Located about 30 kilometers north of La Paz and nearly 5,500 meters up in the clouds, ghosts of a bygone era rest, old wooden relics of a past since past. Since the 1930’s, this mountain, known as Chakaltaya, was home to the world’s highest ski resort. This was the place where members of the Bolivian Andean Club and other visitors could cut through the powder at an altitude high above the flight paths of many airlines, gliding through the crisp, thin Andean air on top of glacial snows. But in 2009, this all came to an end.
Many scientists consider Bolivia a climate canary-in-a-coalmine, a country with a variety of ecosystems with considerable vulnerability to the effects of global carbon emissions and increasingly erratic El Nino weather patterns. One of the first and most glaring signs of this was the rapid melting of the glacier at Chakaltaya. Bolivians watched in disbelief as 80% of its cover vanished within 20 years. By the end of the first decade of the new century its melting rate had picked up pace, and in a relative instant, 18,000 years of snow and ice were gone.
The buildings that once housed the ski resort remain. On top of rocky, brown and black soil, the faded red and white lodge rests precariously along a ledge, its wind-worn siding fading and chipping, a shell of what was once there. Samuel Mendoza and his brother Adolfo, longtime members of the Bolivian Andean Club, still haunt the mountaintop, maintaining the property and serving as hosts to the trickle of tourists that come to this place every day to take in the views and to see for themselves the harsh truth about climate change in the Andes.
Recently, Bolivia has sadly entered the global spotlight yet again, this time marking the disappearance of the country’s second-largest body of water, Lake Poopó. Another drastic result of climate change having adverse effects in Bolivia’s ecosystems, it is more than unnerving to see another one of Bolivia’s natural wonders disappear. Yet again, Bolivia is facing an ecological crisis that is emptying this place of its natural majesty.
In this issue of Bolivian Express, we think about the significance of appearances and disappearances in a changing world. As things come and go, the transitory nature of our experiences come into clear focus, and we set out to see what these processes mean. In writing about the Lost City of Atlantis and the stories of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, we study the ephemeral nature of legends, and how people, and in fact entire cities, can vanish, leaving those who remain to theorise about if and when those who are no longer present may reveal themselves again. In visiting the ruins of Tiwanaku and the waters of the Amazonas, we share stories of Bolivia’s cultural and natural treasures, leaving one to wonder what else is hidden beneath Bolivia’s surface. We hunt ghosts and search for dying languages, and meditate on where tried-and-true, old-fashioned courtship techniques have gone.
In this moment in Bolivia, the latest disappearance of Lake Poopó is surely nothing but a loss, an ecological, economic and cultural catastrophe. But sometimes, disappearances can be seen as an opportunity for rebirth, an opening of spaces for something new to appear. While this may not be in the case with the lake, or the glacier at Chakalyaya, not all disappearances are disasters. Life is full of surprises. One never knows when the next notable thing of great beauty may appear.
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What really happened to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the last moments of their lives?
One of the biggest movie hits in 1969 was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Based on real events, the film depicts the outlaws’ adventures in the North America with their gang, their flight to Bolivia and their last moments on the altiplano.
The film depicts their end in blockbuster fashion, with an epic shootout. But the last moments of Cassidy and the Kid are, for many, still a big mystery, with dozens of theories on how their lives ended. Did they die in the the village of San Vincente like the film suggests, or did they survive the famous shootout? Did Butch Cassidy really get plastic surgery in France and return to a normal life in Washington State? Did the pair escape to Russia and open a dry-cleaning business? Or were they dead even before they reached Bolivia?
LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, and Harry Longabough, the Sundance Kid, were famous bandidos yanquis in South America. They both belonged to the ‘Wild Bunch gang’ that robbed trains, banks and mine workers’ wages in North America in the late nineteenth century. However, after some disputes inside the gang, the duo went their own way. With the Pinkerton Detective Agency hot on their trail in the western United States, the banditos yanquis left for South America to escape the heat and to settle down. Yet their past caught up with them, and after a few years of non-criminal life, Pinkerton detectives found them in Argentina. To get away, Cassidy and the Kid went back to doing what they knew best.
They began robbing banks in Chile and Argentina, and in 1906 found themselves in Bolivia. Here they again tried to live normal lives, this time guarding, ironically, the payrolls of miners. According to letters he sent to friends, Cassidy was tired of his criminal lifestyle and constantly running away. He wanted to settle down for good, even choosing Santa Cruz as ‘a place he sought for 20 years’.
Possibly to create a cushion for retirement, the pair decided to go back to robbery. They headed to the south of Bolivia where there were many wealthy mining companies. On November 4, 1908, they robbed a convoy in Huaca Huañusca, on the altiplano of Potosí department. Two days later, in nearby San Vicente, a four-man military patrol discovered them and shot up the room where they were staying. In the morning, the bodies of two North Americans were found. Rumor says that Cassidy shot his wounded partner, then turned his gun on himself.
It’s said that their bodies were buried in the San Vicente cemetery, in an unmarked grave, but many people believe otherwise.
Even before Cassidy and the Kid fled North America, various sources reported that Cassidy had died in Utah at age 32. Newspapers reported that ‘he certainly must have more lives than a whole family of cats’, and that ‘several of him have been killed but he still flourishes’.
Some members of the Kid’s family believed that he did die in San Vicente because they stopped receiving letters from him after the alleged shootout. Yet someone in Idaho claimed that his neighbour was the Kid’s son, and that the Kid died many years later after the shootout in Washington State.
Cassidy’s sister claimed that he died of pneumonia in Washington State in 1937. There’s also the story of machine shop owner William T. Phillips, who claimed to be Butch Cassidy himself. In this story, Cassidy escaped the San Vicente shootout, leaving the Sundance Kid behind and travelling to Paris for plastic surgery; he then returned to Washington to marry his wife in 1908 (nevermind that that’s the year of the shootout, a troubling inconsistency for this particular version of events). Phillips did have extensive knowledge of Cassidy’s childhood and youth, and he even looked a bit like the famous outlaw. But Cassidy’s sister said Phillips was an imposter, even though her brother occasionally used the name Phillips as an alias. After other Cassidy family members cast doubt on Phillips’s claim, some journalists investigated and proved that Phillips and Cassidy were not the same person and that they had met in prison in Wyoming (before Cassidy even joined the Wild Bunch gang), keeping in touch after their release.
There are also claims from Butch’s ‘children’. Bill Cassidy, who said he was the outlaw’s son, claimed that his dad died when he was run over by a limousine after spending a few years in relative seclusion in Richfield, Wisconsin.
And in 1991, the North American television show Unsolved Mysteries got a call from a man claiming to be Cassidy’s son, who reported that his dad passed away in 1978 (which would make him 112 years old). And a man claiming to be Butch’s great-great-nephew said that there is only one story circulating in his family: Cassidy lived in California until his death in the 1930s.
Other rumours abound: Cassidy died under a fake name, crushed in a mining accident in Nevada sometime around 1944; the Kid escaped Bolivia while operating a Wild West show in the Andes starring Will Rogers and Billy the Kid, and he died in Montana in 1967.
Butch and the Kid died many times in Latin America too: in Honduras, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, shot dead or having committed suicide.
Meanwhile, Pinkerton Agency files either initiated or just added to the theories. After the San Vicente shootout, the agency listed them as ‘dead, but unaccounted for’. In a letter sent to United States about the death of the bandits, the Pinkerton general manager stated, ‘Parker was dead and deader than hell. I am inclined to believe that the information given by the informant about Parker being dead is true but of course I cannot prove it.’
And scenarios kept coming in: Cassidy was shot by the police somewhere in New Mexico. The Kid was last seen in Venezuela in 1900. They were both shot dead in Uruguay in 1911. Moreover, it took three years for the Bolivian government to send an official report to the US government, stating the death of two unknown Americans.
In 1991, a team of anthropologists went to investigate the outlaws’ DNA, to be uncovered from their graves. They had difficulties finding the graves and identifying the bodies of the actual bandits, and in the end the extracted DNA did not match the DNA of Cassidy’s and the Kid’s relatives.
To try and uncover the truth, I went to Tupiza to follow the bandits’ last moments. The dry altiplano made me think I went back in time: horses are still a mode of transport, with their riders wearing cowboy hats. I talked to ranchers, and I was lucky enough to meet some people from San Vicente. Everyone knew who Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were. When asked what happened’, they only ever gave one answer: they were shot dead in San Vicente.
Even today, the true reason for and place of their deaths is unknown. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid certainly did have more lives than a whole family of cats. As for us, we have plenty of theories to choose from. One thing is known for sure, the bandidos yanquis left behind a true legacy of mystery, a mystery tied tight to Bolivia. Regardless of all the theories, it is in Bolivia that the final days of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid belong.
Photo: Oliwia Rogala
“I don’t believe in magic “
The young boy said.
The old man smiled.
“You will, when you see her”
-Atticus
Photo: Kit Fretz
One time the old man said:
“The truth is I don’t understand you young people and the way you handle relationships. Back in my day – in the 80s, I mean – it was hard enough just to meet a girl you wanted to go out with. There were no smartphones, no emails, never mind Facebook or other social networks. I had to wait anxiously for her home phone to ring off the hook and hope she was the one to answer. If anyone else answered, I would hang up immediately, which was tiresome as I’d have to try again later. I would take the number 2 bus from Sopocachi to reach Calle Indaburo near Jaén, a very traditional area of La Paz where my current wife used to live. She was from a conservative family. As you can imagine, she had to make stealthy escapes via the balcony of her house so we could see each other. Obviously, her parents did not agree with our relationship. I was an “experienced 25-year-old boy,” as they saw it. I had left the family nest at age 17 to start working and studying so I could be independent as early as possible. She, on the other hand, even at 21, had to be home by eight o’clock in the evening, escorted by a “gentleman” from her social circle.
“Bolivia back then was going through one of the worst economic crises Latin America has ever seen. Since Hernán Siles Suazo took power in the midst of a series of different governments and dictatorships, annual inflation had risen to 200%. It was an unsustainable situation for a young man like me who had to care for himself. I had to make one of the most drastic decisions of my life: I moved to London, England, where I could save every penny I earned, motivated by the fact that it was the only way I could have a future with her.
“I remember those days at Gordon´s Wine Bar on Villiers Street, the pub I managed to get work in, listening repeatedly to A Forest by The Cure and taking a cheeky 30 minutes every day to write letters about my days in that city. I’d send them by post and wait desperately for about three weeks for a reply. The mental effort to avoid thinking she had forgotten me and was with someone else was truly exhausting. Can you imagine how difficult it was? A relationship between two people was certainly very difficult to sustain..
“Near or far from that person, it didn’t matter. My life and the lives of most people of my generation were geared around being in a relationship. Conventional marriages were idealised.
“Nowadays you lot just live relationships through “long-distance Whatsapps” and all I see are casual relationships everywhere, based on any old thing, whilst fewer relationships are founded on true love.”
The young boy answered:
“Sir, I understand exactly what you’re saying. That kind of romanticism worthy of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez just doesn’t exist anymore. It has disappeared entirely. However, you should know that today I spent four hours at my university where I should have been paying attention to an economics class, and then a marketing one, but my head was exploding as I tried to write the right Whatsapp message to her. Just a little written message, that could be interpreted in thousands of ways and would maybe say what I didn’t want it to, leading to a fight with someone I love and a sleepless night. The other day as I was scrolling down Facebook on my smartphone, I read an almost anonymous post that in my opinion aptly described how we are the fearful generation. This generation was born just to hide behind the image we want to portray in our social network profiles. You, sir, think they help our relationships but let me tell you, it’s quite the opposite.
“I think the ease we have now in responding to a “romantic” message in a millisecond has become a mental effort – an even bigger and more exhausting one. What song should I share with her? Should I reply straight away or wait 10 minutes? No, if I reply now I lose. Has she read my status? She hasn’t been online for more than 2 hours. Is she with someone else? If she sees I’ve seen the message she’ll think I’m angry. It’s 3 in the morning and we can’t stop sending voice messages!
“You should understand, sir, so many social connotations come with this huge range of communicative devices that overwhelm our relationships. Don’t get me wrong, I mean, I’d honestly do anything for her. It is a genuine feeling. I just won’t say it through a tune by The Cure. Instead, I might send her the new crappy Justin Bieber song.”
The young boy laughed about that stupid comment.
The old man was thoughtful.
