AN EXHILARATING AND EDUCATIONAL JOURNEY
by Willie Thompson, Instructor-emeritus in Sociology , City College of San Francisco
The travel over the Andes by mini-bus took us 20,000 feet above sea level, above the clouds with stupendous views over narrow roads. The journey was exhilarating in its magnificence and generously awaits the traveler. I had talked to several Bolivians who variously discouraged the trip because of the condition of the road, the weather, made worse by El Nino Nevertheless, I was determined to visit the rural communities inhabited by indigenous Aimara Indians and Afro-Bolivians brought there as enslaved people during the 17th century.
I had met some of their relatives in Santa Cruz and La Paz, Bolivia. They invited me to visit their families and were pleased that I was going, in part, because they had not been able to visit their own relatives for years. It would be comparable to sending a care package from the South to a relative who had migrated to the north not to be seen for many years.
I visited Coroico, Muruata, Chipchipa, Tocanya with my guide, Jorge Medina, selected with the help of EL MOVIMIENTO CULTURAL SAYA in La Paz, the capital city. These communities were the most accessible during a brief 40 hour visit. My preparation for the visit was minimal. Two Bolivian students in my sociology class at City College of San Francisco had given me a CD of Saya music and a picture post card with two little Afro-Bolivian girls in Aimara hair style and dress including the ever present black Aimara hat. The emigrants from the area that I met in Santa Cruz and La Paz spoke very little of the area. Also, not much was written about it except in the SUB PROGRAMA DIAGNOSTICO DE LA SISTUACION DEL NEGRO EN BOLIVIA prepared under the Auspices of the representative of the Bank for International Development which I hadn’t seen. "The presence of Blacks in Los Yungas dates from the beginning of the Bolivian colony; the 18th and first decade of the 19th centuries contain a lot of documentation that proves that since the colonial epoch the Yungena Blacks were tied to the cultivation of cocaine as slaves of the plantations," according to an executive summary of the DIAGNOSTICO.
I went as an empathic and face-to-face observer with a strong interest in using what I learned to contribute to their efforts to decrease their marginalization, overcome their poverty and integrate themselves into the society as contributing Afro-Bolivians. This was their rationale as told to a diverse audience in Santa Cruz. Apparently, the brutally cold climate in the silver mines, the emancipation of the enslaved, the decline in agriculture and the eradication of cocaine had politically and economically doomed the Afro-Bolivians to oblivion.
THE CASA AFRO-BOLIVIANA in Santa Cruz had appointed me their representative in California to raise funds and design projects to support them. Jorge, my guide, introduced me as one who was from the U.S. who had come to the community directly to get to know the people and the people to get to know me. He told them that I would return to the United States to try to mobilize resources to support existing and other projects for the improvement of conditions of Afro-Bolivians in rural and urban Bolivia. He made it clear that I didn’t come with promises or commitments but with genuine interest and shared history and race.
Coroico is the central area in South Yungas. It is advertised as a tourist resort and invites all travelers to rest and relax there. This is a rather low-key description of what awaits the traveler. Coroico is a place of breathtaking beauty, semi-tropical climate and well accommodated hotels, restaurants, swimming pools, disco, transportation services and paved and dirt roads to nearby communities. The Andean mountains seem to encircle this area. It reminded me of a very deep bowl with Coroico and other communities spotted on the inside of the bowl near the top edge. One looks out from these communities into the clouds and down to the mountains which sometime pierce the hanging clouds.
The North and South Yungas de La Paz, including Coroico, are reached after a spectacular four- hour ride from La Paz. The trip begins with a steep ascension near the peak of the cordillera and occasionally into the clouds.
The journey is for everyone especially those without a lot of fear which
includes hundreds who travel the road as tourist, haulers, workers, and
residents. The primary road ends with a one and one-half hour descent and a brief ascent after passing a river lined with people doing laundry in the traditional manner of rural developing peoples.
Our tour to Muruata, Tocanya and Chipchipa began after meeting several young Afro-Bolivian Yunguenos, friends and relatives of George, my guide. They introduced us to the owner of a jeep who would take us further into the scattered rural communities. Our first stop was at a house we had to reach by foot after a 100 yard walk. A man of some 40 years old came up the hill with a sling shot ( a manual weapon used to kill small game)and big bundle on his shoulder. An older man and woman sat on the porch , a younger man walked past and a young girl and two children exited the mud block house with dirt floors. More young people stayed inside. The setting was typically deteriorating rural living without " salida" or way out as I was told by a man with a sack of coffee beans on his shoulder. Further, from my perspective from a modern and urban society there was not even an image of a way out, no way of symbolically representing hope or hopelessness. Their determination was to survive as it had always been since their ancestors were brought here from Congo and Angola, and had been moved about like puppets as economic opportunity and progress were denied them. The visitor, in this first scene is face to face with a small slice of the 300 year survival of African descendants of the Diaspora.
They smiled deeply at our visit, at George’s explanation of my visit, of my kinship with them and the Simon Patino project in which they were expected to participate. Simon Patino is a foundation named for a wealthy Bolivian with a shadowy past. The lack of land, poor return on their investment, difficult year-round survival on seasonal produce, health, alimentation, the lack of electricity and water were vivid in their face, posture and discussion.
The first contact was shocking in its multigenerational display of rural poverty with day-by-day survival that seems fragile with no way out. Yet, without complete despair. We left with camera, recorder and notebook by the same trail from which could be seen coffee beans with a negative return on investment of time and energy too miserable to attract the attention of none but the least desperate resident farmers.
We met one such farmer on the road to Muruata. He walked with a heavy sack of coffee beans on his back which stayed there during our brief meeting. This was the father of the President of EL MOVIEMENTO CULTURAL SAYA, Monica Rey who was also preparing to defend her thesis for the Master’s Degree at The University of La Paz. The father said that there was no salida but his hard work and his daughter’s university education symbolized talent, hope and determination to survive and prosper under extremely poor conditions.
Each group had its story to tell, similar to and different from the others. Even the buildings talked, as did the overgrown square. The church was pastored by a visiting priest who came sometimes. There was a school, but few materials. The sun carried with it all but candle light. Water was carried from far away and the town square in Muruata was overgrown. Grass surrounded several women who knitted with materials given to them by some outside group. The children came out to meet us as we talked to their parents who were clearing the side of the road so that the children and women could travel to school, to get water and find food. They smiled and made eager and easy eye contact as I photographed them to replace the picture post card which I had seem before leaving the states.
It was dark when we met Elvira, a 56 year old widow at Coroico. She ate dinner with us and kept us company at the disco until 11 PM. Elvira was wise and flexible. She told us of her life and drank beer and listened to the music. She was also well known to the owner and the neighbors we passed en-route to and from the disco. We would see her later that morning in the park with friends and relatives who had come in from the country to shop at the market. One of these shoppers was a pensioner whose husband was killed in the military thus entitling her to a sizable pension which enabled her to live at a higher standard which some military disagreed with.
The Saturday market day is an excellent opportunity to meet people from the rural areas who come to buy dried meat, shoes and other necessities. They also hang out in the plaza sitting, playing with their children and eating . This is also an inviting condition for a photographs which are a little touchy. However, I had been very generous, traveled with a very convincing native who encouraged their cooperation.
Jorge and I stayed in the Kory hotel in Coroico less than ½ block from the plaza. We selected rooms without baths located on the north edge that seemed to reach out to the clouds encircling the mountains and teetering over the metaphorical bottom of the bowl. The Kory serves wonderful trucha or trout and is tended by its Bolivian owner seen supervising his staff and being available to his guest. The rooms were 80 Bolivians each or a total of $32.00 without bath. This is considered mid-price.
Too soon we had to return to la Paz, My guide was unable to stay longer and I had failed to anticipate the splendor of the people, the climate and breathtaking beauty of this part of Los Yungas de La Paz; I had not allotted enough time to fully absorb this complete social, cultural, topographical and climatic experience. It is still there; the Afro-Bolivians have invited me and, the spirit willing, I shall go again to Los Yungas de la Paz and, hopefully, take other interested travelers with me.
Willie Thompson spent 3 ½ weeks in Bolivia during the Spring of 1998. He went as a tourist invited by his former Bolivian students whose parents made very comfortable living , travel and touring arrangements. Two and one-half weeks were spent in Santa Cruz where he spent lots of time with La Casa Afro-Boliviana and its members in their homes. One week was spent in La Paz with El Movimieinto Cultural Saya and its members and Los Yungas. Mr. Thompson is fluent in Spanish and lectured to high school and college students. He plans to return in 1999 and is organizing a group that’s interested in learning about these communities, the conditions that confront them, an unusual travel experience and a beautiful country.