To reach the AnahI mine, one must trace the gems’ voyage in reverse, up the Paraguay River from Puerto Quijarro, a small, dusty town in the extreme east of Bolivia

Ametrine, a purple-and-yellow blendof amethyst and citrine semi preciousgems, is known as bolivianite inside of Bolivia. For years, it was thought to be available from various mines inthe eastern Bolivia and parts of Brazil.Rumor even had it that gemologists had perfected a method of synthesizing ametrine in a laboratory. But these speculations obscured the truth, namely that the Bolivian military had been illegally extracting the gem from a single mine in the deep wilderness near the Brazilian border. The stones were smuggled into Brazil and cut, polished, and sold, their proven ance obfuscated to circumvent Brazilian import duties and hide the Bolivian military’s plundering of Bolivia’s natural resources. Then, in late1989, Bolivian law changed and the government granted a concessionto the Santa Cruz–based Minerales yMetales del Oriente (M&M) companyto legally mine the gems. Founded by Ramiro Rivero, a businessman from La Paz, M&M now has exclusive rights to the Anahí mine near the border of Brazil in the vast Pantanal, one the world’s largest wetlands.

A quirky product of molten metaland water, combined with thousands of years of heat and radiation exposure, these gems have been sitting underground for millennia. Accordingto legend, about 400 year sago the local Ayoreos tribe gave the mine as a dowry to a passing conquistador who married the tribal chief’s daughter. Her name was Anahí. But the conquistador was more interested in finding El Dorado,and, depending on whom you ask,he either left the mine untouched o rwas driven away by the Ayoreos. We do not know what happened to the mine’s namesake, the Indian princes sAnahí, although some versions of the story say she was killed to prevent her from leaving with the conquistador.

M&M’s processing facilities sit in a large industrial park outside of central Santa Cruz. Inside, dozens of workers busy themselves in front of workstations, first measuring and grading rough clusters of the gem, then grinding them down into gemstones and separating them into colour piles. Skilled gem cutters then cut and polish the stones under magnifying glasses into trapezoid, emerald, and baguette shapes before they’re shipped off to retail locations. Rivero, a short but sharply dressed man in his early 60s, has his office just off of M&M’s work floor. In it, various gems are displayed conspicuously: rough amethyst gemstone clusters weighing tens of kilograms are arranged on the floor, while his desk is covered with a scattering of cut gems—purple amethyst, yellow citrine, and the coveted ametrine. When M&M was granted the mining concession in 1989, Rivero explains, the market was flooded with cheap ametrine, much of it poorly cut. Rivero decided to change how the stone was provided. “We like to produce the least amount possible,” he says, “and give as much added value as possible, with the idea of producing quality.” To that end, M&M created its combined offices and production facilities in Santa Cruz. It’s the exclusive distributor of naturally produced commercial ametrine in the world— and the source of much amethyst. (Ametrine can occasionally be found in other locations in Brazil, but Anahí is acknowledged as the only commercially viable operation worldwide.) With no longer any need to fudge the provenance of the stones, and since M&M has a virtual monopoly on ametrine production, local markets near the Brazilian-Bolivian border dwindled and eventually were shuttered.

In order to boost ametrine’s value and reputation—which suffered during its illegal-mining days due to rumors that its synthetic version was basically indistinguishable from its naturally occurring form—M&M regularly hosts gemologists and geochemists, who have confirmed that the synthetics lack a certain quality that’s inherent in the naturally produced variety. “When you talk about quality gems,” Rivero says, “there are two issues: depth of color and brilliance. The Russians [who synthesized ametrine] obtained great depth in purple and yellow. What they don’t have is the brilliance, which nature gives the stones. It’s a plastic appearance. I wouldn’t even call it jewelry.”

To reach the Anahí mine, one must trace the gems’ voyage in reverse, up the Paraguay River from Puerto Quijarro, a small, dusty town in the extreme east of Bolivia, through the vastness of the Bolivian and Brazilian Pantanal to the far-flung Mandiolé Lagoon. Vast tracks of water lilies clog the slow-moving river while urubus— black vultures with light-colored head plumes—soar overhead. Crocodiles snap their jaws at boats speeding by. Mennonite soybean farms, cut out of the dense vegetation, come onto view and then disappear around the river’s innumerable horseshoe bends. From Mandiolé Lagoon, it’s a twoand- a-half-hour ride through an insect- filled forest up a narrow, muddy road. Once guests finally arrive at the mining camp, M&M’s junior engineer, Gonzalo Gonzales, shows guests the spartan accommodations. Miners relax in the dining hall; many of them are from Potosí, where the mining vocation goes back generations. M&M frequently hires workers from there because they already have a mastery—and lack of fear—of the mining profession.

The mine’s entrance is located up a steep slope from the camp, at the end of a path that is littered with cast-off low-grade gems from belowground. Purple stones crunch under feet in the dense brush; quartz and citrine stones are mixed in, forming a colorful semi-precious path to the mine. Large clusters of amethyst are strewn about as the earth offers up a bounty of purple treasure. The mine’s entrance is a horizontal shaft set in a crumbling rock wall. Stuffy air greets visitors, and bats flitter about deep in the hole. “They live here,” Gonzales explains. He tells his guests to don hardhats and gloves before going any further. “Watch your step. It gets very slippery in here.”

The Anahí mine extends 80 meters underground. It isn’t particularly deep, since the gem lode is near the surface. This is fortunate, Gonzalo explains, because the region receives so much rain that the lower levels of the mine are frequently flooded and inaccessible. Gonzalo shines his flashlight down into a vertical shaft. “This goes all the way to the bottom,” he says. “But as you can see, it’s flooded with water.” Nearby, a wooden scaffold is decorated with ribbons and surrounded by cigarettes, coca leaves, and bottles of alcohol. It’s an offering to El Tio, or “the Uncle,” who is the spirit of the mine. Miners in Bolivia traditionally leave offerings to El Tio, to appease him so that he doesn’t claim many lives.

About 100 meters into the mine, a wooden ladder extends into a dark hole in the floor. Gonzalo becomes animated and explains that a gem vault sits only 20 meters below. After giving instructions to his guests to follow, Gonzalo climbs down. The guests follow him down the muddy ladder, a seemingly endless climb in the pitch dark. With every meter farther down, the temperature increases; water drips down and mud scrapes off boots, making the ladder dangerously slick. Gradually, though, the light from Gonzalo’s torch gains brightness, until he’s visible in a low and narrow tunnel. He shines his lamp into a refrigerator-sized vault cut into the side of the shaft, and a deep purple hue reflects back out. Hundreds of fist-sized gem-quality stone clusters project from the vault wall. Deep and light purple and yellow gems glisten in the darkness.

Miners pry the large stones out of the various vaults in which the stones are found. The tunnels in the side of the hill follow the lode of gems; miners must dig exploratory shafts to find where the gems extend, then widen the holes and reinforce them with timber so that they can prise one cluster at a time from the clutches of the earth. They then carry the clusters outside and place them in metal carts, which are wheeled to the facilities back at the camp. There, a young man washes and grades the rough gems in an outdoor workshop. The first of many gem graders, he dumps a cart of gems onto a wire mesh platform, sprays them down with a high-pressure hose, and quickly separates the good from the bad. Then, with a well-practiced technique, he gathers the good gems in a chute and dumps them into a bag. The bag joins dozens more just like it, to be eventually shipped down the river to Puerto Quijarro and then the M&M production facilities in Santa Cruz. There they’ll be cut and polished; then, in weeks or months, they’ll be in showrooms, in Santa Cruz or Brazil, possibly China, India, or the United States, a two-tone purple-and-yellow treasure snatched from the depths of the Bolivian wetlands, a product of nature, myth, and back-breaking labor.

So you have your product. It’s going to be the next big thing for sure, but how do you get people to buy it? Welcome to the world of marketing. It may be something you associate with New York or Buenos Aires. If this is the case you may be surprised to find a thriving marketing industry here in La Paz.

Like any city, when walking the streets of La Paz advertisements, branding and promotions can be seen everywhere. Flawless models flaunting the latest piece of technology beam enthusiastically from their billboards placed across highways and tower blocks and every shop window eagerly invites you to ‘find them on facebook’. If there is a medium which can communicate information, then you can guarantee at some point that information will be telling you to buy something.

I wanted to investigate this world of marketing first hand. How does it operate? What’s the secret to vast exposure? How do you relate to a target audience? My first port of call took me to the company ´Toolbox Communications ´. If you have a business and want to get it off the ground this is where to start. They specialize in getting you recognised, in every and any way they can.

They work in every media you can think of. Cae Pelenque, the young director explains that there are two kinds of media, the more formal methods of television, press and radio, and the more original methods, such as social networking, viral advertising and most importantly, interaction with people. Toolbox’s first port of call may be the more tradition methods, but Cae explains that Toolbox takes a 360 degree approach to working with brands. No stone is left unturned when searching for the right way to promote a company. He stressed that this was his favorite type of promotion is actually talking to people and getting them involved personally. The better experience they can give someone the more they will remember it and associate it with the product or brand they are promoting. He gives one example where they staged a fake protest in the street for Beldent chewing gum. The joke was that people were protesting that the flavor was too intense and lasted too long. Onlookers watched upon this eccentric skit with confusion and humour. One thing was for sure, come the evening Beldent chewing gum was the topic of conversation.

Now Toolbox has forged alliances with companies in Argentina, giving them a truly international reputation. The progress of their expansion is staggering, having achieved all this in only a few years. Cae’s enthusiasm for marketing was infectious. Listening to him talk so passionately really inspired me. It was certain Toolbox was going in all the right directions. If half of Bolivia’s communications companies work as hard as Toolbox, then the competition is as healthy and cutting edge as any other country in the world.

My investigation into forms of Bolivian marketing next took me to a more hands-on experience: casting for the production of Bolivian television advert. The reason was to meet Jose Arispe, directing assistant to home grown talent Juan Carlos Valdivia who was shooting the advert. With Juan Carlos’ directing pedigree (he directed the awarding winning movies ‘Zona Sur’ and ‘American Visa’), I was keen to find out more about the television advertising industry in La Paz, Jose graduated from film school one year ago; he notes that it is common for directors to make the transition from feature film to advertising. Jose mentions that Juan Carlos always takes the same approach to filming an advertisement as he does with a feature film. Juan Carlos’ style can be seen in both his films and his adverts, with the result being that his adverts can relate to a target market in the same way the director of a film wants to relate with his audience. It is quite obvious when viewing some of Juan Carlos’ previous advertisements. They have a strong narrative and distinct story to them.

Jose tells me that before Juan Carlos there wasn’t much of an industry in Bolivia. When he won awards for his work some of the bigger companies started taking notice of Bolivia instead of awarding contracts to production companies in Chile and Argentina. The amount of work fluctuates depending on the season, but over a longer period of time it has steadily been growing. Now the business is positively thriving, with several Bolivian production companies competing for contracts. Big events such as the current Copa America football tournament also drive the opportunity of production forward. Jose reminisces of the time when Bolivia qualified for the world cup back in 1994. He says nearly every player starred in a separate advertisement!

It was really refreshing to see such modern and progressive companies like Toolbox doing so well. Equally it was satisfying to know that now more the ever, the majority of television advertisements seen on Bolivian channels come from home grown talent. Marketing in La Paz alone is thriving, and this cosmopolitan city is brimming with creativity and enthusiasm. When thinking of where to go to find a fresh new approach to marketing, Bolivia is certainly up there with the other big hitters of the continent.

Independent cinema has a hard time of it in the richest of countries, and in Bolivia it is no easier.Filmmakers must campaign for funds to finance their projects and expect little profit: here the difficulty is not the will, but the means to produce an independent film. Nevertheless, the hard work and many hands that are muscled into production transform this area into a hive of cultural productivity, and Yashira Jordan’s new documentary, Durazno (Peach) is doing much to bring independent cinema into the mass arena. But no integrity is lost: Durazno, rather than being produced en masse, is being brought to life by the masses, thus marking an important moment in the history of Bolivian cinema.

Project Durazno is innovative in three ways: it is ecologically produced, it is “transmedia” and it is partially ‘crowdfunded’, a technique that has never been used before in Bolivia. For this reason it has also not been an easy ride: one of the most difficult tasks for director Jordan has been to communicate and explain the concept to her target audience. So what exactly do these terms mean?

Crowd-funding
Crowdfunding means allowing members of the public to become producers of the film. This is facilitated through the web-page that takes online donations. Durazno thereby expands both its publicity and funding capacity by appealing to private individuals. One of the main barriers Jordan has come up against is that Crowdfunding has never been used before in Bolivia, so people often think they are being asked to donate to charity. This, she argues, is not the case: they are being asked to become involved in the production of the film itself. Funders’ names appear in the credits, and they receive early sneak previews and teasers of what the film involves both before and during the production. This allows them to watch the project develop from just the seed of an idea into its fully-fledged fruit. They are producers not only through donating money, but because their supportive presence means that they too are emotionally involved in the project, and have high hopes for its success. Depending on the size of their contribution they are offered relative incentives, ranging from a free edition of the DVD to a VIP ticket to the premiere and private email updates on the project’s progress.

Ecological film production
Jordan’s naming of her own production company, Arbol cine, (Tree cinema) is reflective of her own values. For her it represents ‘cine orgánico’, something that grows naturally, and with consideration for its natural environment. It would be an exaggeration to call Durazno an entirely ecologically produced project: just like any other film it needs cameras, lighting, cables draining electricity by the kilowatt. Nevertheless as far as it can, it is doing its bit both directly for the environment and for awareness. There are a number of ‘dream-scenes’ in the documentary, where memories of the protagonist are re-enacted in a fragile and ephemeral landscape. This landscape, Jordan proposes, will be constructed from recycled goods: cardboard, plastic and glass bottles. In obtaining these materials the ‘crowdfunding’ and ‘ecological production’ concepts become linked: members of the public are also asked to contribute their rubbish. Tagline: “lleva tu basura y convertíla en película…..” (Bring your rubbish and transform it into a film!)
Jordan has organised various Durazno ‘picnics’, meeting points in open spaces to which the public can bring their rubbish. If there is too much Jordan in turn donates it to environmental organisations, who can sell it on to profit-making corporations for profit. Durazno thereby supports other organizations involved in environmental protection.

“Transmedia”
It sounds a bit space age, but Durazno’s third innovative characteristic is truly trendy. Current technologies like surround-sound and 3-D aim to make the viewer feel enveloped by the film; it leaps out from the screen in more than a metaphorical sense. But “Transmedia” goes further, taking this experience beyond the cinema doors. Crowdfunding and the environmental awareness are part of this effort: for this film’s target audience the cinematic experience has become an active one that plays out in diverse spaces. It transcends its original medium, the screen, to take place over the internet, at picnics, and through donating rubbish. In turn, the events organized by Jordan create a Project Durazno dialogue in which the crowd gives to the film and the film speaks back at them. She has even coordinated ‘flashmobs’ (a crowd whose conversion in a public space is organised over the internet), in which everyone called to the occasion had been instructed to suddenly begin eating peaches. It’s publicity, it’s funding, it’s peaches all around, it’s “transmedia”. So what’s the film all about? Durazno is a documentary about an individual’s search for his identity. It is co-produced with Argentina, and tracks an Argentinean subject in search of his long-lost parentage. When asked about the significance of the film’s title, Jordan remains cryptic. She can’t give it all away, however, let’s just say it is central to the film’s visual and metaphorical aesthetic. This closing comment epitomises what this new type of cinema production is all about: while Jordan emphasises the audience’s involvement in the film, in fact it is the partial nature of our participation that is seductive.

In contributing to Durazno we don’t really become producers, we’re not signing up for months of hard slog, worries and late nights. We also don’t get to make any executive decisions. Instead we become “lite producers”: we’re buying our ticket to a world of prerelease entertainment: picnics, activities, flashmobs and teasers, carefully orchestrated by Jordan. Thereby Jordan expands the significance of independent cinema in the lives of her audience, and hopes that through her fundingcum- publicity activities, this audience will expand. Worldwide in recent years, Crowdfunding has become a burgeoning phenomenon: in an art world plagued by recession cuts and dropping sales due to piracy and online availability, it is a way to keep independent cinema alive. The message to the public is direct: if you don’t pay for it, it won’t get made. Through joining this international trend, Bolivian independent cinema can become more visible and relevant to a mass audience, attract more funding, and one day perhaps make it to an international stage. Meanwhile Jordan is working hard to whet our appetites and bring us to her own cinema door, dribbling with anticipation for Bolivia’s new giant peach. To watch the teaser and contribute for your piece of peach go to:

http://www.indiegogo.com/ durazno