Don Lucho

How information is delivered in a museum, guidebook or tour can be as revelatory as the information itself.
The Museum of the Revolution in Havana, with its unabashed deification of Castro and Che and demonization of the U.S., undermines its own message of how Cuba was "liberated" from a ruthless dictatorship. Only a ruthless dictatorship would go through such lengths to create a cult of personality around its leaders. What place do thought police have in a free democracy?
At first, I thought La Paz's Museo de Coca had a similar bent. As Sonya and I passed through exhibit after exhibit of how wonderful this medicinal leaf is, I asked aloud why they didn't have an exhibit of me getting mugged and chased by crack addicts in Philly, or a panel describing how my car was stolen four times in one summer. But I hadn't given the museum enough credit -- We turned the corner and discovered the "crack epidemic" section, complete with a lifesized model of a junkie taking a hit. And within this section of the museum, special mention was given to North Philly (photos will be posted early next week).
Mil disculpes, Museo de Coca.
Then there was the tour Sonya and I took yesterday. We had spent the night in Las Yungas, a tropical region halfway between the high Andes of La Paz and the low Amazon basin. The area is how I would imagine parts of Colombia: Rolling green mountains, terraced farms of coffee, bananas and coca. Dramatic waterfalls. And a large community of descendants of black Africans.
They had been brought to Bolivia to work the mines of Potosi, but couldn't adapt to the harsh conditions, so they settled in Las Yungas to harvest coca. Many women have adapted the cholita fashion -- bowler hat, flouncy layered dresses, twin braids hanging down their back. And many members of the community speak not Spanish, but the indigenous Ayamara language.
We hadn't planned to take a tour, but an affable old man named Don Lucho offered us a cheap rate for a jeep ride to some waterfalls, coca plantations and villages.
Lucho's perspective became pretty clear early on. I should point out that Lucho, whose family has lived in the Yungas village of Coroico for at least four generations, was one of the whitest people I've seen in Bolivia. And he lives in a big house on the main square.
As we drove by an old Spanish church and latifundia, he sadly recalled the day when villagers -- coaxed by a government encouraging land reform -- forced the Spanish settlers away at gunpoint.
As we passed a school set up by an Italian N.G.O. designed to teach the children of campesinos advanced agricultural techniques, Lucho said it was a good idea.
"But it will never work because the Ayamara speaking campesinos have nothing up here."
As we crested a hill, he pointed to a village on a distant hill.
"That's where all the little blacks live," he said. "They used to behave themselves. Now they all use bad words."