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.