautiful humans doing beautiful or strange or even disgusting -- but fundamentally HUMAN things. Cities are amazing.

Lima Bean

Lima's huge. I've been walking all day and all day yesterday too and only seen one barrio - ritzy Miraflores. It's like Mexico DF in that all these other cities and villages that surrounded the capital 50 years ago have been swallowed whole and partially digested, living on as semi-distinct districts with their own partial identities within the larger megatropolis. No way I'll see it all before my flight next Thursday... especially if I decide to escape to Huaraz in the Cordillera Blanca for a few days beforehand. Will keep ya posted.

Bigmouth Strikes Again

Have you ever stared down the gizzard of a angry, hungry pelican? It's intense.

On my way out to the wildlife-sanctuary/guano-fertilizer-farm known as Las Islas Ballestas, I was treated to the ugliness of a flock of 2 dozen pelicans hungily chasing around a little Peruvian boy with a bag of anchovies and an outstretched hand looking for tips from the photo-snapping tourists waiting to be loaded onto the boats.

The islands were better. Much better. Never seen so many sea lions, and a flock of endangered cormorants so huge it was hard to believe they're actually endangered. You know how they say "the sky was black with birds" to describe some lost age before humans wiped out most of the planet's wildlife? Well, it was. I was lucky not to get guanoed... the girl next to me suffered a direct hit right in her lap. But being out on the water watching them stream endlessly overhead and listening to the flap of a hundred thousands wings was well worth the risk, methinks.

Peru's New (Old) President

Peru had its run-off presidential election on Sunday and, as predicted, centrist ex-president Alan Garcia beat out fiery ex-military-coup-leader Ollanta Humala by a little under 10 percent, 55-45 or so.

In the past week I've probably asked 25 Peruvians what they think of the candidates and the political situation here. The most common response has been along the lines of "I don't like either of them but better to have something bad that you know than something potentially even worse that you don't know."

Garcia was president of Peru from 1985-1990 and presided over triple digit inflation, the rise of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerillas, shrinking employment, and food insecurity in several regions of the country. Most people think he's somewhat improved with age, and won't repeat the same mistakes twice... hopefully. But no one's really that enthused about him. More people were more enthusiastic about Ollanta, the guy with the angry nationalistic rhetoric and the explicit or not-so-explicit (depending on whom you ask) connections to Bush-baiting Hugo Chavez, and also Lourdes Flores, the center-left female candidate who came in third in April's first round elections. But most Lourdes voters turned to Garcia on Sunday out of a combination of concerns that Humala would tend towards the dictatorial and capricious and that he would become a puppet of Chavez, a fear Garcia wisely played to his advantage in the final days leading up to the election, going so far as to say the vote was to be a choice between Peruvian autonomy and Peru becoming an outpost in Chavez's grandiose hemisphere-wide lefty schemes. This message struck a nerve, and lots of people I spoke with thought of the election as somewhat of a referendum on Peruvian national autonomy... bad move for Ollanta to not distance himself from Chavez earlier on, and a good lesson for Evo as he attempts to move his agenda forward in the face of a strong opposition bent on discrediting him as nothing more than Chavez's plaything.

But while US media are making a big to-do of Garcia's win as a blow to Venezuelan regional ambitions and the beginning of the end of the hemispheric tilt leftward (see this Washington Post article for example) I think that, as usual, the situation is much more complex and subtle. Peru's a diverse country. The coastal cities, the Andean spine, and the eastern Amazon all have distinct cultural, economic, and political currents that often run counter to one another. In the Andean, heavily indigenous departments of Ayacucho, Cusco, and Puno, for instance, Ollanta Humala won Sunday with huge majorities of 80% and higher. The Andean region in general, stretching from Colombia and Ecuador down through the spine of Peru and across the Bolivian altiplano, is experiencing a powerful cultural/political revival and a reassertion of indigenous identity that shows no sign of slowing down or weakening. Evo's MAS government in Bolivia... Occidental Petroleum's eviction from Ecuador... Ollanta Humala's unexpected rise and near-win in Peru. The Andean world is marching to the beat of its own drummer, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more political upheaval here in connection with issues of cultural identity, economics, and natural resources over the next several years. It's not Ollanta's failed bid for the presidency that marks the end of an important trend, but rather the very fact of his successful candidacy that marks the rising tide of indigenous identity politics throughout the region.

PS - I've been having lots of conversations about our faulty U.S. electoral system with Peruvians lately, who've mostly been incredulous and stupified about the dirty tricks and fraud republican operatives used to win in 2000 and 2004. I wish I had a spanish translation of this Rolling Stone Magazine exposé to pass around among people I meet down here! It would be much easier than having to explain it over and over again in agonizing, depressing detail. And for those of you who don't believe Bush stole Ohio (and the White House) in 2004, please read this article and get back to me.

My First Oasis

Huacachina is a town defined by water. An underground spring wells up amid towering 600 foot sand dunes, and life takes it from there: vegetation, shade, flowers, bugs, bats, birds, and people are all made possible here by the presence of just a bit of H2O. Amazing!

And it really felt like what an "oasis" should feel like, in every sense of the word. Comfortable, tranquil, alive... a beautiful and welcome contrast to the hot sandy nothingness of desert surrounding you on all sides.

I intended to spend 1 night but ended up staying three. Mostly I lounged by the pool, ate ceviche for lunches, drank beer, explored the dunes at sunset, and tried my hand at sandboarding, which now makes me feel like I'll be rocking the snowy version this winter without so much trouble. (One key difference between the two modes of recreation: when snow gets down your pants, it melts. Not so much with sand...)

Like lounging by a beautiful swimming pool in the midst of an already too-beautiful desert oasis, my 3 days in Huacachina felt indulgent and ridiculous, as though I was on vacation from, um... my vacation. With just 8 days to go in Peru, though, it was worth it... I'll be back home and stuck in the NYU Law Library before you can say "oasis."

Cholitas Luchadoras Redux (Plus Nazca Lines)

Noah Friedman-Rudovsky, my photojournalist friend in La Paz, finally sent me some of his incredibly strange images of Cholita Wrestling in El Alto, Bolivia. Although his photos are literally NY Times quality (I believe this one appeared on Page 1 along with a long profile piece of the wrestling phenomenon last year), I maintain that photos, no matter how good, still don't do this experience justice. You miss out on the jeering, insulting, jello- and orangepeel-throwing crowd, for starters...

And speaking of photographs not doing things justice, the same can be said for my once-in-a-lifetime, 4-seater, stomach-churning flight over the Nazca lines this morning. I got some photos, which I'll be sure to upload later when I have the time, but it's hard to really capture the surreal beauty and mysterious quasi-religious allure these enormous drawings in the desert actually exude when you see them in person. They're ENORMOUS, and no one knows how, or why, the Nazca people created them... or even if it WAS the Nazca: there's more than a handful of kooky UFO theorists out there insisting that the half-mile long perfectly-trapezoidal shapes were actually alien landing strips and not ritualistic markers for sources of water or shamanistic patterns, as some anthropologists theorize. Trippy. Stay tuned for (underwhelming, but still pretty awesome) photos later on...

PS - no reproducing the above image without Noah's express permission. All rights reserved.

Democracy

Say what you will about the so-called "erosion" of democracy in Latin America: At least they vote here! Peru's second-round presidential election is on Sunday, and I'm struggling to find a cheap bus ticket to Nazca this Friday because, um, guess what? Voting is mandatory in Peru. If you don't show up to vote in the municipality where you're registered, you get slapped with a big fine. For this reason all the bus companies jack up their prices in the days leading up to the election, kind of like US Airlines do before Thanksgiving... and it's therefore hard for tourists like me to find cheap tickets.

And, in case it didn't strike you as noteworthy the first time I mentioned it, I'll repeat: the elections are on SUNDAY... when nobody has to work, and can therefore afford to take a little time out of their day to get themselves to the polls.

For a country boastful to the point of condescension that "democracy is our greatest export," the US sure has a few simple lessons to learn from Peru. Why bemoan low voter turnout and then make it next-to-impossible for working people to get to the polls before 8PM on a Tuesday evening when many work ´til 7, struggle with a wicked commute, and have to put dinner on the table besides? Why complain about apathy in what's arguably a citizen's most important civic duty but then make voting optional, when, say, skipping out on JURY DUTY can land you in jail?!

US-style "democracy" a model for the world? Puh-leeeze...

Global Warming Sux

This glacier will be gone in anywhere from 5-15 years. You can see the steady stream of meltwater flowing down the mountainside. Get your fill of the snowcapped Andes while you still can. Same goes for Kilimanjaro, which they give 5-7 tops. Sucks.

And the most ironic part? The enormous Camisea gas fields pumping night and day just 60 km away in the steamy jungle, satisfying the enormous gringo demand for gas by exporting tankerful after tankerful to SoCal so we can keep the AC going all summer long.

I'm back in Cusco for a few days after 5 in Quillabamba volunteering with COMARU. Lots to say but that'll have to wait for another post.

Tini Taxis

I thought the taxis in Arequipa were small, but Quillabambina moto-taxis take the cake. They're wicked cute, and make the most adorable putt-puttering sound as they drive by...

Old Meets New

It's not quite "Burger King at the Great Wall of China," but there's something not-quite-right with ancient Inca ruins being reappropriated for a cell phone store. Ahh, well. That's progress for ya...

Quillabamba!

I love the place names in this part of Peru: Urubamba, Ollantaytambo, Vilcabamba, Quillabamba...

Escaped the tourist madness of Cuzco yesterday on an 8 hr bus ride up over the Abra de Malaga pass surrounded by snowcapped peaks and the incredible shrinking glaciers of Peru: Seriously, you could see the global warming happening right there before your very eyes. Very scary. At the top of the pass the driver jacked up the bus and fiddled with the wheels to make it harder for them to spin and, by extension, easier on the brakes on the way down. We descended over 3000 meters into lush subtropical Quillabamba on the banks of the Upper Urubamba River, arriving late in the afternoon at the magical hour when everything is golden in the light. Enchanted, I wandered around the plazas and watched kids playing soccer for a long while after finding a nice little hotel (with coldwater showers - found out this morning - ouch) just near the leafy, shady plaza.

Lots of curious staring from kids. Lots of friendly people wondering why I'm here and where I'm from. Definitely not in Cuzco anymore... and I haven't seen a single other gringo since I arrived.

Today I met with COMARU - el Consejo de Machiguenga del Rio Urubamba - the indigenous federation representing the communities most directly affected by the massive Camisea gas project on their territory. I'm going to help them create a powerpoint presentation that they can use to explain their position clearly to government agencies, oil companies, and NGOs. Right now they're making do with verbal, off-the-cuff presentations by various representatives, some of which don't jive with the official organizational position. So this will hopefully be a big help. And I may yet be able to tag along on a community visit further downstream... we'll see.

Being here in Quillabamba, so close to this massive industrial development project in the rainforest -- and one that I worked hard to stop from being built in the first place during my early days at RAN -- is amazing/awful. It's one thing to rail against a dirty megadevelopment project in the Amazon when you're shouting into a megaphone in NYC or San Francisco. It's really just rhetoric - hard to make real. But being here, hearing people talk, reading the newspaper, learning more about the enormous challenges the Machiguenga are up against... it's something else entirely.

Most Peruvians seem to welcome Camisea - it's cash in the national coffers, construction jobs, gas for cooking and heating. For a handful of indigenous communities and voluntarily isolated hunter/gatherer tribes, it's extinction. Not to mention the strictly environmental impacts, from climate chaos (melting glaciers 50 km southbound, anyone?) to species extinction. Try to work out the ethics on this one. I'm trying, and it's giving me a headache.

No photos for now, as Quillabamba's internet connection is too slow for uploading... BTW, isn't it crazy that these days it's not a question of "will they have internet in location X" but rather "will they have broadband wireless that I can use to watch online cumbia music videos or download episodes of Latin American Idol to my cellphone?" My how times change!

...Then again, COMARU's office is equipped with an old-school radio transmitter to stay in touch with the far flung Machiguenga communities who have no phone at all, let alone internet access. And that's the communities who actually live in one place and have a radio antenna. There are still plenty more nomadic folks out there who have no connection to the outside world, and prefer to keep it that way, thank you very much. Exposing the fatal flaw in Tom Friedman's book "The World is Flat," some things and places in this world change much faster than others. These days Bangalore and Boston may be a few nanoseconds away from each other, but in Peru, at least, the 21st Century and the Stone Age both exist, and the nomadic tribesmen don't particularly want to be "flattened," as Friedman would have it.

He should have called it "Some Parts of the World are Flat, and They Want to Flatten Everyone Else Too, Whether They Like It Or Not." Maybe I'll give Tom the benefit of the doubt. His publisher probably told him they'd sell more copies with a shorter title.

Why Gringos Get Such a Bad Rap

I couldn't resist. I know this is meanspirited. But I'll eat my hat if it doesn't get at least one of you chuckling!

I heart "travelwear." Long live mylar! Long live zippered pant/shorts!

Cuzco: World Capital of Masterful Inca Stonework and Helpless Wide-Eyed Tourists

I arrived in Cuzco late last night after a posh 14 hr bus ride from Arequipa. The chairs were comfy, they served snacks and, best of all, I got to watch 5 movies in English, including: Memoirs of a Geisha, The Hot Chick, some Hillary Duff cheezy thing with lots of singing, The Island with Scarlett Johannsen, and Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist. No cinema for me for a while... I've had my fix and then some!

Today I've been thoroughly enjoying wandering around Cuzco's narrow streets, ogling the architecture along with all the rest of the camera-toting tourists (I had to get the requisite 12-Sided-Inca-Stone-Howdidtheydothat? photograph, above) and just enjoying the weather and the city and the sights and sounds of this ancient Inca imperial capital city. Maybe in 500 years a bunch of rich Peruvian tourists will be wandering around D.C. with the same sense of wonder and awe at the previous imperial glory of this now humble regional backwater town. Hmmm...

Cuzco is a funny town. This morning I ventured a bit out of the center, about 1 km, to buy my bus ticket to Quillabamba tomorrow, and all of a sudden was pretty much back in Bolivia. Dirt sidwalks, trash in the street, stray dogs, vendors selling bananas on the street. But walking back down towards the Plaza de Armas I could watch the city change before my eyes, putting on its veneer of tourist creature comforts and cleanliness... so much so that except for the architecture, some of the streets could be in Europe! It's amazing. I really feel how Cuzco is the undisputed tourist mecca of the Andes. Not that that's a bad thing. Lots of money comes in, lots of people get work, lots of fun to be had... It's just interesting is all.

Maybe also because I'm at the end of my travels and speak spanish and am pretty confident in my ability to get around... or it could just be that I'm in a malicious and snobby mood... but I feel sort of annoyed by all the other tourists packing the streets, fumbling with their Lonely Planet guidebooks, looking bewildered. I'm glad to be leaving Cuzco for Quillabamba tomorrow. When I come back in a week or so, the tourist infrastructure here will seem wonderfully refreshing after mosquito nets and mud and boats up the Urubamba...

Santa Catalina Monastery

I have little doubt that the Santa Catalina Monastery would top any list of the coolest/weirdest things to see in Arequipa. Nearly 500 years old, this sprawling complex is like a mini-city-within-a-city... and it's actually not a monastery. It's a convent. Supposedly it was specially built for rich Spanish families to send their daughters to live a life of chastity -- but they ended up throwing crazy parties and having men visit and generally just live the lives to which they had become accustomed... for several hundred years, until the Vatican finally had to do something about the debauchery and sent a special nun to lay down the law.

These days the monastery is open to the public but still feels very much like it must have in 1706... narrow passageways, beds and little altars in each of the tiny (and some not-so-tiny) bedrooms, lots of little labyrinthine rooms that open onto more rooms that open onto courtyards that open onto dead ends. The nuns still live on the grounds, in a private complex built in the '60s.

I spent most of the afternoon yesterday getting lost, taking photos, getting lost again, and finding secret little staircases or silent courtyards with fruit trees and fountains to sit and meditate. If you come to Arequipa, you must do this.

Not in Bolivia Anymore, Toto

I indulged in a guilty pleasure last night and found Arequipa's 10 screen cineplex to go see a movie. It was inside Saga Falabella, a Chilean shopping mall chain, which looked a lot like West Farms Mall in my CT hometown: department stores with perfume and handbag displays, food courts with Pizza Huts and KFCs, etc. I know this certainly isn't the Peruvian norm, but it's definitely nothing like the shopping experience I grew accustomed to in La Paz, which was dominated by street markets and sidewalk vendors. More than anything, I was struck by how it seems as though the infrastructure of consumerism can be read as a marker of class, how the Saturday night family outing to Pizza Hut becomes a sign of economic well-being, of having "made it," in a country like Peru, where most people don't have access to these experiences and products except through the mediated experience of television.

I guess it's not much different from consumerism in the States - where most people can't live like the characters on "Friends" or "Sex and the City," but still strive to wear the shoes or buy the products that reaffirm identity and mark status. The products may be different, but the impulse is the same. For me, the weirdness here comes from having an experience so strangely like my normal gringo life back home -- going to the movies at the mall -- but noticing the small, slight differences that remind me I'm in Peru, and that this is not at all "normal Peruvian life." After 2 months in Bolivia, all the similarities that I hardly noticed in Argentina in Chile -- where there are clearly more middle and upper class consumers than here -- are jarringly obvious in Peru. I wonder how I'll feel stepping off the plane in the Sao Paulo airport, full of duty free shops and expensive restaurants, or in JFK for that matter? Commodities and consumerism are so ubiquitous at home, and were so largely absent in Bolivia: all the things I used to walk past without paying attention to at home have been, at least here in Arequipa, subtly shifting to the foreground of my consciousness, impossible to ignore. It's amazing to notice the small things that signal economic status, both in individuals and in a society at large.

Arequipeña Livin'

Arequipa's defining characteristic is the white igneous stone quarried from nearby volcano "El Misti" that is used in most of the beautiful colonial architecture of the city center. A huge cathedral spanning the length of one entire side of the enormous Plaza de Armas , collonades that wrap around the other three sides, intricately carved theater, bank, and municipal office facades, churches upon churches... one can understand why people here, according the Lonely Planet, say that "when the moon was separated from the Earth it left Arequipa behind."

Besides the white stone buildings everywhere, the second-most important feature of this city seems to be the ubiquitous tiny yellow taxi... from an informal census performed by yours truly yesterday afternoon, these taxis make up approximately 68.5% of all Arequipeña street traffic.

I've been here for 3 days now and am really enjoying new cultural subtleties, new cuisine in the market, new newspapers to read, new political struggles. Peru's an interesting place, especially with the looming presidential election showdown between Ollanta Humala and Alan Garcia - the city's abuzz with expectation about tonight's live debate in Lima and the election is now only about 1o days away... stay tuned!

La Isla Del Sol + Hello Peru!

I visited the birthplace of the Sun and all I got was this lousy sunburn!

Just kidding... I daresay La Isla Del Sol is maybe the most amazing place I've ever been on Earth. Really. Go there! It's an hourlong boatride from Copacabana out in the middle of Lake Titicaca and was the most sacred spot in the Inca Empire, supposedly where the Sun God himself was born. Anyway, after a day in Copacabana I spent a long and sunny afternoon wandering around old silent Inca ruins, exploring empty beaches, hiking the length of the 12km island from North to South, and just generally getting my mind blown by the views and the incredible Aymara people still living and working the terraced fields sloping gently down either side of the island towards the water like it was 1300AD and the Spanish never found this spot. It felt like a dream, like the whole place was floating in the sky, ancient and full of strange powerful vibes. Earth, Air, Water, Fire... Now that I think about it, Mauna Kea on Hawaii is maybe the only other place on the planet where I felt this strong Earth-energy... not to sound too woo-woo Californian or anything, but for reals.

I spent the night and got to watch the sunset and sunrise and it was like I was literally sitting at the very top of the world as it sunk down over Peru and the stars came popping out all over the place and then hours later over on the other side of the island I sat on a rock and waited while the Sun rose again over the Cordillera Real with the sky on fire for a good long while before the the Sun God itself finally appeared over Mt. Illampu's shoulder... it was so impressive I felt like I should be sacrificing a llama or something!

Then yesterday - after recovering from the sunrise - I took an early morning ferry back to Copa, grabbed my stuff, hopped on a bus for the easiest border crossing yet into Peru... Yay Peru!! and rolled into Puno on the west coast of the lake in perfect time to catch an onward bus to Arequipa 5 hrs away, leaving in 10min, enough for a bathroom break and a bag of popcorn to snack on. Rolled into Arequipa around 9:30PM after watching hours and hours of very poorly produced Cumbia music videos, each of which featured an ensemble of hairy men in cheap suits and dancing leggy women in short skirts with the camera mostly focusing on their butts like some weird version of a mysogynistic BET music video mixed with a Peruvian fantasy of what a dozen Las Vegas strippers would look like... A strange first impression of Peruvian culture to say the least, but I'm going to reserve judgement for a few more days. When I arrived I met up with friend-of-a-friend Gabi, who had kindly made me a reservation at a great little hostel right near the Plaza de Armas. We had some cheap chinese food and shortly thereafter I found myself in a hip Peruvian bar with a band playing covers like "Summer of '69" by Ryan Adams and "Hey Jude" while hot young Peruvians danced and sang along... where was I? What is this country called Peru? It was a long day, to say the least. One of those days where you can't believe you woke up in one place and went to sleep somewhere completely different, like it's hard to believe the world is so big and diverse and crazy and beautiful and full of people all just living and doing their thing on a Thursday night.

Whatever. Enough rambling. The main point is that I'm happy to be in Peru and I absolutely loved Lago Titicaca. More news soon...

Spaghetti for Breakfast

Last week I mentioned the spaghetti-eating alligators outside of Rurrenabaque, but now I've got proof! Messy eaters, them gators. Unfortunately, the pink river dolphins I swam with look like small shadowy blurs in all the photos Andrew and Louisa sent me... you'll have to just take my word for it on that one.

Che, Coca Cola, Capitalism

In today's commodified, globalized world, it's not really much of surprise to see these kinds of juxtapositions anymore. Still, it's pretty striking to walk past a meticulously handpainted Che Guevara mural reading "All Our Action is a Cry of War Against Imperialism" and notice that it's overshadowed and seriously outgunned by a jaunty new Coca-Cola billboard happily exclaiming "Optimism is Contagious and I Want to Make Myself Sick."

Not much else to say. That's all you need right there, no?

Shoes, Tattoos, and You!

This might be TMI, but whatever, I don't even know for sure that anyone's reading this blog anymore, so here goes... When you're traveling, and you only brought a pair of black leather boots and then bought some 1/2-size-too-small Argentine Chuck Taylor knockoffs that hurt your feet when you walk in them too much, what ends up happening after 4 months of pretty much just wearing the boots (all day, every day) is that the boots smell... bad. If for no other reason than having a wider selection of footwear to choose from, I'm getting excited to come home!

But that's not the only reason to look forward to my rapidly-approaching return... I'm finding that my excitement about coming back is increasing exponentially in inverse proportion to the number of days I have left on my journey. My brother could probably graph this, but for me I mostly just know that I'm stoked to get back. Not that a month in Peru isn't gonna rock, but still, today I've got 33 days left and despite "living in the moment" and whatnot, I'm thrilled to be planning to see so many of my friends in June and July and August before taking the NYU plunge and not coming up for air again until Xmas. Beers at Zeitgeist, bike rides to the OB for sunset, naps and frisbee in Central Park, island-hopping in Maine, wedding festivities in Puget Sound, etc, etc... Good stuff.

And last but not least: tattoos. I'm not really serious about getting one done here in LP at those ubiquitous sidewalk stands (see photo above) where a dude with a sketchy-looking briefcase, presumably filled with needles and ink and other tools of the trade, sits in the sun waiting for customers (although I haven't seen a single patron at a single Bolivian tattoo "parlor" yet, which I guess is saying something.) I am, however, quite seriously considering getting one when I'm back in SF in July. Thoughts? Objections? Words of encouragment?

This is Weird, Right? It's Not Just Me?

They sell dried llama fetuses in the "Witch's Market" downtown. You pour alcohol on them, say a prayer, and then burn them for good luck. These are things one travels to find out, no?

Rurrenabaque

Swimming with pink river dolphins: check.

Watching a flock of toucans pass overhead at sunset: check.

Feeding a wild alligator spaghetti and meat sauce: check.

Hiding the mayonnaise from smart howler monkeys in the kitchen: check.

Flying between jagged mountain peaks higher than the plane: check.

Just back from a week in Rurrenabaque, the self-proclaimed "touristic jewel of the Beni Department of Bolivia," and I don't know what to say first... it was like another world only 200km north of La Paz but different in every way. Hot, humid, low elevation, lots of fruit, lots of green, big rivers, crazy wildlife, friendly people, mototaxis, dugout canoes, mosquitos and mosquito nets...

Forgot my camera, so will have to wait until some English friends I met on the trip send me their photos... until then, just imagine dolphins, but pink, swimming in circles around you in the most beautiful jungle lagoon ever, blowing air through their blowholes and splashing playfully while macaws fly overhead and big toothy gators bask in the reeds near the shore, blinking slowly in the sunshine.

Cholitas Luchadoras

Finally got to see my first El Alto female indigenous wrestling match this afternoon. This photo was found via Google cuz I didn't take my own cuz was with photojournalist Noah who will send me a few good shots...

This was potentially the most badass thing I've witnessed in my time in South America. After several WWF-style matches between characters like Chicken/Dragon White Spandex Man and Michaelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and S&M Black Latex Bodysuit Guy, each more violent and high-energy and participatory than the last -- with the crowd throwing oranges, jello, yogurt, and soda at the wrestlers and referee and each other -- the women, clearly the main attraction, finally entered the ring.

Dressed in full skirts and long braids and sweaters and their bowler hats -- the basic chola outfit one sees on the streets here all day long -- these ladies beat the shit out of each other (mostly fake moves, but with some hair pulling and bodyslams that looked pretty painful). They also endured some serious abuse from the crowd, and left the ring amidst rowdy cheering and dowsed with coke and jello and beer. It was amazing!!!

For those of you extra-interested in this incredible cultural phenomenon, Noah had a photo run on the front page of the NYTimes alongside a story by Juan Forero some time last year... I'm sure you can find it online and read a lot more about CHOLITAS LUCHADORAS.

Cochabamba Street Food

Whether it's delicious stuffed empanada-like tucumanas with all the fixings, sweet hot purple corn drink api with fried dough and powdered sugar, or a bowl of amazing soup with veggies and meats and spicy for 25 cents, Cochabamba street food rocks... and is available all night long, as you can see by the photo.

Off to Rurrenabaque in the Amazon tomorrow by plane with friend Annelies - no internet til next week - keep your fingers crossed for photos of some pink river dolphins on Sunday!

Chicha and Coca

Yesterday afternoon I got drunk on chicha - fermeted corn juice - for the first time, and chewed my biggest mouthful of coca leaves yet... I learned the proper way to drink chicha at a long leisurely lunch under a garden arbor listening to radical labor leaders and world famous activist Oscar Olivera shoot the shit. For those of you interested, chicha comes by the bucketful. You take a gourd scoopful, spill a little on the ground to honor Pachamama, then toast someone across the table, who will drink after you. You chug the stuff, re-scoop, and pass the gourd to your new friend. This goes on for hours (6 hours in my case) and you have to drink when invited by someone (in my case, all the time, being the token gringo at the table). A chicha drunk is really mellow but really boisterous at the same time... and I think chewing so much coca had something to do with the fact that I had no hangover this morning. Ah, the wonders of sacred plants and fermentation!

Otherness

Being a gringo in Bolivia means constantly being reminded of your otherness, difference, outsiderhood. I had a Religious Studies professor my freshman year of college who taught an amazing course on African American Religious Thought. During the semester he spent an inordinate amount of time jokingly repeating the mantra "raceclassgender... raceclassgender..." to drill into our heads the importance of these three factors in the pervasive power dynamics that determine a person's social, cultural, psychological, and physical realities living in the world. In Bolivia, I'm finding myself repeating his mantra to myself all the time, flabergasted by how obviously my white skin, male gender, and upper middle class US identity shape my daily experience here. What's more, my head is swimming with thoughts and observations about how identity is shaped and power operates in Bolivian society at large. I could probably be more articulate if I took more time to write, and I definitely have more to say on these issues, but for what it's worth, some ramblings:

Race

I see race primarily as a culturally-constructed concept used historically by elites (cultural and/or economic) to divide various groups of people from each other in order to maintain social control. Whether it's Europeans distinguishing between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda or rich U.S. whites maintaining their socioeconomic status by turning poor Irish and Italian immigrants against poor blacks, there's a long history of racism and white privilege all across the world. In Bolivia there's a complex and confusing set of quasi-racial identity issues, with white (or whiter) elite descendents of Spanish colonialists still working hard to distinguish themselves from the majority indigenous population, with self-identified Aymara communities bristling at the more general "indio" or "indigena" or even more broadly defined "campesino" designations used often in the media and even by the Morales government itself, which is of course challenging the traditional oligarchy by Evo's very public indigenous identity. And then, of course, there's the ubiquitous "gringo" traveler, me, with all of my proverbial baggage, wandering and shopping my way through the country, supporting an extensive tourism industry and reinforcing stereotypes wherever I go. Watching "Crash" several weeks ago after the Oscars, I was overwhelmed by how complex racial dynamics play out in the U.S., and how different the issues are here. I wonder what Bolivian audiences took away from the film?

Class

Bolivia has never had a middle class. The term "oligarchy" is used without sarcasm or irony to describe a distinct set of economically elite families who have controlled most of the nation's wealth for hundreds of years. Poverty is pervasive, but you can still spot the occasional shiny Hummer rolling through Sopocachi. In a society like Bolivia's, where the average wage is $3/day and millions still live a life of subsistence agriculture, eking out an altiplano living by harvesting quinoa and herding llamas, class is everything. It seems like more so than racial/ethnic identity, social movements are powered by class resentment and a sense of injustice at the lack of economic opportunities. There's a reason Evo's party is called the "movement towards socialism" and not the "indigenous people's party." Thinking about class in the U.S., what I keep coming back to is the backward slide Bush is pushing towards a highly stratified Bolivian-style economy where most of the wealth is concentrated in very few hands and the vast majority of people struggle to get by. Clearly we're not there yet, but being here in Bolivia, it's easier to imagine such an outcome maybe 15 or 50 years down the road.

Gender

Machismo is omnipresent in Latin America, and in many ways Bolivia is still a very traditional society. Women sell food in markets, men don't. Women take care of children, men don't. Homosexuality isn't talked about, except disparagingly. But on the other hand there's an openness and flexibility to gender roles, at least in the cities, that's refreshing. Lots of female students, lots of visible female leaders in government and elsewhere... this is no Taliban-backward culture, far from it! Even so, the lives of men and women in Bolivia occupy distinct cultural and economic spheres that seem more rigid than those at home, and my privilege as a man, in comparison with the vast majority of women I see and interact with here, is more apparent to me...

More Ridiculous Photos

The landscape outside Uyuni made creating beautiful images easy... Jamien's camera took over for mine on day 3 when the batteries died. Check out the results here.

Great Article on US Foreign Policy in Bolivia

A friend of a friend wrote this piece back in November. For those of you interested in the political situation here in Bolivia and the manipulative role US "democracy promotion" plays across the region, it's a must-read. Anyone ever heard of the Office of Transitional Initiatives? A USAID program founded in 1994 “to bridge the gap between relief and development and provide short-term political assistance to countries in crisis,” OTI has been dubbed by one analyst “the special forces of developmental assistance.” They work in Afghanistan, Liberia, and other failed or failing states to "promote democracy" and "strengthen democratic governance and institutions." What, exactly, are they doing here in Bolivia -- a country with a demoncratically-elected president and a fully functional democratic government? Find out more here.

The Highest I've Ever Been

Life at 5000+ meters is harsh, if it exists at all. Way up at the top of the world the sun shines super bright but the air never gets warm, sitting still in a car watching the landscape out your window can leave you breathless and dizzy, and you're perpetually amazed by anything that is able to eke out a living up here. Little vicuñas grazing on what appear to be fields of gravel are actually nibbling tiny lichens that grow slowly between the rocks. Crazy, noisy pink flamingos filter microorganisms from arsenic, copper, lead, and borax-saturated lakes, somehow surviving and even thriving up here where I'd imagine predators are probably not much of a problem. Strange giant globular green blobs of hard lichen grow on boulders where water runs down off big rock faces. Everywhere you look there are huge vast panoramic nothingnesses, where the major features of the landscape are mineral, not animal or vegetable. It made our sizable fleet of gas guzzling SUVs careening through the high desert seem like fragile little weak machines that could easily be put out of commission and lost forever in the enormity of the landscape. Humbling. Awesome. Scary. Fun!

Uyuni Trip

So much to say about my 5 day journey to the trippy southwesternmost corner of Bolivia, but for now I'll just let the pictures suffice. Ran out of batteries on day 2 so will have to wait to get Adam + Jamien´s before you can feast your eyes on fumaroles at 15,000 feet and other wonders... Happy Earth Day!

Cave Swimming!

Adam took a dip 150 feet underground. Felt like something out of Lord of the Rings.

3 Days in Sorata

I left La Paz for the first time in nearly a month with Adam, Jamien, and Sarah, taking a 4-hr bus up and out of El Alto, across the Altiplano, skirting the shores of Lago Titicaca, and then dropping down into a lush Yungas valley to spend some time in tranquil Sorata. We stayed at a beautiful hostel called Altai Oasis down out of town across the river, with views of 20,000 ft Illampu under the full moon, spent lots of time drinking beer, playing cards, grilling our own delicious dinner over a fire, exploring the markets in Sorata and eating lots of fresh mangos and custard-like chirimuyas, riding in the back of a pickup truck 1 hr down the valley to La Gruta - a huge cave - where campesinos were hanging out, swimming and paddling around in inflatable boats deep underground. All in all a perfect 3 day vacation from the bustling city, but I'm glad to be back...

World's Most Incredible Location for A City?

How pretty is this?

El Cementerio

La Paz's cemetery high above the city center is like a co-op city for dead people... Rows upon rows of apartment buildings for the remains, each little apartment fronted by a little shrine with a glass door and keyhole so families can come and decorate with flowers, cake, fruit, and other more permanent trinkets. Wandering around yesterday after buying bus tickets to Sorata in the neighborhood, I realized how different our cultural ideas of life and death are... and how easily Bolivians have come to remix the catholicism of Spanish colonialism and their local indigenous traditions, creating this crazy cemetery that's distinctly theirs, beautiful and strange.

PS: Compare more photos of La Paz's cemetery on my flickr page to these from the the Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires!

Sweet Street Popcorn

Ladies sell this stuff all over town... Crazy how they wheelbarrow it around without spilling any. They're a bit sweet and kind of lightly frosted and a bit stale and magically delicious!

Semana Santa

Yesterday began Semana Santa, which I think is the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. It's relatively embarassing for a Religious Studies major to have to ask this question, but... why "palm" Sunday? Everyone in the whole city was walking around and hanging out at churches all day with big woven palm fronds in the shapes of crosses and other origami-like designs... I could Google it, but I figure I'll offer this one up to my virtual studio audience: what's the connection between palm trees and Jesus?

Sweater Weather

You know those early October days in New England when the sun is shining but the air is crisp and kinda chilly and you have to wear a sweater outside and it's the perfect temperature and you feel like the whole world is one big J. Crew photo shoot? Well, that's what the weather in La Paz has been like since I got here (except for the J. Crew part).

What is Sickinger & CIA?

This is weird. It's a big building right in the middle of downtown La Paz in Plaza San Francicso. Any guesses as to what they do in there?

A Comparative Embassy Taxonomy

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, and although I'm too lazy to look it up, I'd wager that it ranks pretty low on the list of U.S. trading partners. So why does the U.S. embassy in La Paz need to be a hulking 10-story monolith set back 100 feet in all directions from 15-foot blast walls and videocameras and kleig lights when so many other countries who do real business in Bolivia seem to make do with a more, shall we say, "modest" architecture? How many Special Assistant Deputy Undersecretaries of State for Bolivian Affairs do we need here, after all? What are all those USAID and Department of State and CIA staffers doing in there all day? And why the design features that scream "federal penitentiary" far louder than, um, "friendly diplomacy?" As one of Bolivia's largest foreign-aid donors, are we really so unpopular as to necessitate all this?

Landlocked and "underdeveloped," Bolivia doesn't export too much of value to the U.S. market. Sure, after testy Venezuela, this country has the continent's second-largest natural gas reserves... but very few U.S. companies operate here: the majority of foreign investment in gas comes from Petrobras (Brazil), Repsol-YPF (Spain), and Total-Elf (France). My neighborhood in Sopocachi is home to most of the embassies in La Paz, so I've had occasion to pass Spain's and Brazil's missions (haven't found France's yet). Guess what? These countries make do with buildings that sit well in their surroundings, that don't scream "We rule the world and we're afraid of peasant uprisings!"

Brazil has a big brick office tower with postmodern-looking green and yellow circles and arrows all over it - sure, it's big and ugly, but it looks just like every other big and ugly office building on the block. In fact, it's a little nicer, as if to remind the populace, just ever so slightly, of the regional economic superpower next door ready and willing to develop those petroleum reserves and pipe the gas off to Sao Paulo.

Spain, on the other hand, has gone with a subtle little gated compound of old, quaint... well, there's no other way to put this... "colonial" buildings: 2-story affairs with little gardens in front that you can see through the fence. Mixed in are some newer structures, probably with bullet-proof glass or whatever, but the message Spain seems to be sending with their embassy is, "We're not sorry we built our empire on the sweat and blood of 8 million indians in your silver mines. But, hey, that was a long time ago. Let's be friends in the 21st century, OK? Want some money to build a hospital?"

And what of the rest of the community of nations? Well, let's see:

Japan: Nice big house in suburban neighborhood. Walls, yes. Security guard, yes. But in middle-class La Paz, most houses look pretty much the same.

Argentina: 3-story office building in a neighborhood of 3-story office builings. Nice big flag.

Peru: Some floors in an ugly apartment building with a small "Embajada De Peru" sign above the door, and several reserved parking spots on the curb.

Paraguay: Flashy signage on a building shared with a nail salon and empanada restaurant.

Chile: No embassy. No diplomatic relations since 1978. Hard feelings since Chilean victory in the 1880's War of the Pacific, in which Bolivia lost its coast.

Brittain: Stately white mansion with serious-looking gate and conspicuous metal detector. A distant second to the U.S. in architecture that says "fear."

And you know what? Although I'm sure there are a plenty of other embassies around, you just don't see too much of them. Obviously, this has much to do with the comparative wealth of nations. Even if they wanted to, neighbors Paraguay and Peru probably couldn't afford anything much nicer than what they've got, and Burkina Faso? Forget it. But I think this is also partly to do with the fact that the majority of countries, with relatively little to do with Bolivia, make investments in their embassies accordingly. The logic probably goes something like this: "No need for a huge $100 million dollar building in La Paz we'll barely use. We do so little trade with Bolivia as to be negligable, and these guys aren't exactly going to attack us with nuclear warheads anytime soon. Let's save the money for a really nice spread in country X..."

It makes sense for countries that share borders to maintain embassies in each other's capitals. It makes sense for countries who do a lot of business with each other to maintain embassies. It even makes sense for powerful countries very far away, with relatively little interest in a poor country (Japan?), to keep an office open there. But what could possibly justify the enormous neighborhood-dwarfing fortress the United States maintains in Sopocachi, La Paz? My theory? It's 50% a show of force, as in: "remember we're in charge and will crush you if you cross us," and 50% a strategic operations center for fomenting secession of gas-rich, Evo-hating Santa Cruz province and/or planning a coup. There really are CIA dudes in there planning sketchy and dangerous things, and they're paranoid. The State Department knows it didn't need to go quite so far in securing the building, but, you know, "in a post-9/11 world you can never be too safe," yada yada... and besides, it doesn't hurt to remind the Bolivians who's boss.

PS - No photos for obvious reasons. I'm willing to criticize, but don't particularly want to see the interrogation room...

El Alto

Someone described La Paz to me as an inverted San Francisco: built in a huge valley between mountain range and altiplano, the city slopes downward from the red brick shantytowns high up on the eastern and western valley walls towards the government center and the big glass towers and fancy apartment buildings in the middle, and then down southward as well, from the top of the valley in the north where the autopista snakes its way up to El Alto and the altiplano, down to La Zona Sur, near the Valle de la Luna, where La Paz's wealthy suburbs bask in the relatively lower altitude and warmer weather, far away from the poverty up above. It's a weird topography - much like Caracas or Rio de Janeiro I guess - that puts the wealthy neighborhoods far down below the poor ramshackle semi-squatter villages. At least they get the views of the Cordillera Real.

And then there's El Alto.

Way up above La Paz, clinging to the lip of the valley and sprawling outward from there across the 4000+ meter altiplano, El Alto is South America's fastest growing city, with over 800,000 residents living in pretty much total squalor, the majority of houses without running water and definitely no heat to guard against the freezing nighttime temperatures, most buildings cobbled together from cheap brick and whatever else was available, no planning, little infrastructure, crowds and minibuses spewing exhaust and little Aymara women selling anything and everything on the streets and everywhere stray dogs and mud. The majority of El Alto residents are Aymara, one of Bolivia's major indigenous groups, and the majority have moved from tiny altiplano communities in the past 20 years or so, looking for work and opportunity in the city down below. El Alto only became incorporated as its own city in 1986 - before that it was just an encampment of poor indigenous folks - and that's still pretty much what it is, just bigger.

El Alto has also been the epicenter of Bolivia's social movements, as the Aymara are traditionally the best organized and most radical of the country's indigenous groups, and the extreme poverty of El Alto has been a sort of crucible for hardcore organizing and mobilizations and autonomous community actions that have not only changed the course of Bolivian history (2003 mobilizations and road blockades that toppled the Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada presidency) but also created a thriving community with a strong identity and some hard-won treasures like UPEA, the Universidad Publica y Autonoma de El Alto, founded in 2003 as a result of student and youth mobilizations and steady pressure on the government.

On Friday and Saturday of last week I attended an amazing Andean/Mesoamerican Indigenous Movements Conference up at UPEA, where academics and indigenous leaders from across the hemisphere came together to share stories, experiences, strategies for social change. To say UPEA is underfunded would be a stretch - the "quad" is a muddy dirt field between a few small buildings - but this is the newest and most politically radical university perhaps in the hemisphere, and the lecture hall was packed with young Aymara men and women in traditional dress and the energy was electric - this was the real deal.

On Saturday afternoon the conference ended with a beautiful ceremony and song and dance and a big community feast of potatoes and plantains and beans all laid out on the floor for everyone to dig into. Just as the blessing over the food was said, the air turned cold and thunder struck and a hailstorm just opened up in the sky, making it hard to even hear each other as the stones hit the metal roof overhead. As the andean drumming and reed flute music got faster and louder, everyone held hands and started doing these long snaky line dances like at a bar-mitzvah, and I joined in and danced until I was breathless in the thin cold air and had to stop. I made my way out into the crazy muddy streets and hopped on a microbus full of sopping wet Aymara women in their bright rainbow colored shawls and bowler hats and rode down the autopista back to La Paz, where the sun was shining and the air was warm.

Longing for the Sea

Today is the 127th anniversary of Bolivia's defeat in the 1880's War of the Pacific, when the country lost its coastline. Last night Caitlin and I were watching "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," but just before the best part, when Newman and Redford head down here to rob Bolivian banks and silver mines, we were forced to hit pause and head outside, lured by the sound of marching bands in the street. Cadre upon cadre of smartly dressed soldiers were marching down the hill in front of our apartment building in lockstep formation, waving flags, playing tubas and trombones, banging on huge drums. There were literally a dozen bands at least, each representing every conceivable wing of the Bolivian armed forces, including the Navy (yes, despite its landlocked status Bolivia still maintains a Navy... they practice on Lake Titicaca, no doubt preparing for the day when Chile renounces its claim to the northern coast and gives it back). Other than the sailors, who each carried a mini-ship lantern in the colors of the Bolivian flag, the weirdest thing I saw was the marching band composed of riot cops in full battle gear, with black bulletproof vests, helmets, plastic shields, tear gas cannisters, knee pads, etc.

Every band played the same song, which had something to do with Antofagasta, the lost coastal city that it seems all Bolivians long to reclaim from Chile. The "enclaustramiento" - Bolivia's landlocked status - apparently weighs heavy on the national psyche. Seems kind of like people blame a lot of the country's problems on the lack of a port... who knows, maybe it's true. With 127 years of economic development making use of the ocean for imports and exports, maybe Bolivia would be a dramatically different country today.

I found the patriotism and militarism and nostalgia and pomp and circumstance all a bit much. In a country with so many problems and so much poverty, all those shiny new tubas and Kaiser Wilhelm helmets and sabres seemed a tad excessive. Couldn't the government's money be put to better use building schools or health clinics or something?

Then again, who am I to talk? Over 50% of my tax dollars are paying for an idiotic war in Iraq and God-only-knows what other ridiculously expensive and useless bombs, planes, missile defense systems, etc. It's not like the U.S. doesn't have it's own crumbling infrastructure and poverty problems... Militant nationalism: what a waste of resources!

Ah, and as if last night's excitement weren't enough, another marching band started up again outside my bedroom window this morning at 7:45 sharp! More parades and singing and flag waving all day today... Antofagasta!

Thoughts on the Equinox

Some of the many things on my mind during the first day of spring:

1) State Power vs Social Movements

Evo Morales was swept into the presidency December 18 by an unprecedented wave of popular support. While, judging from the international press coverage and statements made by the Bush administration, you'd assume he's a fiery radical who can count on the unwavering alleigance of the Bolivian left, the truth is of course much more complicated. Evo's party, the MAS, actually occupies a moderate Clintonian center-left position in the Bolivian political spectrum, and is viewed with a mix of disdain and begrudging acceptance by the powerful and radical and huge social movements of this country. The Aymara federations of the altiplano, the miners union, the coca growers and other factions are all keenly aware of the divide between campaign rhetoric and promises and the slow pace of moderate reform several months into the Evo presidency (see #2).

In a country where far more power currently resides in social movements than the state, where the last presidency was toppled by roadblocks and marches on La Paz that could easily be organized again, and where the government's options are severely limited by debt and poverty and significant external factors such as the U.S. war on drugs and the need to attract foreign investment to develop gas fields and other intrastructure, the question is whether Bolivians can find a way to strike a balance between state power and people power that won't topple the Evo presidency before it has a chance to even get started.

Everyone knows that the social movements were the real force behind Evo's victory, and that many on the left voted for him because he seemed to hold out the most promise for change. People see him as though in a trial period now, but the streets are already buzzing with impatience and disappointment, and who knows how long folks will wait before they demand to see results comensurate with campaign promises. With a constitutional assembly process already begun, which many are loudly criticizing as corrupted and insufficiently responsive to the issues most important to the people, no one knows how much slack the left will be willing to give MAS before people take to the streets again. People power got Evo the presidency, and people power may well remove him.

2) Challenges and Compromises of a Populist Presidency

What does it mean to have fought for years as an oppositional force, sometimes even as an underground revolutionary movement against a corrupt government, and suddenly find yourselves in the halls of power, in control of the very government you've been railing against for so long? The difficult task of governing often means making compromises, but what if your campaign was framed as a radical revolutionary movement for change? For those on the left, with an ally and friend as president who's willing to listen and ostensibly shares your vision ang goals, how do you decide when to criticize and when to be quiet, tolerating compromises that may contradict your basic platform or program? Like liberals in the U.S. who sat idly by while Clinton dismantled welfare and passed NAFTA, the left in Bolivia is unsure how vocally it should criticize the new government as it falls short of what was promised and expected.

For Evo, on the other hand, there's the tricky balance between carrying through on basic campaign promises and staying in power. In a global economy, with foreign oil companies jittery about talk of appropriating their Bolivian investments and the IMF and Bush administration holding the purse strings that allow the government to stay solvent, Evo knows he can't fully nationalize gas or legalize coca without a severe and prompt international response, perhaps even clandestine support for a coup or assasination. What, then, should he do? How far should he go towards what the social movements are demanding? Allende nationalized the copper mines and started a radical program of wealth redistribution and look where it got him, not to mention his country for 2o years afterwards. On the other hand, Castro's Cuba, despite the leader's storied longevity, doesn't exactly present a wonderful model of development and poverty alleviation for Evo either. So really, is it better to burn out, or to fade away?

3) Nationalization of Resources in a Globalized Economy

Then there's the whole hornet's nest that is Bolivian gas. With the hemisphere's second largest reserves after Venezuela and gas prices at near-record highs, Bolivia could raise standards of living, build roads and schools, develop infrastructure, etc, with revenue from the sale of gas. Problem is, unlike Venezuela, Bolivia has no state-owned petroleum company, and no equipment of its own, so has to settle for Spanish Repsol-YPF and Brazilian Petrobras to do the heavy lifting. Understandably, the Bolivian people are clamoring for full nationalization of all natural resources, most importantly gas. Bolivia's natural resources belong to the Bolivian people, plain and simple.

Except it's not. Evo can't just kick Repsol and Petrobras out of the country like Iran or Saudi Arabia did decades ago, creating state-owned oil companies that could be leveraged to finance national development programs. For one, in the short-term, who'd be left to run the equipment? Secondly, am more important, these companies would immediately sue Bolivia in international trade court or through WTO mechanisms that protect against appropriation of foreign investment. Bolivia wouldn't just be without the resources or expertise to pump the gas out of the ground, it would be stuck with a multi-billion dollar bill for damages, effectively wrecking the economy and putting all other spending programs on hold, including those for education, health, and public safety, etc. A very bad situation.

In a global economy, with trade rules and international mechanisms in place to protect corporations who operate overseas, it may be effectively impossible for Bolivia to nationalize its gas except in name only... which is what it looks like Evo is doing. 51% of Bolivian gas belongs to Bolivians, and Repsol and Petrobras are invited to form a public-private partnership, with 18% royalties and 32% taxes going to Bolivia's treasury, a better deal than they had beforehand, but still a far cry from the nationalization that was promised, and that a majority of Bolivian citizens are demanding.

4) Federalism vs Regional/State Autonomy

One of the most interesting questions currently facing Bolivia is how much autonomy should be granted to the "departments," or states, and how much central control should be maintained by the national government in La Paz. In Bolivia, state government is practically nonexistent. Local mayors are elected by the people, but "governors" of the departments are chosen by the national government, and departmental revenue all goes straight to La Paz, where it is distributed nationally, according to priorities set by the president.

Bolivia's problem is Santa Cruz. The easternmost department, and the largest, Santa Cruz has most of the gas reserves and a huge percentage of the agriculturally productive land in the country. Santa Cruz's politics are dominated by the wealthy right-wing elite who profit from agribusiness and petroleum, and they want to secede, or at least keep more of the wealth they generate in their own pockets. They're clamoring for a referendum on departmental "autonomy," which it looks like Evo will include in the June elections for the constitutional assembly, a huge concession which will have major repercussions on the state's ability to manage its development. But the reality is that without this concession, Bolivia could well face the prospect of a civil war, and with last year's re-opening of a U.S. airbase 50 miles from the Bolivian border in Paraguay and strategically close to the Santa Cruz gas fields, you can bet which side Bush will support...

Unlike in the U.S., where the conflict on state's rights comes down largely to questions of gay marriage and medicinal marijuana, the Bolivian debate on regional autonomy has grave consequences for the future of the Bolivian state itself. Let's hope they get it right.

Power Politics in Bolivia

I arrived in La Paz on Saturday and have been in total sponge-mode since then, absorbing not only the sights and sounds and smells of this amazing city, but also spending many hours listening and learning about the social movements that brought Evo Morales and the MAS party to power in December, and about the challenges and struggles facing the new government and the country's various social movements now that a populist protest leader controls the state apparatus.

I'm fortunate that Jean - a great Wesleyan and SF friend - is so connected to so many brilliant and amazing peeople here. Everything in Bolivia is up in the air, from the new constitutional assembly process to the nationalization of gas and other natural resources to the decriminalization of coca cultivation to the legitimacy and longevity of the Evo administration itself. Already I've met and shared meals with some of the people both in government and outside of it who are helping to shape the future of this country, and it's been intense!

Tomorrow I'll begin attending (and volunteering for) an international conference on indigenous rights with participation from leaders across the hemisphere. Totally fortuituous that I happened to arrive this week, and also that I've been introduced to the coordinators of the conference, who desperately need logistical support, which I'm more than happy to provide!

Besides the listening and learning and asking questions, I'm also lucky to be joined here by another amazing activist friend from SF, Caitlin, who's here for the week laying the groundwork for an international gathering in October of women lawyers and environmental activists. We've had a great time breathlessly exploring the city together, including my favorite discovery so far: the witch's market where you can buy dried llama fetuses, which apparently are used for good luck ceremonies?!

So much more to write, explain, describe, but for now the most important thing is to DO.

Of Bus and Bloqueo

I love this country. Scattered reports Tuesday of campesino blockades on the route between Potosí and Oruro became on Wednesday confirmed reports and newspaper photos of an ugly confrontation between bus passengers trying to get where they were going and locals frustrated with their corrupt mayor and using the only tool in their strategic toolbox, the roadblock, to force change. Makes me think about the tactic and how we use it in our country - largely symbolically, as there are always many detour routes and cops don't tolerate any threat, real or perceived, to the unobstructed flow of commerce - compared to how it´s used here: several dozen angry peasants shutting down all long distance transport in several regions of the country, for days on end, effectively paralyzing whatever commercial activity there might have been.

By Thursday morning it was pretty obvious that my 8PM bus for La Paz was going to be cancelled, along with every other bus using the single passable road between the southern cities of Potosí and Tarija and Oruro and La Paz in the northwest.

Thursday afternoon, after gathering what scant information I could from ticket vendors at the bus terminal and watching a television reporter file a report with his cameraman using an old duct taped Sony Handycam, I decided I would take the 12hr night bus through Sucre to Cochabamba, where I could then catch a connection to La Paz on a route passing north of Oruro and the blockades.

As if Jean Claude Van Damm´s stunning tour-de-force, "In Hell," and "Rocky IV," that grand anti-Soviet agitprop masterpiece, both poorly dubbed into Spanish, weren´t enough to keep me wide-eyed through the night, I also got to try out a seat designed for short Bolivians, not 6'1" Americans. Needless to say, I was thrilled to find out this morning when we arrived in Cochabamba that several more bloqueos sprung up last night, including at least one on the road between Cochabamba and La Paz, meaning no buses leaving here in the foreseeable future.

At least Cochabamba has an airport. I'm going the spoiled-rich-kid-tourist route and shelling out the $40 (instead of $6 for the bus) for a 40 minute flight to La Paz tomorrow afternoon. But not without thinking long and hard about all the thousands of stranded people stuck where they are until this controversy is resolved, unable to sell their products or get to their families or whatever, just waiting, maybe not even able to afford a place to stay for who knows how long, sitting with their bags and their babies in the bus station...

Got the rest of the afternoon and tomorrow morning to explore Cochabamba, which is much hotter and lower in elevation than Potosí, and seems more "cosmopolitan" and less "Andean," at least as far as first impressions go, based largely upon music being played in passing cars, menu items in restaurants, and women's clothing choices (less bowler hats, more tank tops).

Some Quick Bolivia Observations

There are Quechua and Aymara women everywhere in serious black bowler hats and big skirts and colorful blankets slung over shoulders carrying huge heavy loads or babies or both... Narrow winding cobblestone streets at 14,000+ feet and stinky microbuses and crowds of people jostling each other and selling pirated DVDs and fruit and bread and everything else on the 2ft wide sidewalks and spilling out into the streets and not a single traffic light functioning in the entire city... Shoeshine boys every 100 yards eager to polish my boots even though I just got them polished yesterday and they're totally spotless and shiny and I don't think I have the patience to get a shoeshine once a day...

Bitter taste of coca leaves chewed up into a ball in my cheek with a little bite of "bica" -bicarbonate - to catalyze it and my mouth got a little numb but that's about it, although maybe it helped with the altitude I can't really tell... Paid 80 bolivianos about 9 dollars for a tour of the Cerro Rico mine above town, which is double the daily wage of the miners who work there every day in the dark in the worst conditions I've ever seen, breathing toxic fumes, covered in mud, handling noisy heavy drilling machinery and dynamite and sickly-sweet-smelling ammonium nitrate to blow holes in the swiss cheese mountain that's been worked over and over again continuously since 1545, where they say that over 8 million slaves and workers have died pulling out bucket upon bucket of zinc-slver-tin-lead ore to be broken up by hand in big piles at the mouth of the mine outside in the bright sunlight... sweating and feeling scared but adrenaline-rushed climbing down rickety wooden ladders through shaftways barely wide enough for my shoulders 150 feet down into a tunnel filled with ankle deep chemical water and turning off the headlamp to total and utter darkness and wandering into the shrine to El Tio de las Minas, the devil-god patron of the miners, whose giant phallus and horns are surrounded by offerings of alcohol and cigarettes and coca leaves... and taking a hot shower in my comfy hostel room at the end of the day and reeling from the physical, emotional, intellectual intensity of what I had experienced, and struggling to imagine how the miners cleaned up at the end of the day and what they ate for dinner and how they managed to get out of bed this morning, every morning, and go back to work there in the dark...

And changing my travel plans tonight because the only route from Potosí to La Paz is blocked by campesino protesters angry with their corrupt mayor and using the only tactic they have at their disposal, a roadblock, to get attention and force change, so I have to go instead to Cochabamba 20 hrs out of my way in order to get over to La Paz this weekend... thinking about the strategy choices and tactics people use here and how different they are from the ways in which we organize protests in the States...

Lots more to say on this and much else, but gotta run to go confirm my seat for another glorious overnight bus departing in several hours... and PS, internet connection too slow for uploading photos today, but more to come soon, including some lovely self portraits in baggy mine tourism outfit with extra large pants on backwards and inside out!

High in Potosí

My head is swimming with impressions and images since crossing into Bolivia yesterday and taking a 12 hour night bus under a full moon and through a lightning storm and surviving 2 middle-of-nowhere breakdowns and finding my hostel in Potosí - highest city on Earth - this morning at 6AM and wandering around literally breathless all morning and then heading deep underground into a silver-tin-lead-zinc mine that's been in operation continuously since 1545 and where the workers make $5.80 per day and I wish I had time to say more, and will, but the internet cafe is closing and I have to get some sleep before I pass out...

Gateway to the Altiplano

Jujuy is Argentina's smallest, poorest, northernmost province, and feels a lot less like the rest of the country and more like what I expect Bolivia to be. Fitting, since I'm sitting in Tilcara, about 60 miles from the border, on my way north later today. The drive from Salta took me out of lush green valleys capped with low clouds and rain all morning suddenly up into brilliant sunshine and dry desert vegetation including lots of cacti, and then into the Quebrada de Humuhuaca, huge multicolored canyon formations that are a designated UN World Heritage Site, a fact that the locals make much of on roadside signs and storefronts declaring the region "El Patriomonio de la Humanidad." We're at 2500 meters or so here, and I can feel the difference.

Arrived in dusty but delightful Tilcara at 2 PM, hoofed it through the narrow windy streets up to a beautiful hilltop hostel to drop my bag, then back down and out of town to the Pre-Colombian fortress complex known as La Pukará, partially reconstructed in the past 50 years by U. Bs. As. archeologists, but still eerie and silent with the wind making strange noises blowing through the cactus spines and no one else around and me sitting alone in the shade of a bi stone wall trying to imagine what life was like here on this hilltop 5,000 years ago.

What else? Ate my first llama steak (photo here) last night, heard some great local folk music, and bought my final Argentine bus ticket bound for the border later today... stay tuned for more from Bolivia tomorrow!

I Heart Salta

Rolled into Salta, Argentina yesterday after 20 hrs on the bus from Mdza, watching "Good Morning Vietnam" and "Armeggedon" through the night and wondering what all the Argentines on the bus must think of the U.S.A. and our movies and music and self-image and culture and neuroses... sat next to a sleepy German guy, so didn't really get the chance to rap in Español like I usually like to on these long rides, but no worries, cuz Dan and Tobie gifted me a massive and brilliant treatise on 20th century warfare and the history of the modern nation-state called "The Shield of Achilles" by Philip Bobbitt so I got my read on for several hours and felt all smart and academic and pensive and that was fun as mostly I had been reading thrown-away tabloids and food wrappers on the bus after temporarily giving up on page 16 of Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera in the original idioma.

The city of Salta lies between several intersecting mountain ranges on the southeastern edge of the rise to the great Argentine/Bolivian/Chilean Altiplano. It's humid but not too hot, lush green but bordering vast superdry mountain canyons and arroyos, and high (1200m) but not too high that you get out of breath walking around town. Salteño culture is rich and storied, partly owing to its unique location halfway along the old Potosí-Buenos Aires post road where pack trains and Spanish soldiers huffed it up to the mines at 15,000 feet and back down to the Atlantic with their silver exports and other mountain riches bound for Barcelona and Madrid. Supposedly the birthplace of empanadas, and also apparently the best spot in Argentina to see traditional Chacarero music (like Tango but more Guacho, more boot-stomping), Salta's got a lot going for it.

No idea where to stay just off the bus and squinting in the bright sunshine, I wandered into Plaza 9 de Julio in the town center and bumped into Tina from Munich, who had been on my bus a few rows away. We chatted briefly and realized neither of us had any idea where to stay, so set off wandering the streets, eventually finding a nice little hotel with a super-talkative owner eager to show off his thousands of digital photos to anyone who expresses even the slightest interest in looking at them on his computer. Late afternoon Tina and I climbed the town mountain and rode the gondola back down at sunset for fantastic views of the city and the valley and surrounding lush green mountains stretching up northward past Jujuy (hoo-HOOEY!) and up to the Bolivian border, then wandered down for a late dinner at one of the many huge restaurants on Calle Balcarce specializing in steaks the size of which you cannot imagine and entertainment provided by live Chacarero performances by beautiful girls in flowing white dresses and men dressed in superbaggy MCHammer style pants, cowboy boots, vests, and huge sombreros, stomping around and trying to look sexy but mostly ridiculous while the girls clearly steal the show.

This morning I had a cup of coffee with my friend Miguel, whom I met waiting in line at the Dulles Airport in January when our Bs. As. flight was cancelled. Small world: Miguel went to the Yale School of Forestry and is general manager of Argentina's only Forest Stewardship Council-certified timber company. We clearly had a lot to talk about, as RAN has been one of the main forces creating demand in the global marketplace for sustainably harvested wood-products, and he had studied us at Yale with a professor I know there. I learned a ton asking questions about the timber business and forest protection in Argentina, and we rapped a bit about the role of international advocacy campaigns in creating markets for sustainable products like his... He then offered to take me on what turned out to be a long and dusty ride through the beautiful countryside surrounding Salta, using the trip to show off his extensive knowledge of trees and forest ecology, pointing out every single species and explaining whether it was native or invasive, and generally just being a kick-ass tour guide and generous and fun.

When we got back to town I thought we would split but he took me straight to his favorite local empanada stand, "El Buen Gusto," jam-packed with locals in a far corner of town and -- bliss -- not a Lonely Planet-reading tourist in sight in the whole barrio. Miguel says they sell 5,000-7,000 empanadas in a weekend, and judging by the line I'd say that's a conservative estimate. The empanadas were tiny and delicious and we ordered a dozen with salsa picante and cokes to wash them down. Was pleased as punch to see this other side of Salteño living not written up in all the guidebooks and full of backpacking tourists just like me.

Monday I head northward again to the Quebrada de Humhu-somethingorother, which are supposed to be beautiful Utah-style or maybe Badlands-like rock canyon erosion formations and nearby you can check out Argentine Andino culture in tiny little mountain towns before crossing the border to Bolivia, sometime Tues, and hopefully making it to Cochabamba by Weds night for a Manu Chao concert I just found out about the other day! Gotta run... love ya!

Alaska to Antarctica

Monday night I met up with SF friends Tobie and Dan, just weeks from the end of their epic 10-month Western Hemisphere roadtrip from Prudhoe Bay on the shores of the Arctic Ocean to Ushuaia, in Tierra Del Fuego, the world's southernmost city. Craziness!

Yesterday I accompanied them on a short side trip to several wineries in Maipú, where we toured the wine presses and tasted lots of Malbecs. Sitting in their car for just a few hours, I tried to imagine all the endless hours of driving and the 30,000 miles they've put on the odometer, and felt much better about my measly 18 hour busride to Salta this evening.

I've already seen "2Fast, 2Furious" thrice on this trip, so keep your fingers crossed for another movie on the bus, please!

OK, more observations later. Siesta time is almost over and Dulce de Leche ice cream is calling my name...

Longest Siesta Ever

Mendoza is a ghost town between the hours of 2:00 and 6:00 PM. It's like people just float off into some other invisible hidden indoor world. What do they do all afternoon? 4 hour lunches? 4 hour naps? Video games? Anyway, it's eerie to be out walking around and just see people disappearing left and right. And then all of a sudden at 6:15 the streets are packed again and the sidewalk cafés are 4 deep with tables of beer drinking, ice cream eating, happily chattering crowds... and they stay this way straight through to 3:00 AM. No wonder they call this place Men-doze-a. I´m not quite down with this routine yet, but I'm slowly learning to like it...

Lost In Translation (For Real)

In Argentina watching "Lost in Translation," the classic Bill Murray movie about early 21st century cultural alienation in Tokyo, dubbed into French and then subtitled in Spanish for the benefit of some other guests at my hostel. All the Japanese, however, remains like in the original film, untranslated. This is trippy.

Driving over the Andes today was too.

My Escape From The Smog

Well, I'm a-goin' where that smoggy air don't blowww...

After nearly a week in Santiago, I depart first thing tomorrow morning for the other side of the Andes... lovely Mendoza, Argentina. I've definitely enjoyed my time here, but I think my lungs will thank me for getting the hell out of this pollution soup.

Highlights include: the best hostel I've stayed in yet, with minimal rowdiness but plenty of good political conversation and a nice beer garden; an enlightening discussion -- about the Danish cartoon controversy and whether there should be limits to free speech -- with two surfing hipster Danish law students doing a semester exchange at U. Chile; and perhaps above all, being treated to dinner and 2 bottles of wine by a professor of oenology at the university, who spent 4 hours answering my questions about grapes, winemaking, chemistry, culture, and global trade policy.

OK, am off to go see Heath Ledger accept his Oscar. More photos and observations coming up next... stay tuned!