Project Visit 2014

Journey or Odyssey

This year's journey started off well enough with the flight Málaga to Madrid in a small propeller plane.  There was a veritable mountain of people in Madrid waiting for the flight to Santa Cruz. With the exception of about six passengers the rest were all Bolivians and many were travelling with small children, and even newborns.  I calculate there had to be about 35-40 children on the plane.  It was quite entertaining to watch the human spectacle particularly watching many of the women whose every movement and demeanour cried out that they would normally have worn polleras and their hair in plaits, but abroad they had their hair loose and wore trousers.

When time came for embarkation, the Air Europa crew arrived on time - but not a minute earlier.  However, they did not start the embarkation procedure but began to make announcements for two unaccompanied minors who did not turn up for 20 minutes.

Only when they had located them did embarkation begin. It followed the usual procedure: first families with children under five (except that anyone with a child of any age joined that queue), then rows 30-44, followed by rows 15-44.  When the front rows were allowed to embark we were informed that there was no space left for our hand luggage, so they took everything away and put it in the hold.  This did not surprise me because I had seen people carry on pieces of  "hand luggage" which were bigger than the suitcase I had checked in.

The 11+ hours overnight flight was as uncomfortable as usual with very little legroom, but it did arrived 15 minute earlier than scheduled.

The first thing I did was ask an official whether suitcases theoretically checked through to Cochabamba would actually go there direct or not.  In Málaga they told me that this would be the case but I had grave doubts about it, which were confirmed:  no, all luggage must be collected in Santa Cruz.

With that clear in my head I was ready to face the immigration procedure. They formed three queues: families with children would go through the diplomatic channel; Bolivian citizens would go through the left hand channel and foreigners would go through the centre. Fine, except that because we had arrived early there were no immigration officials to attend to us.  As suspected, they arrived about 10 minutes after the scheduled time of arrival so we had been standing in the queue for about 25 minutes by then.  The next step was that the lady official who was supposed to attend to foreigners decided that she would also attend to the families with children so that group had two channels and foreigners had none until another official arrived to fill the gap.  With new fangled cameras and technology to entertain them each person's procedure  took longer than before because everyone had to be photographed for posterity by the immigration officials whose demeanour and attitude is as friendly and reassuring as always - ha ha!!!

It took an hour to clear immigration.

Next step luggage collection.  There is only one carousel in Santa Cruz and the luggage hall is about 100m2. Chaos is an understatement.  Clearly many families who have been living and working in Europe are now returning and some of them had 7-10 huge suitcases, baby pushchairs and other goods. Three families were traveling with their dogs.  I was glad to see that they got about the best deal because they did not put them on the luggage belt but carried their crates to one side.  The poor things were beside themselves with joy when they saw a familiar face and heard a familiar voice amid the chaos which was growing by the minute. The children were delighted to see their pets too.

Suitcases were going round and round and people were grabbing cases off the belt which then piled up in the centre of the room with the result that it was impossible to move. Other cases were falling off the belt and there was not way to move out of the way because we were imprisoned by suitcases.

Eventually it was clear that many of the cases not on the belt had not actually been claimed (People had just grabbed them and left them there), so, when the worst of the crush subsided, I was able to do a tour.  None of the cases in the centre of the room belonged to me.  Mine was not on the belt and had never come around.  Finally in a far corner I spied a burgundy suitcase that looked like mine.  Sure enough, it was. Someone had obviously taken it off the belt as soon as it appeared and just left it there.

Next was the long queue for customs. After another hour the suitcase adventure was over.

Now to find the check-in counter of Amaszonas, a small airline that I had never flown with.  Already the queue was long - so another wait. As the aircraft we were to fly in was small, they were only accepting one checked-in bag and one piece of hand luggage.  For me that was not a problem: I just put the briefcase inside the cabin case, but for people travelling with up to 10 suitcases it was certainly a dilemma. They had to choose which two pieces would travel with them and the remaining luggage would be sent on later.

I reached the counter just as the baggage controller announced that he would accept only 5 more cases. He would not accept my carry-on case as cabin luggage, though, so I had to take the briefcase out again.  However, as both cases were well under the weight limit, he allowed them to pass. Another hour had passed by this time, so three hours after landing I had finally completed the bureaucratic procedures.

Nearly there! The flight was called on time and we got on the small plane, a Canadair Bombardier. We began to move away from the parking stance but after about 5 metres, the captain announced that there was a technical problem and we would go back. Ten minutes later they announced that it was fixed so we moved off again only to turn back after about 10m. This time they decided that we should disembark, which was probably a good thing given the temperature outside which was high enough and the even higher temperature inside the plane.

Finally 2 hours late we reached Cochabamba. The locals returning from Europe set up a unison cry that their first stop would be to eat choclo, a whitish form of corn on the cob which is much larger than the sweetcorn usually sold in Europe and the US.

Journey over.

10/03/2014

Today started off in martial style.  As the person I have to meet sent a message to say that he would not be down until 10am, I decided to take a walk while the air was still cool.  As I approached the main square, I could hear the sounds of a military band. Lined up in front of the Town Hall and Army headquarters were representatives of the three armed forces, bands and representatives of students from the military school in Sucre which is the real capital of Bolivia although La Paz is the administrative centre.

For some time now Bolivia has been waging a campaign to recover its coastal territories lost in the Pacific War of the mid-nineteenth century. Someone was reading a declaration stating Bolivia's right to recover its coastal land "stolen illegitimately by the Chileans".

When that was over, the march began.  Of course the main protagonists were the navy and the naval bands. It was quite funny to watch because as they approached the official buildings the naval person in charge of each group called out "Acción" and with the next step they began to march "goosestep style" until they passed the officials. When the turn of the army came, they did not call out but the head of each group raised his or her arm for goosestepping to begin. Clearly they did not do this very often because some of the conscripts had their tongue stuck out and clamped between their teeth while others had their lips so pursed in concentration that you could only see a slit where the mouth should be. One poor chap got mixed up and had to fumble around to get back in step.

As the bands passed, one of the naval officers clearly had a problem either with his ears or because the music was too loud because he kept raising his hand to cover his ears in an "undercover" way: he would ostensibly scratch his ear or rub it all the while covering it to reduce the noise.

The façade of the building was covered with two huge banners.  One was a homage to modern Bolivia
presided over - of course - by Evo Morales. The other was a flag designed in the nineteenth century where the 9 departments of Bolivia are clustered in the top left corner while the 10th. coastal department is in the bottom right on a background of deep blue symbolising the ocean.

This is nation-building surely!

Then we went off to change money with the money changer on the street before heading off to the market La Cancha to buy towels, socks, soap, toothpaste and tooth brushes.  It was a heavy load to carry but we managed to get a taxi fairly quickly to transport it all. That is actually the heaviest task done.

Day 2 11/03/2014

This morning's task was to go to the shoe factory.  We left just before 9 and took the microbus to Quillacollo and then another micro to the factory.  Not much improvement in hygiene standards was to be seen in Quillacollo - the same nauseating stench of decaying rubbish lying everywhere.

The MANACO factory is a delicious reserve of peace, tranquillity and cleanliness amid the general chaos. MANACO is an affiliate of Bata Shoes.  They have three tanning rooms, one for wet processes and two for dry. They have a plastics processing room for plastic sandals and that is the only place where I felt that they had improvements to make because most of the workers were not wearing masks despite the strong smell of glues and other toxic products.  They also cut the uppers and complete the shoes. Other items are imported from other factories elsewhere.  While we waited for our order to be packed, I saw that safety boots which resist acids and other products are made in Bata's Mexican factory.

The company employs 800 workers at this factory and they have a medical centre and dining-room for staff. The factory is surrounded by a well-kept garden and the workers also have an outdoor dining-room where they can eat in summer. The man who deals with our order told me that the company is investing quite heavily in the factory and they expect to take on more workers.

This year we managed to get a taxi without too much of a problem and after dropping me off in the centre of Cochabamba, Primo continued to the stance where he would be able to get a trufi-taxi (Trufis are communal taxis) to take him and all the boxes of shoes up to San Benito.

I had lunch at GOPAL, a little Indian vegetarian restaurant which caters mostly to hitch-hikers, where you can eat a simple meal of soup, salad and a main course, bread, desert and juice for €2.  They have a choice of 20 salads, 2 soups and 2 main courses. The food is served on stainless steel trays like they use in Indian ashrams.

Day 3 12/03/2014

It is quite clear that the business of the moment is opticians' shops.  In one street I counted more than 20! The other thing that seems to be booming is manicure places offering acrylic nails, nail extensions and other benefits of modern technology. Even down in the market there are manicure places, but you must not conjure up an image of a sophisticated salon.  No, these are mostly holes in the wall with a small table, two chairs and a variety of nail varnishes.

Signs of social change are everywhere to be seen.  The number of women wearing the traditional pollera or wide skirt has dwindled dramatically even since last year.  Most of those wearing at least some form of traditional clothing are to be seen south of the 25th May market. Carrying babies in awayus, the colourful woven cloth that has been used for centuries to carry everything from babies to vegetables, is also waning as baby slings and other new devices hit the market. Some brave souls, fresh from their European migrant adventure, even brave taking their babies out in prams and pushchairs.  With pavements - where there are any - uneven and full of potholes, I think it will not be long before the wheels will break.

Other signs of the migrant adventures are plentiful too. Young boys have spiked hair, dyed all over or with highlights in colours that do not suit their natural flesh tones.  The boy on the stall next to the one where we bought our toiletries yesterday had purple highlights and a safety pin stuck through his ear at two points. The overall effect is to make them look like petty criminals or members of some gang. Some girls have also opted for the blond look which does nothing for them either.

Small businesses set up by returning migrants reveal where they spent their time with a growing number of eateries boasting Italian names and offering pizzas. The one business that rarely fails in Cochabamba is eating places.  The Cochabambinos eat all day long and the portions are not small.

The other sign of the migrant experience is that there are more people to be seen walking little dogs on a lead. This would have been impossible only a few years ago.  The fact that three families returning from Spain on the same flight as mine had gone to the trouble to bring their pet dogs back with them is an indication of a huge mentality change.

Building continues all around Cochabamba and in the High Valleys as returning migrants invest their savings building new homes.  The major problem is that Cochabamba does not have enough water to support this expansion.  For the most part these creeping districts are supplied with water cisterns.

Having written the above yesterday evening, today the "real Bolivia" made its presence felt. It was like being transported back 20 years.  When I went down to the main square 14th of September this morning all kinds of awnings were being put up and a stage was being erected in the middle of the square.  When I looked around at the banners, they all bore names of places in the Chapare where the UN project Roberto worked on had initiatives.  The coca growers were out in force and today was National Acullicu Day. Rivers of campesinos were flooding into the square carrying wipalas, the multicoloured flag of the original peoples of America.  The coca middle-men, except that in the case of coca they are almost always middle-women, were setting up their stalls with piles of coca leaf spread out on awayus on the ground. All the campesinos were coming by to pick up their plastic bag of coca and then settled down on the ground to chew. The cholitas with their polleras, plaits and babies in awayus were equally active.

At first the authorities tried to keep them off the grass and flower-beds in the square but that was a hopeless task so in the end they gave up.

Around 11 the official ceremonies began. This was a "mixed" event, because the coca was combined with political slogans in favour of President Maduro of Venezuela and most of the morning was spent listening to diatribes in favour of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina, the only democratic countries in the world, and against the US and Obama in particular.  An effigy of Obama was dragged along the street and people took turns at whipping him with a leather belt. 

When Google, as the representative of North American Imperialism, finally allows me to get into my blog, I shall upload the photos and some video clips.  I can't put them on YouTube because, of course, that also belongs to the Google stable.

What is clear from the much greater number of coca syndicates present in the square is that coca leaf production has expanded enormously.  The sad thing for me was to see that there are now syndicates in the Mamoré region.  This means that more rainforest has been chopped down and colonisation has expanded further into the forest.  This is bad news indeed for the environment and for the forest tribes whose homeland is the rainforest. When people talk about imperialism, it is always someone else's imperialism and never their own.  The altiplano campesinos have been invading the rainforest for decades, first of all as part of a government plan to relocate miners when the tin market crashed and later for coca growing, but nobody ever takes into account the forest tribes, like the Yukis, Trinitarios and so on, whose homes they are usurping.  That seems to be OK and "democratic".

The number of very young coca growers was large.  When I say young, I mean adolescents or early 20s. This does not augur well for the future.  If the future of Bolivia is to be based on coca growing, I think it will not go far. There is no doubt that coca leaf has many medicinal properties and it should be recognised as a valuable resource, but the coca leaf grown in the Chapare is mostly destined for cocaine production as its alkaloid content is high.  The "sweet" coca for chewing comes from the Yungas near La Paz. However, as Evo Molares is still the President of the coca growers association, he uses this movement for political purposes and, as some Bolivians say, they are "manipulated like a flock of sheep".

As the speeches progressed, it became clearer that the day's events had indeed been programmed by MAS, the political party of Evo Morales, (They tried to recruit me as a member!), and part of the pitch was to class as traitors any campesinos who had preferred to find alternative sources of income.  That explained why certain campesino groups that I knew from the Chapare were not present because they had made the transition from coca growing to other crops such as tea.

With loudspeakers booming, firecrackers banging, speeches raving, campesinos milling, coca smelling, there comes a point when enough is enough and it is time to go!

Day 4: Unexpected encounter

The main business of today was to pay for the books and school materials and also the uniforms. Of course they both arrived late but the transactions were done. There is a glitch though.  The uniforms are not ready and will not be packed by tomorrow because Vito has to go to Santa Cruz to sign customs papers for the import of cloth for another order. This is a setback because this evening Primo will have to contact the children's families to warn them not to come tomorrow.  It is particularly important to contact the children up on the puna because many of those families walk down and it is a long way down the mountain and back up again.  The revised plan is to meet on Saturday morning at 10:30.  Vito will collect me at 9:30 and I will travel up with him. Cutting things a bit fine, but nothing for it...

This morning, as I waited for Primo to come, I went browsing around the second-hand and new booksellers in the vicinity of the telephone company building. It is a motley collection.  Medical textbooks dominated one stall but on others they shared pride of place with other subjects, mainly mathematics and business studies. At one end of the passageway there was a peppering of self-help books which gradually took over. By the other end of the passage Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence books held sway backed up by Osho and Louise Hay. Yesterday in the midst of the coca growers' demonstration there was also a stall selling Quechua books and ... Louise Hay! Quite mind-blowing in its own way.

Then I discovered a whole world of tourist emporia I had been unaware of before. There were lots of little shops and even a "Mall", the Galindo Mall (The Galindos are one of the big Cochabamba families) selling all kinds of tourist items from awayu cloths to bracelets.

Later, as I passed in front of the main government building in the main square, two young students passed by with a dog on a lead and wearing a notice hanging around his neck which read "You have the right to protect us". Not unnaturally this attracted my attention as it is so unusual here.  I saw they were distributing pamphlets so I followed them across the street and asked them what they did with the animals. They explained that they belonged to a youth organisation and were campaigning in favour of animal rights.  Then a young woman came along with another little dog.  She is the person in charge of an animal rescue organization which has set up a refuge called St. Martin of Porres. The dogs' names are Ricardo and Milo.

When I explained to them what my interest in animals was, they told me that they are holding a forum to discuss ways to draft rules for animal protection and wellbeing and they invited me to come along.  The meeting is at 8:30 tomorrow morning, so I am keen to see and hear what this initiative is about.  It certainly deserves support!

Day 5 Animal Rights Forum

I went along to the forum this morning.  It was a bit late starting because the organisers had been invited to a radio interview. Naturally there were all the usual procedures: identification by the police before being allowed to go up to the meeting room and I had to leave my passport with them.  The Bolivians had to leave their ID cards.

There were 4 speakers: a vet, a lawyer, a member of parliament and the girl I met yesterday who is also a law graduate.  They spoke about the current situation and legal vacuum and what they wish to enshrine in legislation. They also explored the defects of other pieces of legislation being presented to parliament and the MP explained the procedures for presenting a piece of legislation and the obstacles that will be faced, not least that most MPs do not actually know what the correct procedures are so they are not respected. This means that the people presenting the bill are never contacted to present their case.

However, there are several points that will probably prove to be major stumbling blocks:

a.    the army uses animals in training to desensitise soldiers who have to kill the animals by ripping them open.  They didn't say so but I imagine they also have to stick their heads in the blood and all that.  These are training techniques introduced by the CIA throughout Latin America starting in El Salvador.
b.    the sale of bitches (particularly muscular breeds such as the pitbull types) for the purposes of bestiality. Apparently this is a widespread practice and crosses social class boundaries.
c.    the indiscriminate sale of animals in markets: these animals come from clandestine breeding places where the animals are kept in horrendous, insalubrious conditions.
d.    street dogs and other animals that are caught for use in laboratories and universities - even for vivisection practice.
e.    the municipal authorities round up animals at night (The government has just bought seven new vans for this purpose).  The dogs (mostly they are dogs but cats are also hung from trees etc.) are then beaten to death or until nearly dead, then disposed of.  This municipal activity is not regulated and in any case, when the animals are taken to the pounds, they are killed after 5 days - if they last that long that is.

As you can see, not a pretty picture, but the people who were there are very committed and seem prepared to stand up and be counted. I was able to put them in touch with animal rights lawyers in Argentina and other countries so they can get some advice on what seems to work and what is more difficult. I hope they are successful.

At least this street dog has his priorities right!

Day 6 - San Benito

Today, at the last gasp, the uniforms were ready and packed. Vito, the owner of the little company that has been making the uniforms for us since the beginning came to collect me at 9:30.  From the tiny operation he had when we started with 3-4 workers, he now employs 25 workers and has won the contact to supply the work clothes for the maintenance department of the BOA airline and also for the oil company YPFB.  His two daughters are now grown.  One has graduated as a doctor and the other is halfway through her degree in industrial engineering.

Being Saturday, there was a lot of traffic on the road and there was a long queue at the toll booths. There is a lot of money sloshing about here in Bolivia.  One of the cars that passed us was a Hummer and Vito told me that when he went to the Santa Cruz motor show a couple of years ago ALL the Hummers had sold tags on them! It would appear that the soya farmers are the main customers for this type of vehicle.

The building boom is still going strong, although perhaps not so strong as t was a couple of years ago.  The hills all around Cochabamba are covered with buildings and all the way up to the High Valleys it is the same story. The government has bought a lot of land and is giving it to miners from the Potosí and other regions to build houses on. 

All the children and their parents were already seated by the time we got up to San Benito. Sister Rubina and

the school headmistress were both present.  Sister read a short passage and led a prayer and then we were able to give out the things to the children. They all got their uniforms, shoes, school materials, socks, soap, toothbrush, toothpaste and towel, and looked very happy with their booty.

When that was done, I took the photographs which I hope will have turned out well and I will send them next week once I draw my breath and identify each individual.

Now it is time to pack in readiness for an early start tomorrow morning.

Days 7 & 8 Return Journey

If getting into Bolivia is a nightmare, then getting out is beyond words.

8.30 am: At this precise moment in time I am fuming!  It used to be that there was only narcotics control in Santa Cruz.  Now they also have t on Cochabamba and after rifling through all my belongings, they took me into a cubicle where I was half undressed and a hands-on body search ensued - into underwear, pressing the abdomen and then a throat search.  Then an interrogation as to why I was in Bolivia, where I was going and so forth. Enough is enough. Let's see what happens in Santa Cruz ...

The flight from Cochabamba should have left at 9:30 but no sooner had I sat down than the screen changed indicating that we would leave at 10.  In the end it was 10:30 before we taxied off.

On arrival in Santa Cruz luggage had to be collected.  The luggage retrieval was a slow process despite the fact that the plane was only about 100m away from the carousel point. I had checked in online yesterday but it had proved impossible to print out the boarding passes.  The most important thing, for me at least, was that I had managed to get an aisle seat towards the front of the plane. While we waited they were already announcing that the Madrid flight was in the pre-embarkation area. So, after checking in my hold luggage, upstairs right away.

First stage was the usual "security control" that now tortures us in every airport.  After that migration control where the new toys make the procedure much longer than before. Not only that: before, this control was in the front part of the room and then passengers continued on to the third control. Now, since they have to have counters for cameras and such things, a queue is formed on the right hand side of the room.  Then when passengers have been through that rigmarole, they must go back to the point of entry and join another queue for Interpol anti-narcotics control - again.

As I stood in the queue a soldier from the FELCN (anti-narcotics) came down the line and decided, for some reason which I have not fathomed, that I should go to the head of the queue.  Good! I asked the lady soldier why we had to go through this all over again when we had already done so in Cochabamba.  "That's the regulation. Go to table 7".

At table 7 all the contents of my hand luggage were scrutinised, my homoeopathic travel kit attracting particular attention. I managed to convince him what it was. When that was over I was sent to join another queue for another physical examination. Once again I asked why we had to repeat this procedure and once again the same reply.

By this time we should have been boarding but there was no sign of any activity at the gate, and then they changed the gate. One of the stewardesses later told me that before boarding could begin FELCN went on board with the dogs and checked out every inch of the plane. When boarding did begin, it was a slow process because another new procedure has been introduced.  When the last section of the finger is full of passengers, no more are allowed to enter.  We were then told to stand on the left hand side of the finger and place our hand luggage on the right hand side.  There was a sniffer dog (both lovely yellow labs) at each end of the finger. The one nearest the plane came up and checked all the bags while the other one at the entrance to the finger came down and sniffed every passenger. 

Finally 1 hour and 10 minutes after our scheduled time of departure the plane doors were closed when one poor devil who had clearly been put through a gruelling experience came on board.  The person in question was the man in front of me at the Cochabamba checkpoint. When he boarded the plane his eyes were watering and red and his face was puce. I'm glad it was not me, is all I can say.

The irony of this whole situation is that the President of this country is the President of the coca growers association, and anyone who owns land in the Chapare, where coca leaf is grown, and does not have a certain percentage under coca, has the land confiscated. When we were in the Chapare, coca leaf was dried in the sun.  Now they have big industrial buildings full of clothes driers to dry the leaf.  In the past the pasta base was exported to Colombia to be transformed into cocaine.  Now this process is also carried out in the Chapare. So, the long and the short of it is that the whole thing is completely hypocritical and a farce.

The flight path on this Air Europe direct flight is different from the flights going to Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo.  Instead of coming in over Fortaleza and following a roughly north-south path, this flight comes in further north over Cayenne and then flies a diagonal path across the Amazon over Manaus.

Leaving Santa Cruz late meant that the arrival in Madrid was also late with only 45 minutes to get through immigration (Fortunately the procedure is less gruelling and exhausting than in Bolivia), security and change terminals.  However, Fate was on my side and I reached the boarding gate 10 minutes before take-off. 

Home!