Carnival and the Mines

At this hour, I ought to be sleeping, but this thunderstorm is as wild as Carnival -- it should not go unappreciated.  So awake I am.  Long crinkled highways of electricity run across the sky.  The thin tin part of our roof is played like an enormous drum:  wind, stray apples stripped from the neighboring tree, water -- all possible percussion. 

So I write.

Traveling across the Altiplano to Oruro

The week after I arrived in Bolivia began Carnival.  Bolivianos wait all year for this festival. When it arrives they party -- hard.  (So hard that Bolivia lost its coastal land to Chile during...yup, Carnival.)   What was a religious festival for the devout in the rural "el campo" has been appropriated by urban Bolivianos (and beer companies) as cause for a week long party. 

Getting sprayed at Carnival

Our favorite -- the Afro-Bolivian drummer-dancers

All of Bolivia parties, but nowhere can compete with Oruro -- a mining town that sits at about 12,000ft elevation.  Oruro is quiet--almost desolate in the cold, high altiplano--for most of the year, but this one wild week makes up for the other fifty-one.  The streets bustle with visitors, street stand vendors and never-ending crossfires from squirt guns, foam spray and water balloons.  I hopped a bus at 4:30am in Cochabamba with Dani--a member of Colectivo Katari--to arrive in Oruro around 8:30am.  Dani came with drum in hand, prepared to play and march with his group in the parade later that evening.  At 9:00am Saturday morning the 4km parade begins--thousands upon thousands hailing from every corner of the country--dancers, musicians and the most elaborate costumes I've ever seen--all unique to their region.  The parade runs till 2am.  Then they do it again Sunday.   All this dancing and music making occurs at the altitude of volcanic Mt. Adams back home.   I didn't stay for all 17 hours....if you linger into whee hours of the morning you must also brace yourself for the inevitable drunken brawls.  

In accord with Bolivia's synchronistic culture, Carnival blends Inca beliefs with local and Catholic beliefs.  Saturday's festivities begin with a Virgin Mary festival, and the festival ends on Tuesday with a majority of Bolivia's population making offerings to the Pachamama.  Carnival is observed in honor of the legendary appearance of the Virgin in the richest silver mine in Oruro in 1789.  "Danza de los Diables" (Dance of the Devils) is the central dance of the festival, honoring the underground gods (devils, or "tios") of the mines, of under the earth.   Picture a hundred or two performers in devil masks and costumes (which cost a few hundred dollars each).  I'm still grasping for a less hazy understanding of Bolivian relationships with these so-called devils--or gods--which seem more like a pantheistic assortment of deities: of music, of each lake and hill, of sex, etc.   Nevertheless it's clear that the devils bear particular importance in the mines.  For those working--some living--under the earth, their belief is split into worlds.  Many follow the catholic God as their savior, but it is thought that when they enter the mines, things change--they are entering the realm of satan.  If the underground devils ("tios") are not appeased, they punish miners "with falling rocks and explosions."  The "tios" will kill miners, then eat their souls.  Therefore though they pray in a Catholic church and trust the cross to keep the devil trapped inside the mines, they continue to make regular offerings to the tios and paint llama blood on the door of the mines, so as to spare their own blood and souls while they are under the earth.

Oruro

My reflection on Bolivia's mines continues beyond dancing costumed diables and religious fear in mining communities.  The mines are historically crucial in Bolivia.  Spain built its Bolivian fortune here on the backs of Indigenous, Afro-Boliviano (African slaves captured and brought to Bolivia much like in North America) and Mestizos.  My understanding is that the Spanish also invented the tios--to keep miners in line.  (And you wonder why Liberation Theology was born in Latin America?)   Miners eventually became a powerful political force in Bolivia--a populist power the Bolivian Government was forced to recognize.  However, the mining unions were all but completely dissipated when the mining companies fired and relocated (with government help) the majority of the mining population in the mid 80s when the global price of tin fell.  (Ironically, much to the dictatorship's and the USA's chagrin, many of these wandering former miners later regrouped in the Chapare region to form the powerful Coca Growers Unions).

After my trip to Oruro I spent an evening in candlelight (thanks to our burnt electrical wires--we were lucky the house didn't explode) talking of the mines with Marcello -- one of my new housemates.  He comes from a family of miners in the high-altitude Postosi mining region, where Marcello was born.  His grandfather not only worked, but lived underground in the mines.  No sunlight.  Inhaling mining chemicals day in and day out.  Living on next to nothing.  Marcello's father lived underground until he was five years old.  His father and all his aunts and uncles have either passed early, or suffer from health problems.  His family finally moved from within the mines when a two ton rock crushed his grandfather.  To this day, his body cannot be recovered.


I highly recommend the film The Devil's Miner (click to watch the trailer) to get a sense of the conditions in Bolivian mines.  The film is captivating.   While the main character in this documentary is no longer working within the mines, other Postosi children are.  Additionally, Postosi has become has sort of "tourist destination" for mine-curious foreigners (and filmmakers)--but this has not necessarily benefited the community.  Some would argue it has continued the exploitation--turning their horrid living and working conditions into an exhibition.   Travel thoughtfully.

I will think of this history the next time I hear Marcello sing Yo soy el dueño de todo in the Katari presentation Otras Mirados, Otra History (Other Perspectives, Other History).
Hear a brief clip of the song here. 

Yo soy el dueño de todo, I am the owner of everything

pero nunca tengo nada. but I never have anything.

Yo hago la luz, hago el fuego I make the light, I make the fire

hago el viento y hago el agua I make the wind, I make the water

yo soy el dueño de todo, I am the owner of everything

pero nunca tengo nada. but I never have nothing.

....

Yo hago la silla y la mesa I make the chair and the table

y no tengo ande sentarme, and I have no where to sit myself

total, si ya no me queda Overall, I have nothing left

ni el derecho de cansarme; I've lost the right to get tired.

Yo hago el palacio y mis hijos I make the palace and my children

duermen en ranchos de lata; sleep in tin cans

soy martillo, hacha, tenaza I am hammer, ax, pliers

pinza, cuchara y azada: pliers, bucket and spake

yo soy el dueño de todo I am the owner of everything

pero nunca tengo nada. but I never have nothing...

El día que yo me canse, On the day I get tired

van a arder las llamaradas!... the flames will burn...!

Treehouse (More Poetic Mediocrity)

 Climbing the tree 

Climbing the tree in my pink skirt

(someone taught me skirts were ideal for every day's climbing)

strong branches with ample footing

filling my shirt with as many ripe purples ones as I could find

before descending

where I knew you'd be waiting

to share the figs

Did you know about fig leaves?

It is a wonder Eve and Adam chose this leaf

(I pity them now more than I had before)

They itch.

I learned this as the minutes accumulated

each sticky itchy spot 

transferred to my body

worth every pound of figs

I hope Eden's expats walked away with several pounds

before the gates closed behind them and their itchy underwear.

a woman picking apples from the tree out our window

My New Home

There's an apple tree a-front my house, 

a guava tree behind.  

I climbed the wooden ladder

twisted 

and pulled myself a snack.

Last night the man who advises neighborhood organizations

advised us on Marxism
I got "infastructura" and "superstructura"

and forces of labor

but not much else.

This is a country of revolutionaries

a people of who've struggled for livelihood 

despite 500 years of colonial or (casi)-colonial rule

Here I am a student of everything

Even yesterday's advisor articulated that marxism 

in ideology 

is different than marxism 

embodied

(Yes, I understood that part too)

A marxist equality in salary means something different to me

than to the woman selling my papayas

and growing my coca

living on $2

a day.

I will tell you also

that I almost adore the leak 

in my bedroom ceiling.

I've made good friends with the blue plastic bowl

who catches drips

and only comes out to play 

when the rain is tan fuerte

The rain that sings the most lovely song I know 

sobre el techo

(the song my lover once sang to me).

Meanwhile the distant kind sounds of love being made

(don't tell them I'm writing this)

Is there not something good --when you pass quickly by any discomfort--

of a couple renewing their vows in breath and touch

while their hija sleeps by the side

That is a home.

So I sit here saying Bless them, Bless them, Bless them.

A couple clips of rehearsing in our living room for Desde los Sueños.  The bad singer who joins at the end is me, trying to learn the song!

Contradictions

Traveling by Trufi

Tonight I visited with Miro, my newest amiga from "La Comunidad" -- a church recommended to me by a friend of a friend.  (As a side note, this church as a fig tree out back--heavenly.)   Miro has been an angel of hospitality since I met her.   On my first Sunday she met me at my house to personally show me how to travel to Comunidad Cristiana Cochabamba via public transportation (Cochabamba's charming, yet random, and map-less Trufi system).  She has continued to issue invitations and kindness since then -- she is a paragon of warmth and hospitality.   

Tonight she was housesitting for missionary friends who live in Cochabamba.  The house was incredible, beautiful.  Three stories high, three bathrooms, and all the charm and amenities of an american suburban home.  I didn't know what to think.  I could not help but wonder: "to whom are they missionaries?"  The wealthy in Cochabamba?  I don't technically know where their quality of living falls on the Cochabamba wealth spectrum, but it was the the richest home I'd encountered in all my time here.  Missionaries.

On the high-altitude road toward a lovely church camp in the hills--which
is uncomfortably surrounded by a very different standard of living.

I've been known to spend (what is to some) a week's wages on one bar of chocolate, so let's keep that in perspective as I liberally judge the lifestyle of others.  Wandering the missionary house's many flights of stairs I recalled the cognitive dissonance of friends who traveled the globe for 6 months (an incredible luxury in itself -- much like my own current travels) and housed often in the home of generous missionaries.  Yet amidst their gratitude for all the hospitality, they were repeatedly stunned by missionaries who lived in comparative opulence to the people around them, or by missionaries who, while living in a Muslim culture, had never visited a mosque and had no Muslim friends.  How could this be?  How the disconnect with the culture?  

Crossing the coffee-colored Rio Rocha near my house

For those of us who claim any degree of compassion or solidarity with the poor, or alliance with Jesus (who, according to Luke audaciously began his ministry with the words "The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor..."), this disonnance is unnerving.  How much can we have before we start loosing our sense of what it's like to not have?  

Jen Hatmaker, in her book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess writes of her community's tiny, four-month-old church that took in eighty strangers--evacuees of Hurricane Ike.  Her family personally housed twelve:

We moved our three kids into our bedroom, washed sheets, blew up mattresses, rolled out sleeping bags, and readied the house for an onslaught.  As carloads arrived and we welcomed them in, one ten-year-old boy walked into our home, looked around with huge eyes, and hollered:

"Dad!  This white dude is RICH!"

We are.

For years I didn't realize this because so many others had more.  We were surrounded by extreme affluence, which tricks you into thinking you're in the middle of the pack.  I mean, sure, we have twenty-four hundred square feet for only five humans to live in, but our kids have never been on an airplane, so how rich could we be?  We haven't traveled to Italy, my kids are in public schools, and we don't even own a time-share.  (Roll eyes here.)

But it gets fuzzy once you spend time with people below your rung.  I started seeing my stuff with fresh eyes, realizing we had everything.  I mean everything.

I dig this passage because Hatmaker (I just wanted to use her last name again) ends with a reflection about relationship with others.  How does our wealth enable or inhibit our ability to relate with our fellow humans on "another rung?"  In Hatmaker's case wealth was both an obstacle and a opportunity.  Their 2400 square feet became community property for one important week.  But without the open door -- including the open door of allowing her way of life to be questioned those 2400ft would have remained an obstacle.  Instead the week set in motion a lifelong change.

Colectivo Katari doesn't have quite as much choice in the matter.  These Bolivian Artists don't earn an American salary; most live on $150-300 a month, some less.  They are middle class.  However an intentionality permeates the life choices, their spending, and perhaps more than any other artists I've met, there is a conviction that their artistic presentations must be matched--even proceeded--by a change in their personal lives.

Overlooking Cochabamba from the high surrounding hills

In racial matters, Katari has chosen to show solidarity with the "lowest rung" of the racial class.  (Indigenous Bolvians are the majority here, yet racial violence and passive-agressive oppression continues as it did 500 years ago.)  Though nearly all have indigenous blood, none claim a pure indigenous heritage.  They are urban mestizos.  Aliya is a white North American.  But they know this.  They're frank about the privilege these identities entail (or don't).  

My friends at Church of All Nations in Minnesota (a church that astoundingly has no ethnic majority) talk frequently and with shocking forthrightness about the privileges of race.  Because they have to if they've any hope of their Latino parishioners relating to their white parishioners.  Church of All Nations ("CAN") Pastor Jin Kim confesses his racism as a Korean American--"at least we're not black"--and Korean Americans' contribution to the violence against Rodney King in an article in the MN Christian Examiner here.   Or, read a CAN parishioner's confession to the immigrants of their congregation published in the February edition here. 

A large plant at the park next to my house.
I don't think you can eat it.

What I'm getting at is the liberty that seeps in when we become aware of all that our color and class entails.   It begins a conversation on another plane.  I know I'm white,  which entitles me to privilege all across the globe.  I know I come from the educated middle class, which meant it was near impossible that I not attend college--a privilege that aligns me with the 7% of the world population.  I know I'm a woman, which means in many parts of the world my testimony in court is invalid.

This is not the vice of Conservatives or Liberals, Buddhists, Christians, Jews or Secularists  -- but all.  Indeed, often those of us who consider ourselves "progressive" are the most blind to our racism, classism and sexism.   I noted this in my time in San Francisco.  Tim Wise outdoes me in his article With Friends Like These Who Needs Glenn Beck.  

The Post-Performance High

Talking till 2am about the idea of ideologies

when I could've gone to bed at 7

Whether it was the wine at 9,000ft

or my delight at having this conversation in another hemisphere, another language

I told my exhausted mind to stay with it -- understanding the 75% - 55% - 80%? 

I could

Oh the day when I hear in compete clarity

(Will it come?)                  

"You're worth more than I am"

because you're estadounidense

That's the structure--the ideology--of our world

I'll give you that:   Compare dark-skinned Boliviano and middle-class american 

(even as a woman).

But we both know.

We know.  Somehow.

That it's a lie.  That we are equal.  

Burning Lunch

Rehearsal Break at our house--pausing for homemade bread (not my best loaf)

Colectivo Katari, with whom I'm working, eats four meals a week together.  Four.   We're talking adults, 4 times a week, committed to sharing and eating together.  A couple people cook and clean, and the rest pitch in for the cost.  Today 10 of us ate for 50 Bolivianos--just over $7.  I wouldn't call them foodies (Matt Johnson is the only foodie I know), but they eat well -- para buen salud.  In contrast to this meat-heavy culture, all meals are vegetarian, usually accompanied by tea or fresh juice. 

I cooked today--and burned my main dish.  Which equalled my first Bolivian cry (tiny one).  Cooking (or burning) for 10 people, in a kitchen that doesn't belong to me, in a foreign culture -- it wounded my pride and trigged every insecurity....from "how on earth will I impress people without my standby of balsamic vinegar?"  to "who am I?"

Probably those of you familiar with the experience will affirm that living in a new culture is terribly awkward.  Other days I feel like a complete chicken.  I'm not sure why I'm tempted to think I'll eventually (soon, of course) master all fears.  I doubt fear quits.  Bravery has little to do with the "No Fear" slogan from bad 90s t-shirts.  It has to do with feeling fear, and stepping forward anyway.  My fear was one of the reasons I knew I had to leave the US-- I was afraid to leave.  It was a fear that called to me--even by the sweet love of God--to face it head on.

A trip to La Cancha, Cochabamba's town-sized market
(They never run out of bananas)

I often have instincts which I hesitate to (or simply don't) follow through: that person I ought to greet or thank, the gift I should have bought for someone, the phone call I should have made.  Usually the instincts have to do with connections with other people.  I squelch them due to fear, sometimes due to laziness.  

You can buy everything at La Cancha.  Everything.
Live chicks, bunnies and guinea pigs--check.
Washing machines, cheese, couches--check.
Dried baby llamas--check.   Everything.

This habit of hesitation showed itself in my acting years ago (it probably still does).  Thankfully I had an observant teacher who took note.  He commented that he saw my instinct emerge, then collapse--never fully realized.  As he was known to do, he designed an exercise specifically for me: an improvisational scene in which I was required to follow through on every one of my instincts.  It was an incredible breakthrough for me.  And what a relief it was! --not to judge every action before committing to its realization.  Frankly I attribute much of my success in San Francisco to the fearlessness--or habit of fear-facing--that I developed in that very exercise.  It began to set me free.  

Why did Guatemala feel "easier?"  Perhaps because 3 weeks (half with a friend) is only a visit.  Most of the time I was near Antigua, which caters to tourists--particularly tourists attempting to learn castellano.  The community makes their living off being patient with people like me.  There I was a visitor, free to be strange and struggle with the language -- now I am "home" but still as strange and language-inept.

As an artist fear is death.  In learning a new language too.  So I lay them down--every valid terror.  Again.  Again.

There is a river of God vigorousness, where my Beloved has invited me many times.  If you know the wild rivers of the Northern Cascade foothills, maybe you can imagine.  The current is strong, whether dangerous or calm, and my Beloved requires I unfetter myself from each branch along the shore.   This is the river of every terrifying thing and the world's most quiet place where my Beloved sits with me, very close, in absolute stillness, and I am never afraid.

Bolivian Cocaine

As is usual,  my housemates Aliya and Marcello are playing with Teva (the young housemate--11 months).  It's ten PM.  Marcello returns from rehearsal (with his band, Quimbando) every night, usually we eat a light supper (lunch being the main meal here)  -- tonight a sip of soup and a bit of spinach salad.  We finish eating, and together they play with Teva.  That girl is loved.

I visited a couple classes of SIT--School for International Training--this week.  SIT is what originally brought Aliya (my housemate and the one foreigner in the collective) to Bolivia when she was a college student.  Katari brought her back..  Katari, husband and child kept her here.

Rain in the city meant snow up above--the hills and
mountains surrounding Cochabamba

Today I sat in on a "charla" about the Drug War in Bolivia--a cozy lecture with the director of the Andean Information Network (AIN, see:  http://ain-bolivia.org/).  
No shock:  it was fascinating.  And no shock:  this was not the sort of lecture that makes one proud to be American.  For a country that "loves freedom and democracy" it's astounding how delighted we are to support militaristic dictators abroad who suck up to our every foreign policy whim.  Concerning Bolivia the US has made many foreign policy decisions (costing millions of dollars and thousands of lives) without a true understanding of what was actually going on on the ground.  Indeed one of AIN's main advocacy efforts among journalists and Washington politicians is: "Just Leave Bolivia Alone."  I won't dare try to squeeze in three hours of lecture, but some highlights:

One of Cochabamba's many plazas

• It's at least 23 times cheaper and more effective to focus on the DEMAND side of cocaine than the supply end.   The US has not invested its funds accordingly.
• Opulent supply of coca hasn't convinced Bolivians to make it their drug of choice.  Worst addiction problems here:  alcohol and glue.
• The US State Dept, Defense Dept, CIA, Customs, Justice Dept, among others -- all work on counter-narcotics, but especially work for their own success in this area, often counteracting the work of another.  Often these departments have celebrated "another coca farmer dead or jailed."   But this "success" is not the capture of large drug-lords (who have budgets against which the US anti-narcotics budget will never be able to compete).  More typically "success" is the poor farmer caught mashing coca in a naïve attempt to support his family--these are the "disposable population" according to drug lords.   
• Washington/State Dept/Embassy/etc lack accurate information because people simply lie to keep their jobs.   One charming example of the disconnect between Washington's understanding and reality in Bolivia:  years ago the US threatened to pull all US Funding from Bolivia if Evo Morales were elected.  (The first threat in 2002 skyrocketed Morales' support from 10% to 48%).  The second threat (2005) was predicated on Morales' unwillingness to eradicate coca growth.  However, the present "Catua" system which allows farmers a particular rationed plot of coca growth per family (enough to survive) was already in place a year before Morales took office -- the US "officials" simply hadn't told Washington this supposedly unpleasant information.  Washington assumed eradication was still in process. 
• The Catua System offered families enough on which to survive, and was locally governed by strict union participation--which includes a no-tolerance cocaine policy.  When the Catua System was put in place, the frequent and devastating road blockades and protests stopped -- finally the Chapare population could survive.  A limited, registered plot of coca also encouraged cultivation of other crops (which are much more expensive to farm than coca) on each farm.
• At 25% of the cost, Bolivian efforts to curtail cocaine production have been far more effective and humane than US military efforts.
• The US funded Bolivian soldiers who were destroying coca farms chewed coca, even dried it outside their tents.  As military officials defended them:  "How do you expect these boys, in this tough climate, to be able do the exhausting work of eradication if they're not chewing coca?" 
• I have chewed coca and sipped coca tea, but I am cocaine-free.

WORK: Colectivo Katari

I had my first day of "work" this week in Bolivia -- actually quite exhilarating. 

To fill in the gaps:  I am working (volunteering) with a small Bolivian Artist Collective called Colectivo Katari, named for 18th century indigenous revolutionary Túpac Katari.  Made up of musicians, theatre artists, visual artists, puppeteers and culinary artists, Colectivo Katari is as political and personal as they are artistic.  I don't know if I've ever met a group of artists so communally committed to changing their society--beginning with themselves.

Katari has a number of projects, of course.  To give you sense, I'll name a few:

• Sunday Puppet shows in the Central Plaza
• Radio Show  (http://grietasradio.blogspot.com/)
• Theatre workshops in underserved schools in the "sur" of Cochabamba
• In April Katari we will begin theatre-based workshops with women who are victims of domestic violence.  The curriculum will be based on workshops I did this summer in Minneapolis with sex-trafficking victims.
• A beautiful musical and puppetry show for niños called Desde los Suenos.  Check out the recently released Desde los Suenos album (and sing it with your kids!!) here: http://katari.bandcamp.com/



Alexia and Marcello performing Yo Soy el Dueño de Todo
(...pero nunca tengo nada)

• Otros Mirados, Otra Historia: A dramatic presentation for local schools and for visiting groups of students and volunteers

Much of the Katari's work deals with issues of race, class and resistance and Otros Mirados, Otra Historia is no exception.  The presentation blends visual elements, narration, story and music to explore the indigenous history of Bolivia -- a history about which most of the collective (the majority of whom are mestizo) heard nothing in their childhood education.  The canon in most American textbooks is outrageous, but I found this reality even more mind blowing here, in a nation with a majority indigenous population.   


Occasionally Otros Mirados, Otra Historia is performed for American students or volunteers -- in these cases, the presentation connects Bolivia's history with the history of oppression and resistance in the United States.   I've already enjoyed the privilege of performing with the collective in Otros Mirados, Otra Historia  -- you can see a couple painfully brief video clips here: 



Or, clap your hands to Marcello singing Jallalla (click)

Finally, I gave a voice lesson today to members of the collective -- a group lesson with 8 people, which will continue twice a week.  All my students were delighted and devoted -- a pleasure.  In true Colectivo Katari fashion, we finished our session we tea.  

And it was my first class taught in spanish.   There was a degree of grunting and "como ésto" but nonetheless -- Yes.