La
Paz – Going Deeper
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La
Paz is first an foremost the largest outdoor market I have ever seen.
Anyone who has ever enjoyed a farmers market, garage sale, or flea
market could possibly find nirvana here. |
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From
the central boulevard Plaza de Los Heroes upwards almost until El Alto
there are literally hundreds of thousands of stalls. A good illustration of the sheer number of sidewalk stalls is a
recent protest by the stall owners that stopped all traffic on the
central boulevard for several hours. It was
estimated that 100,000 stall owners came out to state that they have
difficulty earning a living wage – it was also estimated that not
even half of the stall owners participated in the protest.
The stalls tend to be loosely geographically organized
by items sold. For
example, I wanted to buy a towel and everyone that I asked directed me
to one intersection where towel-sellers dominated the commercial
landscape. This type of
geographic concentration is fully to the advantage of the buyer since
cost comparisons can be made and it is easy to move from one seller
to another when the price is not right. This is the kind of real-time buyer information
and choice
that mobile access to the internet promises the buyer of the future
– without the shipping delays!
One
famous feature of La Paz is its democracy in action. La Paz is frequently the setting of large street demonstrations
where the riot police come out in force, the protesters fire loud
booming bottle rockets
into the air to get everyone’s attention, and more often than not
the whole thing ends with the riot police’s liberal application of
tear gas to the offending crowd. Quite often this approach earns the protesters the social
change they were seeking. The
good news is that almost no one gets hurt (other than breathing some
stinging tear gas).
| The other day while filing my last dispatch at the
Café
Ciudad not one of the other people in the cyber café even looked up as
several large booms |
| reverberated though the building from a protest
outside. When I asked the
attendant what was afoot she just shrugged and said "it must be some
protest". |
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|
My
curiosity about tear gas was fully later that week when I decided to
go get ‘up close and personal’ with a protest being conducted by
the students of La Paz
who were demanding that a campus of the university be opened uphill in
the fast-growing lower-income suburb of El Alto. |
|
The
geographic focal-point of most protests is the plaza Murillo, the seat
of Bolivia’s government. As usual, the protesters were trying to get into the plaza
Murillo and the |
riot police were doing everything possible to prevent
this from happening. As I
looked around me I noticed that several of the students had daubs of
white paint under each eye and were holding cigarettes in front of
their faces in a decidedly un-smoker-like way. Then the pop of opened tear gas canisters hitting the ground
filled the air and I ran towards my hostel as a large white cloud of
irritating gas surged down the street behind me.
As it turned out, Hostal Austria where I was staying turned out to
hardly be a refuge when an unlucky toss of a tear gas canister by some
students in the street into the hostel's foyer filled the whole front
of the building with the irritating gas.
The hostel owner loudly proclaimed that this was the first time
any such thing had ever happened as she herded the guests into the
back kitchen area where we sat around drinking coca mate tea and
smoking cigarettes to get rid of the sting until the teargas cleared
from the lobby.
One
of the highlights of any adventurous traveler’s La Paz experience
has to be a visit to the famous San Pedro prison in downtown La Paz.
Photographs of the prison or even outside of the prison are
considered a breach of security. Even
so, I was able to get a hastily snatched crooked shot of the yellow
building before going in.
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Here is the drill: San Pedro is a working prison that houses
criminals incarcerated for everything from simple murder to drug
smuggling with the majority involved in the latter. |
The more serious big fish, mass murderers, and foreign
prisoners are held in a different high-security penitentiary outside
of town. In San Pedro things
are a bit looser. Through some
strange agreement with the government, the local San Pedro prison
mafia boss and his henchmen are allowed by the prison guards to escort
tourists around the prison and show them what life is like in
low-security Bolivian penal mayhem. In
response to a question about what he was in jail for, our guide,
George Redcloud, evasively said he "was born in Canada, got lost,
stayed lost, and is now a UN citizen with a blue passport."
Here
are a few facts about life in the prison: - the cells cannot be locked
from the outside and are more like dorm rooms than cells. Prisoners wander freely throughout the prison.
- Prisoners pay for their own cell when they enter the prison.
Prisoners who cannot afford a cell must sleep in the hall or
may work for other prisoners as servants for the privilege of sleeping
in their cell. Cells are
purchased with one flat amount from exiting prisoners and are like
real estate with some costing as little as $500 and others costing up to $7,000 depending on
what patio ‘neighborhood’ they are in. The richest prisoners build their own penthouses complete with
private bath and furniture high up on the prison walls. – Wives, children, and girlfriends are allowed to enter the
prison and roam unhindered like the rest of the prisoners. These guests are not allowed to sleep over however and must
leave in the evening. These visitors bring in fresh fruit, vegetables, bread, and
cigarettes daily and these products are sold in the main patio areas
like another outdoor market. –
It is also interesting to note that guns and
drugs are readily available within the prison and offered for
sale to any interested visitor taking the tour.
To
visit the prison just show up at San Pedro's front door any weekday.
Once inside you will be asked to pay $41 Bolivianos (about $US7) and will be assigned a young thug to act as your ‘protection’
and a multi-lingual guide to show you around the prison.
My
favorite way to begin the day in La Paz was with a visit to the comedor
popular next to Mercado Lanza on the main boulevard.
The comedor popular is a Bolivian institution and by asking
where it is in any Bolivian city you know you will find an area filled
with permanent hot food stands offering excellent fare at dirt-cheap
prices. The only thing to
remember when going to the comedor popular is – do like the other
people do! The most crowded stalls are the best and waiting for a few
minutes to sit down is your insurance that the food will be fresh,
tasty, and clean. In the
morning some popular favorites at the comedor popular are pasteles de
queso (a hot deep fried pastry filled with a dab of salty cheese) or
buñuelos ( a hot deep-fried pastry filled with nothing but steam)
accompanied by a cup of coffee or api (a thick semi-sweet fruity
concoction served hot that Paceños swear by to ward off the
early-morning cold).
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Having
buñuelos and api at the comedor popular represented my only contact
with La Paz’s professional business community – |
| odd since this is
the cheapest breakfast in town at about $US 50 cents for two coffees
and a buñuelo! |
One
of the things that brought me to Bolivia was my interest in indigenous
American culture. Some
statistics state that upwards of 80% of Bolivia’s population’s
first language is something other than castellano (Spanish). This manifests itself most visually in La Paz in the person of
the Bolivian Chola woman with her round bowler hat and
pollera skirts. Chola women hold positions in the social hierarchy that range
from street vendors to wealthier business
owners and prominent politicians.
The
front of San Francisco Cathedral is the site of daily presentations by
sellers of the latest miracle herb or spiritual revelation. On one single afternoon I listened to a ginseng extract seller
speaking in auctioneer-speed Spanish extolled Ginseng’s many virtues
(including eliminating impotency) to an enthralled (mostly male) crowd
and a bearded man patiently explained how we
| are definitely in the last
times of the biblical apocalypse using a large cloth diagram covered
in drawings of biblical and pop-culture images. |
|
For
anyone who has an interest in Andean music there are different ways to
see a live performance in La Paz. A
group of other foreigners and myself were on the cusp of paying the
$US 15 cover at the Peña Marka Tambo on beautiful colonial Calle Jaen
when we noticed a poster advertising a live music performance to take
place the next day in La Paz’s version of Central Park for only 10
Bolivianos ($US 1.60). This
performance lasted all day and featured three songs each from over 30
groups ranging from traditional Andean music and Charango ballads to
Mariachi and Tropical groups flown in from distant Latin American
locations. Throughout the
performances the stage was ringed by a group of seemingly 17-year-old
‘hostesses’ that listlessly clapped and swayed to each song. Other children in the stands waved Pokemon balloons and ran
playing up and down the concrete amphitheater aisles.
| ‘Perfect
days’ in La Paz don’t start with an itinerary, they start
with an open sense of adventure and a pair of comfortable
shoes for sprinting across the street – remember: |
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| practically
all streets in La Paz are without stoplights or crosswalks! |
Aymara
Lesson Number 2
Thanks
to Jacinto Fernandez of Guitarron Music Instruments shop on Calle
Sarganaga and Paulcarpio Valencia of the Linares area Policia Turista
post for this Aymara lesson.
-
Chuguiago
Marka - La Paz.
-
Cow
Kan Quisa - Where is...
- Cuhama
palta - How do you say...
- Laya
Tacuasca - I am looking for...
-
Tienda
ya wira taskiwa - Is the shop open?
-
Yawin
tatawa - Are you closed?
-
Sarjanyani
- Lets go!
- Ham
parlistates - Leave me be!
- Alhita
- Go on and sell me!
- Suma
Gualiki - Very good.
- Nayan
Estados Unidos tatua - I am from the United States.
-
Nayan
sutehawa - My name is...
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