Photo Essay by Alexis King  

Concrete pitch in Alto Tacagua. Perched precariously on a hill well-above the city of La Paz, this pitch has breathtaking views. The chances of recovering a lost ball, however, are remote.

It doesn’t take long to realise just how important football is in Bolivia. Perhaps not known for its high quality of football, it is nonetheless followed with passion and played with intensity at all levels. In the altiplano, winners of rural leagues can expect to be rewarded with a cow. In the sprawling cities of La Paz and El Alto, there exists its own form of “Champions League”, where some “amateur” teams are known to pay for certain players. While the quality of the pitches varies enormously, it is clear that almost any possible space has been dedicated to host even the most rudimentary pitch. For many who use these pitches football is more than just a hobby, enabling some to represent their heritage, and others to earn a better life.

I tried to capture the importance of the sport at its grassroots, as well as a snapshot of the sheer variety of pitches across the two cities.

Estadio Luis Lastra in Sopocachi, the former home of Deportivo Municipal de La Paz. The hugely successful team in the 1960s, which finally folded in 2010, used to welcome up to 10,000 fans to home games. The pitch has seen better days.

Eufrasio Cruz, 54 years - from Colquiri, playing in zona 12 Octubre, El Alto

The captain of a team of former miners who have moved to El Alto. Playing in the seniors (over 50) category, what is lacking in quality is certainly made up for in desire. When asked what playing for the team means to him, Eufrasio says: ‘We carry the pride of our mining centre, Colquiri, which we represent with dignity and love. The most important thing is to carry the name in El Alto.’

Estadio Maracana, El Alto

Taken around midday at over 4,000m The sun burns with a ferocious intensity, but the locals are not put off.

17 de Obrajes at around 8.30 pm

Despite the threat from lighting, they continue until one player boots the ball down the neighbouring hill.

Mansilla Zene Macario, 85 years - from La Paz, playing in Estadio Obrero, Miraflores, La Paz

Mansilla comes to Estadio Obrero every Saturday and Sunday to watch whoever happens to play. Mansilla turns out to be a hive of info about football in La Paz. When asked why do you love football: 'Football is a universal sport.' He collects the balls tha fly into the stands 'because we love football.'

Photos: Alexis King

Helping families across Cochabamba

Sat in Don Massimo’s office, the walls of which are adorned with photos and trophies from various football teams he’s helped, he tells a story of when he first established a football school in Cochabamba. He recalls that the first obstacle was to win the trust of the locals who weren’t convinced: ‘Who does this Italian think, he is coming here and claiming he can teach our kids how to play football.’ But over two decades later, Massimo Casari and his wife Verónica Urquidi have become incredibly influential members of the local community. Since 1996, they have set up various projects through their main foundation, Fundación Casari, aimed at helping disadvantaged families and children in difficult situations across Cochabamba.

Don Massimo, as he is affectionately referred to by the children and parents alike, is originally from Bergamo in Italy. He first came to Cochabamba in 1986 with an Italian charity that helped children in need. Returning every year thereafter, he would pay for his trips by selling any type of car he could. In 1994, Don Massimo met Verónica, and moved to Bolivia permanently after getting married in 1995. After spending three years running a house for children, in 2000 the couple decided to build a recreational and educational house (Centro Educacional Recreativo, CER) in the barrio of Ticti Norte. Verónica, a cochabambina, has been hugely important in everything they do, providing local knowledge and experience.

The aim of the CER is to provide apoyo escolar, or educational support, for underprivileged children while they are not at school, supporting around 150 students up to the age of 15. Most of the children are from poor or troubled families in the neighbourhood. The centre provides a safe place for them to learn and have fun, through attending homework class and playing football together.

It doesn’t take long talking to Massimo to realise just how important football has been and still is in his life, and something which is at the heart of what he and his wife do to support young people in Cochabamba. The free football school, which was once an important part of the CER, has become a project in itself. While the two initiatives have steadily become less connected, many children still attend both.

Since 2008, Fundación Casari has been working with Inter Campus, the foundation of Italian football club Inter Milan. As well as helping to fund the CER, the club provides training and pay the coaches’ wages, all of whom come from Cochabamba. Every year, Inter Campus also provides 220 uniforms for the children, which cost over 80 euros a piece in Europe, as Massimo proudly points out.

On weekdays, morning and afternoon, children are able to go along to the football school without having to pay a cent. Watching a training session was an impressive and somewhat surreal sight, to see the mass of navy and black Inter Milan shirts in a quiet neighbourhood of the city.

Unsurprisingly, Massimo is effusive in his praise for Inter Campus. He fondly recalls how in 2009, the foundation paid for 14 children from the   CER under the age of 12, to participate in their ‘copa del mondo.’ Even though the majority of the kids had never left Cochabamba, the programme flew them to Florence to spend a week playing football against children from other Inter Campus foundations.

The foundation’s work with Inter Campus has enabled Verónica and Don Massimo to launch other social projects. In Irpa Irpa, about 70 kilometres away from Cochabamba, they set up a centre for children named Jatun Sonqo, which means big heart in Quechua. The project involves a similar apoyo escolar, but also works with the mothers of the children, running workshops, such as bakery classes or clothes making. The project partners 160 local families with 160 sponsors in Italy who support the centre.

With the help of Sister Mariana Heles González, Fundación Casari also supports children who live with their mothers in the local prison. Every Saturday morning, around 40 to 50 children are picked up from a nearby prison and taken to the CER to play football and enjoy themselves. The programme, called 'Niños Fuori', which means 'Children Outside’, in a mix of Spanish and Italian, is completely funded by Inter Campus. For the kids involved, Massimo explains, it gives them a break from the strict life inside the prison and a day of freedom.

As if that were not enough, Foundation Casari also helps run a community house for people with a variety of mental and physical disabilities, funded by his friends back in Italy. Every evening Massimo and Verónica have dinner at the house.

What is perhaps most amazing is to see Massimo and Verónica laughing and joking with both the children and their parents. It's easy to see why they are so well-liked in the community.

Talking to the children at the CER, they talk about feeling happy and making friends. When we asked what they like most about the centre, they unanimously replied: 'Doing homework!'. Perhaps a little surprising, but it’s clear nonetheless how important it has been for them to have a fun and safe place to come and learn.

We spoke to one parent whose child attended the football school, to ask about the influence of the foundation’s work. 'Apart from doing physical exercise,’ he said, ‘as a way of distracting themselves and having fun, some kids have become more independent.' When asked what he thought of Don Massimo, ‘muy buena gente.’ was the simple response.

The close bonds him and Verónica have developed with the children, that he describes as 'como sus hijos', have meant they have become almost parental figures for some. Being so close with the children brings a real responsibility however, something Massimo is very aware of. He mentions times when children have confided their most serious problems in him, including instances of domestic violence, or young girls experiencing the inevitable challenges of puberty.

When a former hijo comes back, it is always special for Massimo. He fondly recalls the example of a young boy that recently came back after many years with his wife and son; or a young girl who is now a qualified vet and others who are now doctors, policemen and footballers.

Through the amazing work of Massimo and Verónica, Fundación Casari has truly changed the lives of thousands of children across Cochabamba.

For more information, visit http://www.comitatocasari.org/.

Photos: Michael Dunn Caceres  

A look at the opposition in this year’s Bolivian general election

With the general election due to take place in late October, this year could prove to be pivotal for Bolivian politics. Evo Morales and his Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, who have led Bolivia for over 13 years, are seeking a fourth consecutive term. Although Morales lost a referendum in 2016 to sidestep the Constitution and allow him to run for president again, a controversial decision by the country’s Supreme Court ruled in his favour.

Under Morales’s leadership, the Bolivian economy has grown at an impressive 4.9 percent, driven by high commodity prices which have enabled Bolivia’s GDP to more than double in just over a decade. Morales’s effort to redistribute this income has also seen extreme poverty fall by half. Furthermore, MAS’s social policies have empowered and ensured representation for previously marginalised, predominantly indigenous sections of the population.

However, the failure of MAS to diversify Bolivia’s economy and its seeming disregard for democratic principles have put the party in a precarious position. Unsustainably high hydrocarbon and metal ore prices have so far excused a dependence on an extractivist model, but a lack of industrialisation could jeopardise Bolivia’s economic future. Morales’s government has also so far failed to address the shockingly high rate of violence against women and claims of rampant corruption across the country. The government’s dismissal of the 2016 referendum, coupled with its almost complete control of electoral organisations, has set a dangerous precedent for the future of democracy in Bolivia.

What is for certain is that there is a real opportunity and significant momentum to put an end to Morales’s grip on power. What remains very much in doubt, though, is whether any one candidate or party can capitalise on such an opportunity. Since assuming power, President Morales has faced a divided and hitherto ineffective opposition. Now, with a total of nine names on the ballot and a host of familiar faces amongst the candidates, the anti-Morales side is still fractured. Unlike in the past, though, the president’s slide in popular opinion might portend that this election will prove different.

THE CANDIDATES

The list of challengers to the incumbent president includes the vastly experienced, former presidents; Carlos Mesa, for Civic Community (CC) and Jaime Paz Zamora of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), the current governor of the La Paz department, Felix Patzi, of the newly-established Third System Movement (MTS), and Virginio Lema for the historically left-wing National Revolutionary Movement (MNR). Candidates further to the right include Santa Cruz native and current senator Oscar Ortiz for Bolivia Says No (BDN) and Victor Hugo Cárdenas of Solidarity Civic Unity (UCS). Ruth Nina for National Action Party of Bolivia (PAN-BOL) and Israel Rodriguez of the Front for Victory (FPV) have also declared their candidacy.

The most likely challenge to Evo Morales’s position will come from ex-president Carlos Mesa. In 2002 Mesa served as vice president under then-president Gonzalo ‘Goni’ Sánchez de Loza and subsequently assumed power when the latter fled the country in 2003. Mesa’s time as president proved to be ill-fated, however, and he resigned in 2005 following widespread demonstrations and violence. The well-known historian and TV journalist is now the candidate for the Civic Community party. This centre-left alliance unites Mesa’s former party, the Left Revolutionary Front, with the Sovereignty and Freedom Party, led by the current mayor of La Paz, Luis Revilla.

An advocate of free-market economics and critic of Morales’s protectionist and state-interventionist policies, Mesa has supported opening Bolivia’s economy to international markets and foreign investment. Unsurprisingly, Mesa depends on the urban-based, highly educated circles of Bolivian society for support. Since declaring his candidacy, he has surrounded himself with upper-class elites to further his political aims. According to Bolivian journalist and political commentator Fernando Molina, Mesa may struggle to convince poorer and less well-educated Bolivians to vote for him. There’s an ethno-cultural tendency to reject blancos in Bolivia, Molina says, due to a history of exploitation, and Mesa’s association with Bolivia’s elite makes support for him much less certain.

Molina also says that Oscar Ortiz could play a role in undermining Mesa’s bid for the presidency. The former president of the Senate and current senator for Santa Cruz is the candidate for Bolivia Says No (BDN), a right-wing conservative alliance between the National Unity and the Social Democratic parties. BDN’s main support is likely to come from the east of the country, in particular from wealthier landowners around Santa Cruz who favour BDN’s proposition to federalise Bolivia. Like Mesa, Ortiz is also a vocal advocate of a more capitalist economic model based on free-market principles.

At the time of writing, most polls have both Morales and Mesa tied with around 30 percent of the vote each. Ortiz is seen as the next favourite, currently slated to receive between 6-10 percent of the vote. For the two opposition candidates, much will depend on their respective campaigns. For Mesa the key will be convincing working-class and indigenous voters to challenge MAS’s recent dominance. For Ortiz, it will be a case of how far he can erode Mesa’s popularity.

On the far-right of the political spectrum in Bolivia is the ever-divisive candidate for UCS, Victor Hugo Cárdenas. The 68-year-old Aymara politician became the first indigenous vice president, in 1993, during the first presidency of the now-loathed Goni. Cárdenas was also an important part of the neoliberal project in Bolivia of the 1990s and early 2000s, and he’s retained connections with international and US institutions as well as with Brazil’s controversial leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

Along with his running mate and former pastor, Humberto Peinado, Cárdenas does not seem afraid to divide opinion. In March this year, Cardenas chose International Women’s Day to launch a somewhat controversial campaign proposal: to open the debate on women carrying weapons as a solution to gender violence. Peinado also openly opposes abortion and ‘gender ideology.’ Come election day, Cárdenas’s appeal may well be limited to predominantly Catholic groups and right-wing supporters.

Felix Patzi, former minister for education and current governor of La Paz, is another interesting candidate. An erstwhile member of MAS, the Aymara native is representing MTS, a new party pushing to represent the rights of indigenous groups. The party’s campaign is based around a rather generalised criticism of traditional left- and right-wing politics and advocacy of a revolutionary new political system.

Patzi says the MTS is a centrist party that, supposedly, ‘doesn’t mix any elements of the left or the right.’ He proposes to combat Bolivia’s epidemic of violence against women by developing strong family norms, and suggests that ‘communal businesses’ – arranged without hierarchy or individual ownership – could usher in a restructuring of the Bolivian economy. However, Patzi’s very traditional social ideas and indigenous ideology seem highly unlikely to resonate with much of the population.

For the majority of the challengers to the presidency, they can only realistically hope to win at least 3 percent in the general election, which would protect their respective party’s legal status.

A DIVIDED FRONT

Despite real dissatisfaction with the current regime, the opposition remains perhaps critically divided. Those in the running to become president in October include two ex-presidents, a former vice president, the current governor of La Paz and a former president of the Senate. Almost all of the opposition candidates have claimed that a defense of the people’s rights in light of the 2016 referendum to be a priority. Yet all of them are standing for a separate political party.

At this stage, it appears that this reticence to form an alliance could undermine the challenge to President Evo Morales. Molina suggests that the success of Mesa and Ortiz appear to be mutually exclusive, and Mesa’s refusal to ally himself with the cruceño ‘could cost him the election.’ BDN’s negative campaign against Mesa, in which it has accused the ex-president of profiting handsomely from Bolivia’s legal fight for access to the Pacific, looks set to play into Morales’s hands.

First-time candidate Israel Rodriguez insists that despite his lack of political experience, he is the only candidate that can offer something different. When asked what his party can realistically hope to achieve, Rodriguez responded that their hope is to form an alliance with other candidates against Morales but, crucially, not with someone such as Mesa or Ortiz as leader. Instead, Rodriguez proposed that it should be ‘someone young and clean, and with beliefs and strong values, with new ideas… and that is ourselves.’

MNR candidate Virginio Lema is also basing his campaign on offering a fresh perspective. Irrespective of his party’s 60-year history, Lema is counting on the appeal that he is not a traditional politician and the only candidate who can bring change to Bolivia. You get the idea.

In addition, aside from MAS, the political left in Bolivia remains underrepresented. In fact, MAS is the only effective party which purports to offer a left-wing or socialist government. As well as being closely tied to the middle and upper classes, the majority of political parties belong to the political centre or further to the right. And then there is Patzi’s MTS, which doesn’t belong on any political spectrum. Morales’s simple, ostensibly left-wing rhetoric has so far been very successful in appealing to many Bolivians who have long lacked a political voice.

Waldo Albarracin, a very vocal critic of the current government, was unequivocal in his opprobrium of the current opposition candidates. The former human-rights lawyer is the current director at La Paz’s main public university, UMSA, and a highly influential political and social figure. In Albarracin’s view, ‘the same shortcomings of the government can be seen in the opposition.’ More specifically, Albarracin referred to a lack of transparency and, notably, each candidate’s own aspiration to lead the country. Ivan Rodriguez Montenegro, a former general secretary of the Bolivian railway workers union, is also sceptical. Highlighting an inability to unite behind a common front, Rodriguez attributed this to the self-interest of current politicians. ‘Since the era of the dictators, everyone has been looking out for their own interests,’ Rodriguez argued.

While it is possible that the political outlook will change considerably before October, such a divided opposition is welcome news to Evo Morales.

EL MAL MENOR?

The opposition is certainly facing an uphill battle in their bid to gain the presidency, even more so considering the unlikelihood of completely fair elections. On this point, Albarracin is characteristically critical, declaring that for the government, ‘playing fair is suicide.’ Molina is slightly less cynical but still pessimistic, likening the elections to playing football on a sloped pitch. Thanks to its comparatively vast resources and current dominance of supposedly autonomous electoral institutions, MAS has a clear albeit unfair advantage.

Whatever the outcome, what does appear likely in the aftermath of this year’s elections is more extreme polarisation and a sharp rise in tensions. If Mesa wins, he will almost certainly face strong resistance from the incredibly influential and heavily pro-MAS Chapare region, important for its coca production. If Morales retains power and democracy in Bolivia continues to be worn away by MAS’s political machinations, public outcry and mass mobilisations would seem a foregone conclusion.

Whatever the outcome, with a dearth of fresh faces and ideas on this year’s ballot paper the decision on October 20 could well be a case of el mal menor – the lesser evil.