A Hot and Humid Tierras Bajas

Ive been a traveling fool for a little while so I haven{t been able to get on the computer. We got back last Thursday from the Lowlands. The first couple of days we went into the rural areas, to a town called Ascension de los Guarayos. The short and sweet (or sour, more like sour I would say, or maybe sweaty--it is unbelievable humid there. I know that those of you from the midwest do not believe me but yes, it was worse than our lovely summers in heat-thick air) version is: we learned a lot about the privatization of the rain forest which means trees are disappearing at an alarming rate by being cut down by large businesses, not a new story for Bolivian natural resources. A few people we talked to said that in 5 years, this part of the rainforest probably won{t have any trees if they keep cutting them down so rapidly without replacing them. There is a lot of conflict over land ownership as well, because the indigenous communities think they have possession over their land but every time they think so, it turns out their land title is fake and the land gets taken away by a big business...A lot of these communities are fighting to have governmental autonomy from the Santa Cruz region, because the city of Santa Cruz is much different the the region called Santa Cruz. There are also a lot of problems with water access and accessibility to education, especially after high school. Right now, rural universities are few and far between, so people have to go to the city to study and because there are no jobs in rural areas, most stay or immigrate out of the country. It is a struggle right now to make rural life sustainable.

In these two days, of course we had our share of bus adventures. We had heard before that we might have problems crossing roads because in the beginning of February they had tons and tons of rain and it caused lots of flooding. At least we were ready, but at this point, we expect to have to push our bus anyways. After we went swimming in a river for a good while, which was after we made it to the end of a Palm Sunday service in a nearby town, we were back on the road. There were piles of dirt and gravel to fix pot holes, but they were covering almost the entire road. our bus driver tried to go around, however the problem was that on either side of the road was swampy marsh lands. We didn{t make it very far before we had to stop, get out and problem solve. We tried many things with rocks and the jack and pushing but eventually somebody drove by and towed us out of trouble, and we also moved the rock piles in the middle of the road to one side so everyone could get by. We spent a lot of time on the bus those first few days because this town was 8 hours outside of Santa Cruz. I was able to make pretty good headway on East of Eden by John Steinbeck and practice my charango skills (A charango is a small string instrument native to Andean music here and I bought one a few weeks ago. It has been a good investment so far). I will also note I slept both nights in a hammock. I don{t know if I ever want to go back to a real bed...

In the city of Santa Cruz we came upon another world. Santa Cruz is the wealthiest city in Bolivia, or atleast has the wealthiest people (but also the poorest) and one of the largest. It has grown incredibly in the past 50 years, especially because of the "rainforest business" that has created a stronghold of elites that control the region, and it is incredibly westernized. I saw many American clothing stores, neon lights, and I think even a strip mall with high end furniture. I had been told by my host mom and one of my academic program directors, Ismael who grew up in Santa Cruz, that it is another country, and not in a good way, a lot of racism and discrimination between classes. We also visited some sand dunes that are the direct result of deforestation. They did not exist 50 years ago.

A lot of the political opposition in Bolivia comes from Santa Cruz and it was very evident. There were many political party rallies because the elections for governor and mayor were that weekend and many of us stopped by the MAS rally because there was a rumor Evo Morales, El Presidente, was going to speak. It was a big rumor and he never came, but a lot of us acquired MAS flags from the rally. We were told not to show those outside of the rally because we might be accosted or harassed. Some members of my group were stopped by cars in the street because the drivers were convinced that we did not know what we were doing. There was an assumption because we are white, we cannot support MAS and must be confused. That is Santa Cruz, or at least the sector that has money.

We also traveled to the edge of town, which is a world apart form the city center. There is a neighborhood called Plan 3000 that we visited to learn about the community activism in trying to gain independence from the larger city. you see, in the 80{s there was big flood and many indigenous communities lost everything. So the government moved 3000 families to the edge of Santa Cruz, which was still jungle at this time, and left them to survive without food or equipment to build anything. Since then, the 3000 families has grown to 300,000 people and there still is no water and no sewer system because the money from the region of Santa Cruz stays with the elite. The cherry on top is that Plan 3000 has since become Santa Cruz´s one and only landfill, which brings another whole group of health and living problems. This is why Plan 3000 wants to govern themselves because they feel it is the only way they can improve their conditions.

I´m very glad I got to see this side (geographically, politically, socially) of Bolivia. A lot of people think "Andes" when they think of Bolivia, but 2/3 of Bolivia is tropical forest and low lands. I would have liked to spend more time there because it is so different but I will not miss humidity, at all. Also, it was very hard to understand a lot of people because they speak with a different accent. They never us the letter "s" and the speech runs together a lot more. We also learned some words in Guarayu, the main indigenous language, ands its a shame i can´t remember them. I couldn´t pronounce them right once, much less remember now.

I will try to put up pictures later but I forgot my camera cord....