Who Says We Need to Develop?

Some shots from my Coca-Cola Album.
We are exporting the best of American Culture.

Bolivia is leaking people.  Millions of Bolivians have emigrated--primarily to Spain, Argentina and the United States--in hopes of making some dent in the struggle to survive.  Some return after a couple years or many--to their spouse, their friends, their children--finally having saved enough to buy a home, a car, start a business, or put their children through college--goals impossible to fulfill at home.  Others create small Bolivias in their new home, as immigrants have done for centuries.  My circumstances are completely different, but I am a foreigner in a foreign land, testifying to that there is a commonality among those here who "have left."  It's easy to spend my time with gringos.  How much stronger that commonality must be among those who leave with extreme objectives, who have sacrificed so much to arrive.

Today I had lunch with gringo who lives happily in Bolivia with (Bolivian) wife and son.  His wife has struggled alongside with campesinos who have never heard of the Atlantic Ocean and lectured in prostigious Washington, DC venues and universities.   One afternoon walking through the Plaza Principal, passing an indigenous woman on the street, my new friend remarked to his partner "If they could only get an education, like us..."

"Why would they want to be educated like you?" his wife shot back.

There is an inevitable gringo attitude of we know best.  Consider how in how we've named "the developing world."  "What do we need to develop?" a Bolivian friend of mine recently asked me. "For generations we've had our culture, our society, our way of life.  Who says we need to develop?  


We're sensitve about our diminutive language--even when we roll our eyes calling it "politically correct"--toward one another in the states.  What about our international dimunutive language?

And when will "the developing world" be developed?  When their GDP approaches ours?  When they speak english?  When capitalism thrives there and they begin exploiting poorer nations?  When everyone has wi-fi in their adobe homes?  As my friend Gabo joked with me after an invitation to use the internet in our house: "I'm a child of the 3rd World -- I'm accostomed to using internet cafes."

Five hundred years ago the Spanish arrived with hungry eyes for Bolivia's rich natural resources, and as a result had to "develop" the people as well: they put them to work in mines, raped, killed, and converted them to Catholocism.  Fascinatinginly, in the 18th Century a revolution briefly put the indigenous community in control over the colonial Spanish.  The question arose:  What should we do with these Spanish invaders? Naturally, many suggested they simply kill the Spanish. But ultimately they decided the Spanish needed to be re-educated.  Clearly the Spanish had forgotten how to be human.  The Spanish brutes were incapable of cultivating their own food or building their own homes, therefore they enslaved the local (now Bolivian) population to do this for them.  Thus, the indigenous decided that the Spanish should be placed in small pueblos among the people who could reeducate them and help them develop back into human beings who lived in harmony with nature, with others.  Who live in anyi -- a concept of shalom, reciprocity or harmony with each other and nature.


Coca-Cola....not living with a whole lot of anyi...

Shared Conversion

Spanish colonist, pinning down a native Quechua.
 By Guaman Poma de Ayala, from his illustrated
chronicle Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno
which was sent to the Spanish king to denounce to
the horrid treatment of native Andes people in
hopes that the King would prohibit such treatment.
The chronicle never arrived.

I belong to a faith whose central figure demonstrated an exemplory life and teachings.  He also called his followers to "make disciples of all nations."  This is a befuddling call in our modern world after centuries of brutal colonialism justified by those five words.  How, in Bolivia, can one talk about the goodness and love of Jesus sitting on a history of brutal exploitation, violence and (even) continued subjugation?   (I note that the USA shares an equally horrid past between Native Americans and the colonizing force of the church, but with a smaller indigenous population, it is easier to deny.)  Living in San Francisco I wondered "What does it mean to be a Christian among my friends here--many of whom have been hurt, deceived or rejected by the American church?"  In Bolivia I ask a related question, but with Spanish conquistadores in mind.     

In my search to understand the diverse and complicated spiritual pulse of this land (not to mention, find spiritual oasis myself), I've recently encountered a particularly incarnational sect of local missionaries who insist theologically on "living with the people."  The MaryKnoll missionaries arrived in Cochabamba 100 years ago after China expelled them along with various people of unwanted faiths.  As Catholics arriving in an already (even if colonial version of a) "Catholic country" they had to ask themselves what it meant to be Catholic missionaries among, well, Catholics.   Their reflection brought them to the convicition that "conversion is a shared experience."  (A notable contrast with the original sword-to-throat-conversion methods widely implemented in South America, which--it should be noted--if you're going for numbers this method is proven wonderfully effective.  Talk about megachuch success.)   

Early morning markets, waking the day in La Paz

If it's not clear from my previous entries, I'm boggled by (some of) the Christians and missionaries who apparently have a completely different read of Bolivia than what I've experience in my (albeit brief) time here.  "They look down on and shelter themselves from real Bolivia" as my friend and long-time Bolivia resident (and technically a "missionary" herself) noted of many, "If you only shop at western-style supermarkets, don't want to ride trufis, and don't respect indigenous culutre--why do you live here?"     

On the other hand, MaryKnollers study Bolivian culture deeply.   They study the Andean theology which continues to guide both Catholics and non-Catholics in Bolivia (If you have any doubt of that, take a walk the night of the first Friday of every month--the air is thick with the smell of the Koa, a traditional Andean ceremony to the Pachamama).  All the more, MaryKnollers expect to be changed by the culture and theology they encounter.  

Downtown La Paz, surrounded by mountains

I knew two other Christians in the theatre community in San Francisco, which inevitably meant that most of my "spiritual conversations" were with friends who'd left the church--violently turned off by its attitude or actions, thought it was full of freaks, or simply were generally uninterested.  I realized early on in my time that if I was interested in sharing my spiritual perspectives or my personal sketch of reality, I had to be equally willing to listen.  I had to listen with the same kind of openness, curiosity and humility with which I hoped my friends would listen to me.  Love your neighbor as yourself.

Thus, I'm drawn to the MaryKnoll idea of conversion as a shared experience.  In the 1970s "conversion as shared experience" drew a number of priests and nuns to identify deeply with the people--"el pueblo."  Due to insistance on an incarnational "living with the people" many of them were drawn into the suffering and human rights struggles of the day.  I've begun reading the poem-prayers of one priest in particular, Luis Espinal's Oraciones a Quemarropa.  Espinal claimed that "to be a priest means a constant communion with the disinherrited of the earth." ("Ser sacerdote signifcaba una comunión constante con los desheredados de la tierra.")  He backed this statement with his life.  Few of our spiritual leaders today--of whatever version of faith--follow this ethic.  Our spiritual heros write books that become movies, they give conferences and have fancy websites.  They are heros of happiness, not necesarily heros of empathy and incarnation.

Frankly, I'm not ready to follow Espinal's steps.  Shared conversion for Espinal meant giving his life.  I am in initial baby steps of shared conversion, sharing my life and listening timidly to those around me.  My friends here aren't particularly disinherrited. It is incredibly difficult to build relationships across class divides.  My community is the urban middle class.  They haven't been afforded all the cool travel opportunities I've had, nor have the funds to buy a car like me, but culturally we share enough points of connection as middle class urbanites--even from opposite continents.  

the colorful streets of Bolivia's capital city, La Paz

Perhaps almost as disorienting as the huge change in my circumstances is actually how similar everything is here--particularly on the surface.  I ride in cars, I buy coffee, I use facebook and everyone around me drinks Coca-Cola.   A third of the cabs I get into are playing American Music (usually horrid stuff).  Western culture's appetite is insatiable, but the almost identical urban/capitalist visual cues rest on an Andean worldview.  And yet, as a gringa, almost whenever I want to I can dodge the uncomfortable clash of perspectives.  I can "shelter myself" from real Bolivia, as my friend would say.

I've been an adult long enough (turning 30 this week) to have developed certain habits and various comforts I depend on.  I want things the way I want them.  I took my first trip to the Zona Sur recently.  We caught the 1 Mirco bus, leisuring rolled through the Cancha (Cochabamba's enormous street market--Why vehicles even attempt to drive through it blows my mind).  Nearly an hour later, we arrived in southern Cochabamba.  For all a knew, we could've been in another country.  The view in this city surrounded by rolling dry hills was unrecognizable to me.  Without the generous city parks typical of the north and central zones, the surroundings felt desolate, brown, hot.  Houses constructed with the bare minimun of materials extended up into the hillsides -- where there is no water.  Residents there wait for the trucks that (hopefully) make the weekly trip up the rocky dirt "roads" with expensive jugs of water for drinking, bathing, washing, life.  We talked at length with a man who'd lived in the Zona Sur for over a decade -- originally in the hills without potable water, now only a few blocks from the major road where we walked.  He identified himself as middle class.  He worked in the central zone of Cochabamba at a hotel, for a boss he described as racist.  (Racism isn't only a subtly in Cochabamba.  In 2007 a group of metizo ("white-er") Bolivians beat indigenous Zona Sur residents with sticks in the streets of central Cochabamba.)  

The end of the Mirco 1 line in the Zona Sur

So perhaps the most exposing impression I had about the Zona Sur was: how boring.  The brown hills and treeless streets were a total drag.  There was a simple market:  food, produce, the normal everything vendors with clothes, extension chords, spatulas, chinese-made hollywood action figure toys.  But there was nothing to do.  No hip pleasant coffee shops to meet with a friend.  No movie theatre.  No restaurants or bars or music clubs.  No cute shops.  The streets all looked the same--the same brown shaddily-built architecture, and rocky dirt streets full of wandering dogs scrounging for scraps.  I thought:  I would die of boredom here.  And it feels dirty.  I was so grateful not to live there. 

In my "rural seasons of life" I may have lacked the stimulating urban scene but I never thought twice about its absence amidst the surroundings of rivers, mountains, lush forrest and animals.  Besides...I could always drive into town for a night at the pub or the movie theatre. So.  Boredom is my defining gringo trait today.  I wonder if the residents of the Zona Sur are bored.  Without the natural riches of the mountains and without the culture which gringos and upper/middle class hipsters afford in the City Center -- are they bored?  Granted I've never tried making a life in the Zona Sur.  Building a community around me in the neighborhood would undoubtely change the tone.  And yet, I don't want to live in the "disinherrited" Zona Sur or to give up my, my, my...

I want to be happy, and I'm afraid of redefining what happiness is.   I didn't think I was as tied to my habits and pleasures as I am.  "I want" are some of the most common words in my vocabularly, and I'm relatively accostomed to my wants being realized.  What if I didn't live in a world ordered by "I wants"?   

Doing gringa things!  The high pass of the Choro Trek
(my highest altitude yet in life - 4859m/15,941feet)
We climbed up, then descended down 4000m into the
jungle (those of you who have hiked with me know
what a big baby I am heading down...ugh.)  But was I
so happy to be in the mountains-- first Bolivian trek!

I've observed a curious phenomenom, perhaps familiar to some.  The babies of indigenous families never seem to cry.  At sixteen months they wander the yard or street while mother works, unable to offer extreme attention.  Babies nap under a tree in the plaza while their mothers sell orange juice or fruit.  They live strapped to mom's back, enduring all that she endures during the day.  I recently hiked from Choro trek, descending from the high Bolivian mountiains to the Yunga jungle.  I encountered a baby--or toddler--literally face down in the dirt, unable to put herself upright again.  Her mother was down at the river, busy washing clothes.  She didn't hear the baby cry.  I took obvious compassion on the child, picked her up, put her on her feet. Despite the trauma of having been stuck briefly in the mud and her face (still) painted with dirt and snot, she immediately stopped crying.  She didn't cry for her mother.  She was simply glad to have her face out of the mud.  Her needs were simple.

Near the home of the aforementioned child in the mud.
Descending into jungle...

Inequity is getting to me.  Not just the stinging awareness of how much more I have, but of how much more I've been trained to need.  I want.  I saw it the minute I arrived in Central/South America, but four months I'm still later staring at the difference and still living in comfort.   I wonder--in partial envy--are the lower classes here tortured by their wants?  Are our physologies are different? Or are their wants merely more simple, so they don't share my inequity-guilt pyschological battles.  Like the vender my compañera befriended in La Paz's Plaza Murillo: "I want to sell enough ice cream this morning so that we can eat lunch."  Pretty straight forward.   

Last night I went out for pasta and a bottle of wine, and it was lovely.  In Minneapolis, it makes me feel average.  Here I am palpably aware of this privilege articulates my "otherness" in this country of exploited poor.  I'm aware how I am trapped in my way of life.  And yet shall I despise the joyful and sad celebration of a friend's departure with wine and food? Shall I despise the culinary creativity, experience, artistry, health and education that money affords?

  

We hiked a centuries-old trail -  observe the beautiful ancient Inca path

During college I spent a pleasantly mundane few months working at Costco. It dawned on me one day that it was my summer job. I was taking in the money for a summer so I could enjoy my days off in the mountains and then pay my bills during the school year.  But most of my co-workers were here for the long haul.  They were going to continue selling pizza and ice cream and coffee. I was off to "bigger and better."  Frankly, many of my colleagues lived quite decently--their needs were met, as were many pleasures, even if I could not comprehend spending all my days selling snacks. I needed more from a vocation; as an artist, I realize this is an insistence that not all share.   But among the workers who "sell snacks" here--the disparity is huge.  Some of them don't have water.  They work brutal hours.  They don't have a 10th of the priviledges I've had, nevermind the ability to dream about "vocation."  And how can we change that?  How can I change that? Because I still want to go on living in my pleasantries.  And sometimes the immensity of it makes me crumble. I feel impotent facing its enormous complexity and want to give up. Throw in the towel and who cares--I am what I am--a gringa who likes gringa pleasantries.   I don't want to give up the things I like.  I like them.  Was Jesus talking to me when he asked the rich man to "sell all he had, give it to the poor and follow Jesus"? 

Arhuaco children, playing native instruments

A gringo friend of mine here in Cochabamba spent some time in an indigenous Arhuaco community in the mountains of Colombia.  The community intentionally cuts itself off from globalized society.  They have a small store where they sell a few (about 10) of their community products:  wool items, coffee, some food.  They don't make much money, big surprise, but they don't need to buy much.  They're essentially completely self-sufficient.  As much as they would love to partake of some of world's modern conveniences, they don't want the globalized world to take over their community, their culture.  They don't want electricity -- because that will bring television and suddenly their children will be learning televised spanish in competition with their native tongue.  The want to be self-sustainable, off the grid of globalized dependence.  So they don't have money. But are they poor?  

If you can imagine, picture an 8 year old child -- perhaps a child you know.  Ask that child to write down a few sentences.  The first things that come to mind.  What would the child say?   My friend Tomás invited a few of the Arhuaco children in this indigenous Colombian village to a similar practice.  Write a few sentences--whatever came to mind.  Then they translated them into Spanish.  Then to English.  This is what the children wrote:

The chicken lays eggs.

The moon illumines the night.

The sun illumines the day.

The birds eat the fruit of the trees.

Tomás drinks coffee every minute.

The pig eats pica-pica.

The Arhuaco build their own homes.

The hummingbird sucks the flower.

Arhuaco youth, preparing dinner

Sit with those for a minute.  The first thoughts of an eight year old child.  Now return to the child you had in mind.  What would happen if those two children met?  What would they share?  What would they learn from one another?  Would one feel rich and the other poor?

Maybe I feel the guilt because I'm aware of how we--the first world--are taking from the so-called "third."  You can call the Arhuaco community "developing world" but are they not sufficiently developed?  They don't need or want the "development" help of gringos.

Overlooking La Paz, one of the most incredible cities I have ever seen.
Overlooking the city--and the long, steep road up to El Alto "suburb."

In my view there is a painful clash when the Western world begins consuming its neighbors and forcing them out of their way of life, and taking advantage of their vulnerability.  For example, a number of indigenous have fled to Bolivias cities. A large indigenous population lives in Quillacollo, a suburb of Cochabamba, as well as in El Alto, the high suburb (4150m, 13,615ft) north of La Paz of nearly a million residents--notably poorer than the Capital City.  Indigenous don't flock to these underserved suburbs because they enjoy the urban lifestyle, or because Cochabamba's Quillocolla residents get a kick out of the annual (often deadly) floods that plague the city every summer and the droughts that leave many without water in the winter.  They leave their rural homes en "el campo" because other options have been taken away from them.  They leave because of environmental destruction, like in January 2000 when a Bolivian oil pipeline operated by Shell and Enron broke open in the Desaguadero River, spilling twenty-nine thousand barrels of toxic petroleum across nearly a million acres of indigenous farm and grazing land.  (Shell and Enron hid the grave destruction while publicly touting their "exemplorary post-disaster clean-up."  Meanwhile they told indigenous residents that the black substance which had invaded their river and farmland was fertilizer which would aid their crops.)  Indigenous campesinos leave when colonially-imposed businesses like the mines layoff the majority of their workers, forcing the already poor community to seek options elsewhere.  They leave because global warming destroys glaciers (and therefore their water sources) on which they have depended for generations.  The come to the crowded cities, sell vegetables or imported candies, toys, batteries, or orange juice at streetcorner stands.  They are prisoners to a globalized systems which they did not create.  Not all are fortunate or forseeing enough to preserve their way of life like the Arhuaco.  So instead of their self-sufficient homeland they live in underdeveloped suburbs where the lack of sewage or water or schools can be severe.

Choro Trek llamas, chillin at high altitude

Facing these realities 30 years into a life in which I have always enjoyed gringa pleasanties (unavoidably at the cost of others) what shall I do?  Globalized capitalism is inherently exploitative and its appetite huge.  A gringa friend here recently spent a month among coffee growers in the Bolivian Yungas.  In a conversation with union leaders she asked them about Fair Trade Coffe: Is it really fair?  Are their problems with it?   "No, there are no problems" they replied.  "We receive better wages, health access, schools."  But a money-based economy, western-style medicine and education is rewriting their traditions, it's replacing their ways.  And yet it has been so for centuries.  Though they have grown it for centuries, coffee is not indigenous to the Yungas. But Westerners want to import and drink it.  Since human beings began crossing territories and borders, globalization began.  The exchange of ideas, cultures, economic systems and spiritualities.  Typically the exchange is weighted with uneven scales--whether by the economic power of Coca-Cola or the weight of a colonist's boot on the neck of an Indigenous Quechua.  So as a student of my new world and a child of the world's most dominant culture, I must ask:  How is this conversation a shared experience?  

Overlooking the long descent ahead (and Incan ruins) on the Choro Trek

In a conversation about disparities here, a Bolivian friend shared a story:  There was a man on a bus, riding it uphill.  And another man, walking--sweaty and tired from the difficult journey.  The walking man was suprised to see the man conveniently riding a bus, so he chased after the bus and called out to the man:  "How wonderful to ride that bus!  How can I get myself on the bus?"   The passenger replied:  "I so sorry, I don't know--I've always been here.  I was born here."

You Can’t Learn That In A Book

Two Aymara women, overlooking southern La Paz & the Altiplano
from the heights of El Alto.

Spent the evening with Alan, who learned Quechua over the years so (finally) he could

talk with his grandmother.

Alan who visited Vermont in an international exchange, and took a side trip to the Apple (the big one)

Waiting underground for a friend to recharge his metro card, a Columbian approached him: "Do you need to use my metro card?"

"No, thank you" said Alan.  He had a card; he had enough to get by.

But what blew him away was the brotherhood

Like the LA taxi drivers who wouldn't accept payment from their Latino brother.

The Columbian stranger in New York's underworld took Alan for a immigrant, 

fresh off the boat of trying to survive.

"You can't learn that in book

about South America"

said Alan.

"The people here don't read much" said Alan

but if you want to understand politics

you don't need a newspaper

or the newest hardback

get in a taxi

ask the driver

You will find 1000 articles and endless op-eds

talk to someone

Eliana and I on the Choro Trek--from high mountains to jungle

Blockades

My first week of blockades initiated with my own participation in one: the birthday party of Ishmael--a documentary film artist and one of the SIT (School for International Training) instructors.  In costume, and accompanied by a 6-man band, we marched into the streets in full costume, dancing, and nonchalantly holding up traffic.  On a major street.  But this is Bolivia, so no one's surprised.  They wait--rolling at 2km/hr--or they drive around.  No honks. We were dancing.  And there were trumpets.

Holding up Av. Simon Bolivar, followed by brass and drums

The same week the main road connecting Cochabamba and Quillacollo (Cochabamba's principal "suburb") was shut down--some suspicious finagling of battling neighborhood leaders, trying to claim a particular neighborhood as their own for financial reasons.  Colectivo Katari cancelled our workshops that week because the participants couldn't get into town.  (Our schedule here is always, always changing.)

Our friend Gabo lives in the neighborhood in question--and was told he was obligated participate in the blockade, or he'd be forced to pay a fine.  Knowing this "obligation" was illegal and caring little about the issue (which seemed to have little to do with the benefit to the actual residents), he refused.  It's not that Gabo objects to protests; he has taken to the streets before.  He remembers well the 2000 Water War that united the residents of Cochabamba in street rebellion and put the city on the international scene.  But not every protest or blockade carries the same nobility.  Some are pretty superficial. 

Dancing in the Streets

The same week I found myself engaged in a number of conversations about blockades, and a range of accompanying opinions.  One American insisted that nearly all Bolivians are sick of the blockades.  He railed against the obstinate blockading Bolivians who with little communal concern insist in "rights! my rights!"   

I was skeptical that all Bolivians shared the opinion --- afterall, despite the regular annoyance, their history struts a few astoundingly successful stories of this form of democracy.  So I asked a Taxi Driver what he thought of the American's diagnosis of Bolivian opinion of blockades.  His immediate response was:  "Is this person rich?  Because when people get lots of money it goes to their head and makes them very sick." Whoa.  In honesty I had to respond "Yes.  This person, in comparison, is quite rich."   He doesn't share the concerns of many blockaders.  His sewage system works, his water runs, if gas prices go up his family isn't going to starve.  I guess we're talking a different kind of urgency.  A different reality.

The Taxi Driver agreed that a number of blockades are superficial squabbles.   But he didn't write them off either.  For centuries a majority of the population haven't had a voice in the governing powers--taking to the streets was their legislative option.  One can't expect this cultural habit to change overnight.  It is ingrained in the people.  And in all honestly, it is ingrained because westerners like myself stripped away other legal recourses.  The Bolivians I talk to don't share the same fierce irritation at blockages--even when they think they're stupid and are pissed off at having to walk an hour to work.

Living here has awakened me to how the decisions I make in my neighborhood voting booth shape the economic realities and policies of countries thousands of miles away as they shape the policies of my own community.  Which makes me queasy.  Bolivia has not had a "say" in the economics and policies of the USA for the past 60 years--but we have certainly had a say in theirs.  What kind of superiority do we possess?  Numerous times we have threatened to withhold funds (US Aid or World Bank loans), or stockpiled resources (e.g.  The US stockpiled tin in the 1950s, holding Bolivia in dependency--then strongarming policy changes within the new government.) to force Bolivia's hand or keep them dependent on the United States.  We're like the manipulative parents coercing our adult child with our financial pull, keeping the thirty year old under our thumb.   Except Bolivia was never our baby.  

Perhaps the most humane encounter by a white-man in my blockade-themed week was a reflective recounting of a conversation with a protester :

The Water War was one of the most powerful, uplifting, liberating events I've ever experienced. There, the timing was right, the organizers were dynamic and savvy, and the people were truly united. But for every Water War, there are hundreds of other protests that make little sense to anyone. Recently, I was unable to get home  from work because the road to my neighborhood was blocked by people from another neighborhood demanding the mayor fix their sewers. I asked some of the women in the most diplomatic way I possibly could why they had chosen that particular tactic. "I would love to be able to fix your sewer, truly. But I can't. It's impossible. And yet my wife is sick at home with two little boys, and you won't let me go there and be with them. The mayor, who can help you, is two kilometers away in his comfortable office and isn't affected at all by this. How is messing up the lives of all your neighbors helping you get the sewer fixed? Why don't you go blockade city hall?" They answered with an old saying in Spanish, that the baby who doesn't cry doesn't get milk. I said, "Yes, but the baby cries to his mother, the one with the milk. He doesn't go next door and wake up the neighbors, because he knows they can't help him." They looked at me blankly, confused, and then said it was their right and they had to block the road because they really needed their sewer fixed. The oxygen depleted air in the high Andes can be dizzying, but nothing in Bolivia gets your head spinning like the circles you're forced to run when attempting to reason with a protester. (Okay, almost nothing: attempting to reason with Bolivian government bureaucrats is worse.)

I appreciate this encounter because it stemmed from a genuine desire to understand the protesters' needs, even if it ended in frustration.  It also demonstrates a flavor of the cultural complexities wrapped up in "bloqueos."

What does it mean for a gringo to "get" South America?  I've heard Catholics here speak of the Pope "not getting" South America.  Or of Obama "not getting it."  What does it mean -- to "get" this continent?  A whole continent.  And who decides when America Sur has been "got": The Bolivian upperclass educated in the US and private European Universities?  The indigenous who trade in llama wool, potatoes and services more than cash?  The taxi drivers and market vendors?  The revolutionaries?  

Who "gets" it?  American businessmen investing in Bolivian infastructure?  The flood of European and American volunteers dressed in North Face that visit Bolivia to work at NGOs or volunteer with service projects while adventure traveling on weekends and keeping the hip downtown cafés and bars in business -- do they get it?  

Most of what I had previously read on South America was written by whities from my homeland.  I should have remembered the exhortation of one of my university professors:  "Primary Sources!  Primary Sources!"  (On this note, I hope none of you are taking my diagnosis of Bolivia seriously -- I am afterall an Americana with a full (count 'em) two months experience of South America.  Bask my expertise!)  At the risk of undermining irony, a (um, gringo-authored) article in TIME in 1981 stated that "The simplest American notions about political conscience and human rights are revolutionary when expressed in most Latin American countries."  Perhaps this is what the griping Catholics meant about the Pope not "getting it."  Ideals, rights and public services westerners take for granted--or straight from moderate American civics textbooks--are often cause for revolution here.

If my sewage system didn't work, you bet I would take action.  I would take to the streets or whatever it took to fight the smell, the cesspool of disease.  I would become "revolutionary" because human beings can't survive with sewage flooding into their homes and in their streets.  Who wouldn't do the same?  For yourself, your family, your neighbors, for the well-being of your community?  The global hurdle arises when it isn't your family, your community, your flooding backyard...it's harder to care.  During college, I heard Gary Haugen (founder of International Justice Mission) speak about IJM's beginnings.  Living comfortably in the D.C. suburbs, Haugen became convicted of his negligence toward those outside of his immediate family, outside of his circle.  It's just so much harder to care about the people around the corner, or the globe, who we don't have to look in the face every day.  Nevermind that they are oh-so different in culture and class with all their weird habits and tastes.  (I intend to give all these people a copy of Stuff White People Like so they can starting liking great stuff -- and we can finally have something to talk about.)

Within the church family I've encountered in Bolivia, a number of my fellow Christians ostensibly begrudge the poor--the people outside of their circle.  Faith-wise I'm baffled by this, since my reading (now in spanish) of the New and Old testaments suggests a unique intimacy between the poor, the poor in spirit, the meek--and their loving Creator.  Furthermore, Jesus outright underlines the distance between God and people like myself--because of our wealth.  It is hard for someone like me--with a car, with a savings account, with many possessions to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  With God it is possible, says Jesus, but my wealth...complicates it.  Is it any wonder that the world's great spiritual teachers have given up their wealth?  Wealth was a barrier keeping them from a deeper understanding of God--and of other people.

One American Christian (a long-time Bolivia resident) I spoke to recently harshly criticized the poor indigenous population in Bolivia:  "They don't want to work.  They're lazy.  They want the government to do everything for them."   

Really?  Cause a lot of the indigenous people I encounter seem to work a lot harder than I ever have or ever will.  Up at dawn to sell produce in the street, baby on the boob while they're passing out tomatoes to customers.  Hauling baby and/or merchandise on their back.  Closing shop at dusk or later.  To do it again the next day.  Or what about the taxis I've taken at 6:30am or 4:30am ...driven by the (lazy) indigenous drivers.

Celebrate your birthday here (as I will in 6 short weeks), and you can
count on your face being pushed into your cake.  Tradition.  These
elaborate cakes were no exception to the tradition...though their
carefully crafted decor was sharp enough to cut Ishmael's face.

Granted, there are exceptions in every community.  Like anywhere there are plenty of flojos who drink away the family income.  There is an attitude of hand-outs in Bolivia.  Hand-outs from tourists, handouts from foreign NGOs, handouts from the World Bank.  Instead of expecting philanthropy from their own communities, many Bolivians expect handouts from abroad.  (On the other hand, one could argue that europeans and americans constructed this dynamic.  Even well-meaning NGOs and missionaries perpetuate this construct.)   A Bolivian friend of mine recently visited the home of a family receiving funds from Compassion International to support the life and education of one of their children.  She described the home as substantial--insinuating the family could support itself and was mooching off generous middle class american donors.  Quite possibly.  But this was also her validation for ignoring the poor in general (because apparently they're "not poor").  This family justified her indifference to the lower classes.  The same indifference I sensed from her upper-middle class church.

When I lived in San Francisco I had a number of friends with a strong prejudice against the church and Christians.  Church-goers were a classification of "other" people that were easy to blame for number of society's problems.  Because they had (positive) relationships with not-a-one, they naturally stereotyped them as callous, hateful, terrified psychopaths.  What a surprise when the news slipped out that I love Jesus...but I didn't meet the full diagnosis of the nut-head sub-human christians.  Suddenly, Christians could be human (those of you who would describe me as a callous, hateful, terrified sub-human psychopath just pipe down for now).  I was standing in front of them with two arms and two legs, being homosapien just like them.

I wonder if the missionary who called Bolivia's indigenous population "lazy" has relationships with indigenous Bolivians.  How easy it is to dehumanize and stereotype a people group when we do not know them.  How baffling those relationships can be.  Three glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice from the indigenous woman on the corner of my street, but I still can't find words to relate with her beyond "Bueno días" and "thank you."  

I visited Cochabamba's enormous Cancha market with my friend [Marcos] who knows this enormous, chaotic market like the back of his hand, having grown up in its streets.  His mother owns a tomato stand there.  He spent his childhood among the tomatoes at his mother's side or exploring the thousands of Cancha vendor stands and passageways.  We visited his mother in the middle of our pleasant stroll--privileged to be visiting shoppers, not vendors.  Marcos is my age.  I thought of his mother at the same Cancha stand every day these past 30 years.  I wondered if she went to the gym for yoga class and out to coffee with friends like the local missionaries.  I wondered if she owned a SUV and nice furniture like the upper-middle class Christians I've met who look down on Bolivia's lower classes.  I wondered if she bought music on itunes and adorable new hats and had time and money to sit in coffee shops writing cute travel reflections, like me.  

Sun departing behind Cochabamba's mountain-hills

So now what.  A teaspoon of new cultural awareness and conviction, but (honestly) no sweeping plans to change my life.  Facing this ocean of impressions, how shall I mold myself?  Here is where I reach the end of me.  So I find my knees--that know more in their small round bones than my wise head full of books and adventure experiences.  I pray to be softer than I am and harder than I am.  I pray to know my smallness, but not to waste it.  I pray for the good world we cannot make, and the one we can.  And if I'm lucky enough to sink deep into my knees, I just listen.