Loco (crazy) La Paz

Cobblestone streets zig zag up either side of a steep canyon: full of mini buses, vans and taxis that collectively define anarchy better than any dictionary. There are absolutely NO rules. No need for indicators. Traffic lights occasionally exist, more occaisonally work and even more occaisionally yet they are followed. Crossings are not crossings. Lanes are not lanes. Walkways are so narrow in many places that pedestrians spill out on to the bustling slippery steep streets, seemingly oblivious to the traffic around them. Right of way is determined by the vehicle with the loudest horn and bravest driver. Luckily the narrow, windy, steep streets keep the traffic at a relatively subdued pace. It is also lucky that most people do not have their own cars (about 97 percent of the traffic is public transport). If there were an equal amount of cars to adult population, it would be a gridlocked bedlam. There will often be more people standing on a corner waiting to cross the road than there is space on the corner, again causing people to spill out on to the road unbothered by trucks and buses mere milimeters from their slippered feet. Jono and I were bumped into by a bus on one occasion, though luckily not hurt as it was going so slowly. The already thin air (La Paz is just under 4000 meters above sea level) is all the more cluttered with pollution, exhaust and smoke (wood, cigarrete and burning rubbish). This haze mixes with smells of deep frying batter, roadside fruit juice being made and bbqs being cooked, sweet sultinas, human sweat, polluted water, urine and shit. A total tossed aroma salad. Speaking of ecclectic mixes, cholitas (Aymara women in traditional dress) sell all kinds of goods from the sidewalk: everything from fruit to lama fetuses.

La Paz is a literally breathtaking city built in the middle of a dramatic canyon where there used to be gold mines. The indigenous Aymara people used to mine gold here long beforte the Spaniards came, settled the city, took the mines off the Aymara and made them slaves to work in the mines (feeding them coca to keep them going instead of food, but more about coca later). Settling a city is a strange and conveniently loaded term, isn´t it? I do not know what is settling about shooting and killing and enslaving, but... there are a lot of things about the world that I do not understand.

These days I think the Aymara are slowly getting more recognition and social status as Bolivia now has its first indigenous president, Evo Marales who is also a coca grower and is standing up to the United States´ desire to eradicate all coca crops. Morales argues that coca has been an integral part of Bolivian life since pre Inca times. It has spiritual, health and economic value and is the principal income for a majority of families. In his first address to the world at a UN conference, Morales said that instead of wiping out plots in Bolivia, the US and the West should address the cause of the cocaine addictions in their own countries. He then held up a coca leaf and pointed out that it was green, not white. There has been talk that Evo Morales is stirring up too much passion and may be paving the way for yet another cultural revolution and military coup. I hope, for Bolivia´s sake this is not the case.

While on the topic of history and coca, one of the few touristy things Jono and I had a chance to do in LaPaz was to go to the coca museum, which was really interesting. To summarise the story that the museum was telling: coca has been used by Bolivians for centuries, and has been dated back to pre Inca times. During the inca times, it was used only by royalty and for special ceremonies. When the Spanish took over, at first the church wanted to ban coca, saying that it was the devil´s work. But then the Spanish realised how well it made their slaves work in the mines, so the church changed its tune and coca was encouraged instead of discouraged. There is evidence that the Spaniards used Coca not only to make their slaves work harder but to reduce their appetites so they did not need to feed them as much. The next stages (and I can not recall in which order these two things happened) were that western medicine discovered the therapeutic value of coca, and coco cola also started using it. It was only a matter of time before the drug companies managed to chemically synthesise the good stuff from coca so they did not need the original plant anymore. The other side of the legal drug trade though is the illegal drug trade, which totally took off, with the biggest demand (still) being in the Western world. This leads us to today where the west are blaming Bolivia for its part in the illegal drug trade and the United States has been working with the Bolivian army (prior Morales) to wipe out all coca crops. Even though many crops will never be used to make cocaine out of, and entire families rely on these crops to support themselves. Morales is trying to take a middle ground stance, and help eradicate cocaine laboratories and traffickers, but not the coca crops themselves. I found all of this very interesting.

The other touristy ting we did was to go and watch the locals pretend to wrestle. It was meant to be more about fancy super hero costumes and theatrics than violence... but the violence was a lot more real than I was comfortable with. One guy got knocked out and had to be carried away by the organisers, but only when they realised after a good ten minutes or so that he was not acting. And there was no stretcher involved. He was merely hosited roughly up between two burly men and half carried, half dragged away. On more than one occasion one of the so called actors would be hurled over the so called protective barrier on to the rapidly scattering crowd of tourists, and the so called pretend fight would continue amongst the crowd with people being thrown on their backs down on to a cement floor, and the crowd some times joining in.

I think the cholitas were the star attraction, and while I can see the potential for comedy in showing a differebnt side to the demure and submissive steroetype, it would only be comic without the violence. These women were ferocious. Throwing very real punches and slaps at each other and spitting very real spit into each other´s faces. They were, to their credit, also very acrobatic and threw in plenty of impressive cartwheels and backflips.

I don´t know why we decided to go. We were in a tour agency talking to a woman about something else and she managed to convince us that going to the wrestling that night with them would be a good idea. I think the altitude was affecting our brains. Like I said, I though it would be more theatric, a bit like capoeira (which I used to play) but with cholitas and men in super hero outfits. I think my vision of it had been somewhat tainted by a scene I witnessed from the bus on the way. I had seen what I assume was a Cholita being beaten up. All I glimpsed before the bus kept driving was a cholita up against a brick wall and a suited man throwing her bowlers hat down into the gutter and raising his fist. It seemed like a dramatic scene from a play, but instead of a curtain coming down, the bus just drove away and left the drama to continue, no doubt, in our absence. It was a distrurbing scene to witness and seemed to be a prelude to the so called show, which was just a continuation. The reality seemed like fiction and the fiction seemed like reality.

There were also a lot of children watching the show. A lot of them had their own super hero style masks or costumes on and during the break, they all started fighting and wrestling each other. Great example for the kids!

Then there was the fact that the tourists were made to sit in a special ring around the stage while the locals all sat around the edges of the building, with several meters and security guards in between us. I earlier mentioned that the show was a tousity thing, but it was not really, only that a tourist company has jumped on to the idea of taking tourists to it, providing them with security and transport and a ticket that is probably four times the price of what locals pay. this was bad on two levels. One was that we were the ones that had hefty wrestlers hurling themselves onto us and throwing water on us as a joke. Two was that it was hard to tell whether the locals behind us were hurling the chicken bones, banana skins and water bottles at us or the wrestlers. If they were aiming at the wrestlers, which is what I was trying to believe, they were pretty bad shots!

Oh my god, then there are the toilets! Another cultural experience. Men, women and children all had to use the same toilet block, so that women and little girls had to walk past the men peeing in the urinals in order to use a toilet cubicle. Jono said he had to wait for ages for there to be no girls around when he used the urinal - something most men did not seem to care to do. Actually, many men did not even care to use the urinals, opting simply to piss on the floor!

All in all, I had the uncomfortable feeling you get when you find yourself in a place participating in an activity that makes you feel quite wrong and ill.

Anyhow, the next day we were off to greener lands, as far away from exhaust fumes, wrestling matches and city hustle and bustle as you can get in the space of just a couple of hours: the amazon rainforest.

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