Journey to Bolivia

Monday February 14th.

I finally arrived in Cochabamba at 9.30 pm. The flight left Madrid one hour late because one of the seats in Business Class did not recline properly and they brought someone in to repair it! That didn't really matter much to me because I had an 8 hour wait in Buenos Aires, which wasn't much fun because Iberia had not checked my luggage through to Cochabamba and I had to pick it up in Buenos Aires and hold on to it. The annoying thing was that when I asked to check it in there, the Aerosur employee told me that they did have an agreement with Iberia and they should have checked it right through.

Straight to bed!

Tuesday February 15th.

The first thing I had to do was change some money into bolivianos with the street money exchangers. Then we went to La Cancha market to buy the socks, towels, toothpaste, toothbrushes and soap. I did my best to buy cotton products made in Bolivia and not the Chinese products that have inundated the market. That took the whole morning and there was a lot of carting stuff around.

The city was pretty troubled today. Fortunately we had decided not to go to the MANACO shoe factory today because Quillacollo, where the factory is, was in uproar. All the businesses were closed and the workers committees were marching through the streets protesting against the rises in bus fares and transport in general. The MANACO workers were heading the march. Things got a bit out of hand in some places, and people armed with sticks were breaking the windows of any vehicle that happened to pass by or were parked in the vicinity.

The roads into and out of the city were blocked on the north, south, east and west. There were other marches related to the cost of milk, and later in the day some other areas of the city were cut off.

The general mood is one of unrest. Prices have risen around 80% over the last year. The government backed down over the rise in fuel prices but all the other rises have been maintained. There is no sugar to be had when Bolivia was once a sugar exporter; rice is in short supply and the price of chicken rises 50 centavos every day as a result of which many families are now no longer able to buy chicken and can only buy chicken offal instead.

Bolivia has always had a flourishing informal economy and usually it was the women who sold things in the streets. Now the government has set up a trading company which is selling the same items and undercutting the prices.

The president, Evo Morales, was kicked out of Oruro a few weeks ago when the miners, supplied with dynamite, turned up at the event he was attending. He had no option but to leave. This is significant because Oruro, along with La Paz and Potosí, have been his main power points as they are mainly Aymaras. Many people are now openly calling him a dictator! And these are indigenous people who originally voted him in.

It will be interesting to see what happens next, as corruption is another major complaint.