Every Thursday and Sunday, countless shoppers flood the Feria 16 de Julio in El Alto. It can appear that every resident of both El Alto and La Paz come to this single neighborhood, where just about anything under the sun is available for the right price. One can easily be overwhelmed by the mass movements of people, the ebb and flow of shoppers washing the streets with the kinetic energy of commerce.
On a recent trip to this market, I was easily taken over by this flood, bumping shoulders with merchants and shoppers alike as we squeezed down the neighborhood’s narrowest streets. The movement seemed chaotic and more than a little claustrophobic, and in short time I sought respite from the clutter among the ridge above the autopista, the ribbon of road that delivers cars, cabs and minibuses from La Paz up to El Alto.
Below me spread central La Paz. To my right the bright sun ascended towards its zenith, casting a blanket of golden warmth across the city. From this distance, the city seemed calm, serene. Despite the many cracks and crags wrinkling and pocking the face of this metropolis, and the traffic jams and roadblocks I knew were occurring below, it all seemed almost organized.
Bolivia is a complex place, with a diverse collection of environments, from the urban clutter of high-altitude La Paz and El Alto to the most remote and wild lowlands of the Amazon Basin. But what does this diversity mean for individual people in Bolivia? What does this place mean for the backpacker in La Paz lugging her heavy rucksack to her hostel after descending from the bus terminal? For a city resident looking for a rural escape from the urban grind? For the new lovers looking to a plaza for a moment of ‘privacy’? For the llama herder on La Cumbre, who collects the last of his flock and looks upward at the blanket of stars shining above him?
In this issue of Bolivian Express, we set out to explore not so much different ‘places’ in Bolivia, but to dig deeper and to view Bolivia through ‘spaces’. That is, to highlight the diversity of place here, we wanted to go deeper than the descriptive. We set out to take a look at the environments in which Bolivians (and foreigners) navigate their work, their play, their day-to-day life, and how they create and interact with those spaces, consciously and subconsciously. Beyond explanatory descriptions of locations and scenarios, we set out to highlight the relationships between people and the places in which they exist.
In our explorations, we discovered spaces here beyond the physical. We realized that the places around us contain spaces for the cultural, the political, the spiritual, the metaphysical – sometimes all at once.
As I stood at the edge of crowded market day in El Alto and stared down at the irregular patchwork of La Paz’s streets, I gained a sense of the complexity of space here. Each one of the millions of people here are tasked with navigating their way through the places around them – to engage with their environment, to respond to it, to make it their own.
These are the stories we set out to tell.
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What do the dogs of La Paz have to offer? Besides their talents as road crossers, dustbin foragers and pedestrian schmoozers, for several stall owners in the Max Parades neighbourhood of La Paz, the local dogs serve as unofficial nighttime security guards.
The dogs of La Tablada, a side-street crammed with stalls selling clothes and children's toys, can often be seen sleeping together in the street during the day. At nighttime, they act as companions to the street’s security guards, watching over the wares of vendors who have packed up and gone home.
Local stall holders speak fondly of the animals, suggesting that they have won the favour of the street’s regulars. One vendor, Eva, tells me that people often bring the dogs food and that, although they are street dogs, the security guards are like their surrogate owners. Mateos Rojas, however, who is another stall owner, thinks that they may belong to residents of the nearby houses. Mateos’ own dog, Grupi, keeps him company during the day and comes home with him at night, a luxury that street dogs do not have.
Whether these watchdogs are truly from the street or merely the pets of less-than-hospitable owners, the animals of La Tablada have certainly found companionship in each other, as well as in many of the street’s locals. And for their hard work patrolling the streets, they’ve also found something more: that all-important cosy spot to sleep in.
Look into the mesmerising Andean sky on a winter night and it’s easy to understand the jealousy of northern stargazers. Down here, in the Southern Hemisphere, the glowing white band of the Milky Way is far more pronounced, as are the unique ‘dark constellations’ – silhouettes produced by interstellar dust clouds that obscure the luminescence of our galaxy.
The Incas believed these constellations to be celestial animal spirits watching over their earthly counterparts. There are seven in total, with the number visible throughout different times of the year. With its long neck and bright eyes, the llama, or yacana, is easily recognised. Incan legend says this celestial llama descends to Earth at midnight when nobody is watching and drinks from the oceans, preventing deluge.
Marcelo Valero is a guide for tour company Atlantis Bolivia and an expert on Andean cosmology. He explained that these celestial animals helped the Incas predict earthly phenomena. Like terrestrial snakes, which are most active during the rainy season, the celestial serpent, or mach’acuay, becomes visible in the sky at that time of the year.
Of course, the Incas also mapped the more traditional, connect-the-dot constellations, which represent inanimate architectural and geometric forms. But with a more complex sky to observe at night, these early astronomers certainly spoiled themselves with the beauty of the heavens, taking the opportunity to dream-up forms that don’t make their way to northern eyes.
Explore Bolivia from your living room, but don't forget to grab your guns
Bolivia is the largest cocaine producer in the world. The vicious Santa Blanca Mexican drug cartel, a rising underworld power and global threat, has turned it into a crime-ridden narco-state. Large-scale military intervention is not the answer.
Enter ‘The Ghosts’, a legendary US Elite Special Operations team made up of experts in taking down criminal organisations through highly classified covert operations. Their next mission? Destabilise drug trafficking across Bolivia, assassinate high-profile targets and break ties between the Santa Blanca drug cartel and the corrupt government.
Or so Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands would have you believe.
This upcoming video game, from French developer Ubisoft, was announced at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. It will place gamers in the boots of the Ghosts, leaving them free to roam and wreak havoc in a gigantic Bolivian playground.
The Altiplano, the Salar de Uyuni, the Amazon Basin and the infamous Death Road are among the locations the Ghosts will find themselves in. In order to make these virtual worlds as realistic as possible, Ubisoft conducted two weeks of research in Bolivia, consulting the likes of local officials and botanists. Such diversity of terrain will keep the gameplay fresh, forcing players to adapt their approach to the landscape at every shootout or car chase.
‘I want to play it, I really want to play it!’ exclaims Boris Iván Miranda, a Bolivian journalist with four years experience covering the drug trade. Watching the game’s reveal trailer, this avid gamer sees something magical about exploring familiar places in a digital space.
The game will run on the latest hardware, making it difficult for an untrained eye to distinguish between the game’s virtual environment and reality. However, when it comes to the story, which is supposedly inspired by the ‘brutal reality’ of Bolivia, Boris is not convinced.
‘The idea of Bolivia being a narco-ridden state is exaggerated,’ Boris explains. ‘The biggest clans are in Mexico, Colombia and now Brazil. In Bolivia the clans are smaller. Many of them are familial and they only support these larger clans.’
Despite this discrepancy between the game and Bolivian reality, Boris does not rule out that the game’s bloody outlook could eventually play out in the country. ‘The border between Brazil and Bolivia is larger than the border between U.S and Mexico,’ he says. ‘Brazil is now the second biggest consumer of cocaine and its derivatives, so it’s hard to tell what might happen here in the next five or ten years. Drug lords are looking towards Bolivia for new business opportunities.’
At least for now, the peaceful Bolivian coca farms are a far cry from the savage cartel shootouts and reprisal killings depicted in Wildlands. Such acts are confined to countries like Mexico and Colombia, where large cartels run the more lucrative operations within the supply chain.
Wildlands exaggerates the reality of drug trade in Bolivia and the blockbuster game could potentially harm the country’s image, but Boris does not think this is something worth worrying about. ‘It’s only a game after all,’ he says, ‘and people see these things happen all the time in the media.’
It’s not the first time mainstream media misrepresents a developing country. Boris recalls a controversial episode of The Simpsons where the family visits Rio de Janeiro and is subject to kidnapping by taxi drivers, muggings by children, assaults by abusive monkeys and daily interactions with an entirely bisexual male population. By comparison, the distortions in Wildlands seem less farfetched.
And yet it is possible that Wildlands will draw little media attention in Bolivia, where the latest videogames are not commonplace. According to Boris, ‘In Bolivia it is easy to get copied games for Playstation 1 and 2, but you can’t find games for later consoles.’ In order to get his hands on Sony’s latest Playstation, Boris had to fly to Miami to purchase the console.
That said, the game might boost the country’s image by putting its stunning landscapes and rich biodiversity under the global spotlight. With Bolivia having a relatively low profile in popular culture worldwide, this will almost surely be the first glimpse into the country for many gamers.
For those who can look past the distorted reality and clichéd storylines of make-believe American heroics, Wildlands could provide a thrilling gaming experience, complemented by a beautiful Bolivian backdrop.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands will be released on PS4, Xbox One and PC. The release date is yet to be announced.
