Photos: Poppy Koronka

Contradictory narratives between media, State and people

The sounds of shouts, horns and flares accompanying bustling crowds, road blocks and picket signs often greet daily commuters in La Paz. In Bolivia, marchas are almost impossible to avoid and can be dismissed as normality. However, in recent months, the University of El Alto’s (UPEA) demands for increased government funding have lead to a seven-week long protest on the streets of El Alto and La Paz, that has claimed the life of a student protestor. This ongoing protest has exposed several contradictory narratives in the country between the state and the people.

The ongoing campaigning is primarily focused on amending Ley 195, which allocates the distribution of funding to the various public universities in Bolivia. At present, UPEA receives 0.355% of national yearly tax collections, but they demand an increase to 1.4%, or around BS 222 million yearly. Protesters have rejected the government’s BS 70 million offer to solve the problem, arguing that the sum would do very little to address UPEA’s BS 152 million deficit. David Flores Vargas, a UPEA professor participating in the hunger strike as part of the protest, explains the sum ‘only alleviates rather than removes the issue. It means that next year we will have to protest again, every year it will be the same,’ he says. The movement is after an amendment to the law that secures future funding.

The government claims that there is no adequate justification for the requested sum, and sustains that a change to the law would be ‘immoral’ as it would take away funding from other public universities. However, in the eyes of the protesters university’s current budget does not reflect neither the size of the university nor the quality of its education. According to Flores, ‘UPEA is 18 years old, and has undergone a “natural” growth. Its student population has increased from 20,000 in 2011, to 47,000 in 2017.’ Flores believes that the law needs to be updated in order to correspond with this growth, since it is the government’s constitutional responsibility to look after the country’s education.

Whilst the Bolivian constitution exalts the freedom of the press and freedom of expression without censorship, the protesters believe that they haven’t been able to fully exercise these rights. In response to the government’s accusatory words regarding the movement, Nicolas Mendoza, founder of UPEA, replies: ‘It is, as always, a situation in which the facts are distorted.’

‘They have denounced us as vandals,’ says Edgar René Quispe Colque, another UPEA professor who has joined the hunger strike. ‘But this has been a common way of dismissing protesters for many years now, especially those of El Alto,’ he adds.

Flores also distrusts the media. ‘Since I have a history of political activism,’ he explains, ‘during interviews journalists hope that I mess up. One time they came and interviewed every person in the room but me, because the government had instructed them not to interview “bitter” people.’

Despite these scathing opinions, several small media organisations with limited government funding still operate as exceptions to the rule. Radio Pachamama is a good example of a station that has retained the trust of its listeners. Based in El Alto, it gained a reputation as a reliable news source during the protests known as the Gas Wars in 2003. The station provided a platform for the words and wishes of the people, not the government. Now, in light of a similar divergence of perspectives between state and people, Radio Pachamama continues to report and reflect on these issues. Rather than remaining in support of the government they once helped put into power, the station is openly addressing the communication gap between government and people and giving voices to the protesters once more.

In these recent weeks of unrest, protesters attempted to take over the offices of the state channel, Bolivia TV. Gisela Lopez, Minister of Communication, denounced the act as a violation of freedom of the press. Dr. Alex Chamán, on the other hand, who is a high-profile professor and supporter of UPEA, defends the attempt, saying that they were acting out of desperation given how the state media has misrepresented their movement. ‘The government curates a mudslinging campaign against us,’ he says. ‘At a certain point, one is compelled to deny their accusations. Although [the act] may not be completely justifiable, it is understandable...Evo Morales himself spent years fighting, in various ways, against the previous neoliberal government,’ Chamán adds. ‘This is a case where the steak does not remember that it was a cow.’

In 2003, protests arose against a law that would have allowed foreign investment in the country’s natural gas reserves. Although this year the protests have emerged in a different context, Flores believes there are several similarities. ‘The government has its own priorities that are neither education nor health,’ he explains. ‘The mixing-pot of the events of 2003 is beginning to re-emerge because the government is failing to fulfill its socialist promises.’

Chamán, however, has a different view of the situation. ‘2003 was a different,’ he says. ‘Bolivia was in a catastrophic situation, governed by a neoliberal government that took away our rights…with huge rates poverty and repression, a situation that moved the entire country to fight. Now, Bolivia is in a hugely improved situation,’ he adds, ‘but this does not mean it cannot be further improved.’ For Chamán, the protests are not meant to incite a revolution, but rather to communicate the need for further social improvement. In this case, the goal is for the university to reach an internationally competitive level of education.

The young protesters who are currently on the street didn’t experience the 2003 uprising, but they are fighting for the government's attention in the same way as their predecessors. For them, however, the movement is mainly a matter of university funding, while for those who remember the revolution of 2003, it is a symptom of what they consider is a larger issue: that the government is not delivering on its promises.

‘They have denounced us as vandals, but this has been a common way of dismissing protesters for many years now.’

—Edgar René Quispe Colque, UPEA professor

‘Bolivia TV belongs to Bolivians not the Masistas!’ students reportedly shouted at the recent attempted takeover of the channel. Although it is not clear that the protesters are united in their opposition to the ruling party, it seems evident that the supporters of the movement feel a lack of representation. For them, in the fading afterglow of 2003, there is no excuse for the government to avoid engaging with the demands of the population.

Photo: Gonzalo Laserna

Just east of La Paz’s Zona Sur, the spires of el Valle de las Ánimas (‘Valley of the Souls’) hang over a carved-up glacial valley, resonating with a mystical quality. A mere one-hour bus journey from the city’s centre, this beautiful park is often overlooked by visitors to this sprawling city. The natural attraction goes beyond the aesthetics; it has inspired spirituality for the indigenous population for centuries, who know it as the home of babies who died before baptism – this is limbo on earth.

‘Limbus infantium’ is a concept not readily accepted by the Catholic Church; however, with the indigenous assimilation with Catholic concepts, this interpretation has become commonplace in a very Bolivian Christianity. Looking up at the towering spires, it is hard not to see why the image of spirits in limbo struggling to reach the heavens has been projected upon these rocks. These dizzying spires inspired myths and tales of the yearning of those condemned to a monotonous eternity in the valley. Desperate to reach their exalted loved ones, they try to ascend these rocky ladders – or so the myth goes. Irrespective of spirituality, one can agree that it’s a poignant tale. But those not convinced would happily settle with the geological explanation, which is simple enough: el Valle de las Ánimas was formed due to erosion left from glaciers, an explanation that is no doubt correct but underwhelmingly unsentimental.

But el Valle de las Ánimas doesn’t only attract visitors purely for its aesthetics and spiritual depth. It’s also known for its spectacular view of the iconic Illimani, the tallest mountain in Bolivia’s Cordillera Real. There’s nothing that stands in the way of the perfect view of Illimani, which, depending on the weather, can sometimes be seen from La Paz.

El Valle de las Ánimas so far only houses the lingering souls of unbaptised children and various species of birds; however, there have been recent government plans to introduce a variety of fauna – including condors, Andean foxes, vizcachas, kestrels, giant hummingbirds, hawks and other birds of prey – in an effort to turn the valley into a natural reserve. And then those poor children’s souls will finally have some company in the vast eternity of limbo.

Photo: Jaime Vargas

A bastion of Bolivian folk music

No doubt anyone who has paid mind to the music on the streets and in the nightclubs of La Paz would notice that the current generation is entranced by the bombastic drums and melodic synths of reggaeton. In all its inescapable glory, reggaeton refuses not to be heard. It dogs the commuter, booming from the maestro’s sound system and forces even unwilling feet to tap to its rhythm. This reggaeton takeover, however, threatens to undermine Bolivian folk music, a guitar-heavy acoustic genre that has dominated the country’s pop culture until recent decades. But Mayra Gonzales, a proud paceña musician, stands by folk, unconvinced of its supposed decline and reassured of its strength.

Gonzales was just seven years old when she started playing piano, while growing up in La Paz’s Sopocachi neighbourhood. But despite this early start, she says, ‘I dropped playing piano because I was concerned with my studies and was really disconnected from music until I was 17 years old.’ It was then that Gonzales joined the paceño blues band Almitra, alongside her brother Daniel Gonzales, before joining Grillo Villegas’s band Llegas as vocalist. ‘It was like school for me, Grillo Villegas taught me a lot about music,’ Gonzales explains. ‘It was the most important time in my career.’ After Villegas moved on to other projects with his career, Gonzales was left to ponder her own musical future. She decided to go solo, and called on Villegas to help produce her first album, Árbol de la vida. Gonzales refers to the album as her ‘first baby’ – a testimony to its importance to her.

Mayra Gonzales, a proud paceña and musician, stands by folk, unconvinced of its supposed decline and reassured of its strength.

With her debut album, Gonzales soon began receiving national and then international acclaim. She accepted an invitation to RockBol USA, a music festival in Washington, DC, showcasing Bolivian talent, in August 2017. Because her backing band couldn’t attend due to lack of funds, Gonzales played alone, adapting her setlist and playing acoustic. While it was an unfortunate circumstance, it showed Gonzales that she could play solo very well, and shortly thereafter she recorded a solo album. ‘I then arranged songs with various artists,’ she says, ‘and that resulted in my second album, Bolivia, piano y voz.’ This year, Gonzales accepted an invitation to be a judge on the musical competition television show Factor X Bolivia, necessitating in a move from La Paz to Santa Cruz – a change that proved controversial to folk-music purists. Despite this, Gonzales says, ‘Since being in Factor X, I have been more in touch with the younger generation who are more in touch with urban and pop music, and I feel like I’ve reached out and inspired taste in folk music.’

But today folk music in Bolivia doesn’t have the universal reach it once had. Despite the strengths of talents such as Matilde Casazola, Willy Claure and César Espada (all of whom had helped in the production of Bolivia, piano y voz, including the classical musician Fernando Román Saavedra), it’s no secret that the youth of today aren’t as engaged with traditional Bolivian music as previous generations. And Gonzales doesn’t see her music as a means to change the trend. ‘You can’t change people. That’s not the objective that I have,’ she explains. Instead of changing entirely to adapt to the palate of the masses, Gonzales aims to to adapt folk music to offer something similar yet true to the genre. ‘I am always looking towards evolving,’ she says, ‘not moving over to the mainstream.’

This is very much the stance Gonzales takes in the production of her new album, which she’s currently working on with help from producer Dorian Mendez. Gonzales says that her taste in music is ever changing, and she’s been working in phases and switching between various genres, ranging from soul and R&B to electronic music. Gonzales confesses, ‘I wasn’t sure whether I liked folk, but it was just very natural to me.’ But, she concludes, she’s ‘not going to be a purist,’ and her music reflects her different tastes – which her new album will showcase. By staying loyal to her folk roots but adapting to the modern musical landscape, Gonzales can help folk music rediscover its footing in Bolivia.

‘I am always look towards evolving, not moving over to the mainstream.’

—Mayra Gonzales

‘We need folk – it’s our culture, it’s who we are. If we lose this, then we lose who we are,’ Gonzales says. And with the changing times, the key to folk music’s survival is its adaptability. This is something that Gonzales is aiming towards and something that we can look forward to with the release of her forthcoming album.