Such creativity

I assigned my students to write a few stories while I was in La Paz these past two weeks. Each is assigned a beat in Santa Cruz and is responsible for developing sources and finding stories there. Despite threatening zero credit if I didn't receive the assignments by email on the appointed deadline, only about 20% of my 30 or so students emailed me the homework. Many others, however, sent me some quite elaborate excuses. Thought I'd share a few good ones:

"I was away all week at my cousin's house in X town where there's no electricity. So I couldn't send the homework."

"My parents wouldn't let me go to the beat you assigned me after the jailbreak (27 violent felons did, indeed, bust out of Santa Cruz's Palmasola prison last week)."

"I'm pregnant (ed. note: though just barely showing) and I don't have a car and it's hard for me to walk around."

"I didn't come to the last class, so I didn't know what the homework was."

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."

Now I know why they hate us so

I used to think Bolivia's anti-Americanism was rooted in a perception that our government meddles in its own, or that our aggressive multinational companies have pillaged its economy.
No.
It's that the first person visitors to the embassy meet is the nastiest, most officious puta Bolivia has to offer.
I had to drop my passport off there to get a visa extension.
But first I needed to get past this hag. She faces the street in a small office cloistered behind a thick glass window.
"Hola. I have a meeting with Diego (the guy in charge of Fulbrights) please."
She points to a phone on my side of the glass, but doesn't look up from her newspaper.
I pick it up. She picks her phone up, but still doesn't look up.
"Hola. I have a meeting with Diego," I repeat.
"Call him then." She gives me his extension and points to another phone.
I get his voicemail.
I pick up the phone connecting the receptionist to the outside world again. She looks up, annoyed.
"Hi. Could you please page him? He is expecting me."
"Can't you wait?" she said. She then hangs up her phone and continues to read.
I tap on the glass and point to the phone again. She picks up her end.
"He doesn't know I'm here. I would like you to page him please. Can you try his secretary?"
She shakes her head, hangs up her phone and picks up another phone, dials and extension and starts talking. I can't hear the conversation.
She then hangs up the phone and starts reading again.
I look at Sonya. Sonya nods. I tap on the glass again and point to the phone.
"What did the secretary say?"
"She said to wait."
"Did you tell her who I was?"
"No. You never told me."
"Tell her I'm Andrew Glazer. Diego is expecting me."
"Can't you wait?"
"No."
She dials again. Five minutes later, Diego is downstairs.

Cracked Sonya up, pissed me off to no end

We bought a bottle of water at the pharmacy down the street from where we're staying in La Paz. It was 3.50 bolivianos. I gave the cashier 3.60.
"I don't have change," she told me, cutting a vitamin from a blister pack she pulled form a drawer beneath the register. "Take this little vitamin instead."