Photos: William Wroblewski

New beginnings after the break-up

The adage, ‘It’s never too late to try new things’ is often one reserved for parkour pensioners or grandmothers getting to grips with what they call ‘The Facebook’. When I meet Panchi Maldonado, however, whose iconic band Atajo is embarking on what seems to me a sort of trial separation from the end of April, I find a man who defines the philosophy. Over a lukewarm Paceña, I sit down with Panchi, a couple of hours before the band’s gig at Roots Reggae House, to talk past, present, and future. Smuggling sporadic sips between his long, poetic soliloquies, Panchi tells me how his relentless quest for self-improvement and revolution will, he hopes, take his next chapter to new, ‘more radical’, fresh pastures.

Fittingly for a man who tells me, ‘I learnt that rock has never been a style of music; rock is a way of life’, Panchi’s image is iconic. Stocky, with long dreadlocks, a shaggy grey-tinged beard and that trademark bandana, his sharp eyes pierce through a pair of magenta-rimmed glasses that look like they’ve been pinched from the crown of an optometrist’s secretary. It seems to me that there is a certain sense of irony in the name ‘Atajo’. In English, it means ‘shortcut’, but Panchi does not strike me as a man for the path of least resistance.

His father was a frustrated musician, he tells me. Music was his childhood, music was his home, music is in his blood. He formed Atajo back in 1996 with the intention of ‘exchanging experiences, interests, and ideals’, after a foray into blues had proved unsatisfactorily one-dimensional. In the past 20 years, the band has released nine albums, found success abroad as well as in their own country, and has even succeeded in paving its own genre in Bolivia – ‘urban rock’ – through a central desire to ‘reflect social reality’.

One thing that marks Atajo out from its contemporaries is that, in essence, it comprises a fusion of individuals from distinct musical backgrounds who come together to innovate, combine knowledge and abilities, and create new sounds. They cite as their influences, amongst others, ‘reggae, blues, saya afroboliviana, folk, ska, huayno, morenada, festejo, and rock’. Panchi posits, ‘Why not have a band where you can play all types of music, without limiting yourself to a genre?’ This is a challenging feat, no doubt, but Atajo’s reluctance to be pigeon-holed has created a unique and eclectic archive of songs.

When I ask Panchi whether he has any regrets from his time at Atajo’s helm, he cites just one: ‘I only wish that we had been a little more radical in experimenting with more types of music. It is for this reason that we are separating. I want to link up with people from other countries, other cultures; to have perhaps a drummer from Senegal, a violinist from Russia, a singer from Syria. Those elements are going to change my music. So, I leave to experiment.’

While striving to embrace and incorporate such a range of sounds and genres is a trait that defines Atajo, the band maintains a strong sense of ‘Bolivianness’. They struggled at first to enter the mainstream consciousness because tastes had emigrated to Europe and the USA, and listening to English-language songs and Western covers was the ‘96 modus operandi for rock fans in Bolivia.

The stories, the struggle, the subjects of Atajo’s songs are grounded in Bolivian reality. ‘Nobody listened at first,’ Panchi explains. ‘Many people criticised us because we had very controversial and critical lyrics at the time – we emerged at a difficult political time in Bolivia.’

Atajo’s first album, Personajes Paceños (1998), or ‘Characters of La Paz’, is indicative of Panchi’s philosophy. ‘For me it is important to speak to the hearts of the people, to touch their souls, and fire up their minds,’ he says, with a fluency suggesting that this is a well-rehearsed tagline. Throughout Atajo’s career, the band has achieved this by telling real, relatable stories.

For Panchi, one song in particular stands out from this, his favourite, album. ‘I wrote a song that talks about the journey from El Alto to La Paz by minibus,’ he recalls. ‘Once I was doing this journey myself, and that same song came on the radio. The driver said, “Jefe, are you listening to these lyrics?” This was the greatest gift of the album: I realised that the people were identifying with our music, which is all I wanted, that people were listening because they understood it.’

It strikes me in my YouTube wanderings that politics are central to Atajo. At Roots, when the band starts banging out hits like ‘Pulga Presidente’, ‘Nunca Más’, and ‘Que la DEA no me vea’, the crowd seems to enter some sort of trance, breaking out from their dancing circles to join the battle cry in unerring unison. The notorious line ‘Gringo, go home!’ speaks to me on a personal level as I check my watch and realise that the time has raced to 4 am.

I ask Panchi whether, as an artist, he feels responsible for speaking out when he sees something he disagrees with. ‘I don’t want to fall into the cliché of the artist being “the voice of the people,”’ he explains speculatively. ‘I think that all human beings are responsible for telling their stories and as a musician I am lucky that I can do it through song so that message can reach more people. But it’s important to note that you cannot stay quiet if you see destruction and devastation in the streets, if people are killing each other, if there is injustice around you. You cannot stay silent.’ With each strand of thought, the passion behind those spectacles intensifies.

We can, suggests Panchi, safely assume that this is not the end for Atajo. The split, he stresses, is not a disharmonious one – far from it. It seems as though Panchi is sending out each of his knights to search for their musical Holy Grail. ‘I want each member of the band to experiment in their own lives to see what each of them finds,’ he says. Atajo will be back, he hints, stronger, better and more radical than ever. When I ask Panchi whether he personally has any long-term plans to retire, he swats me away out of hand: ‘I could never retire. Music is my life. Without it, I would die.’

As we come to the end of our shared Paceña, Panchi leans forward in his seat as if to deliver a closing statement to his mourning fans: ‘I only want to say, “Listen to Atajo”. I know that lots of people have listened to the hits, but listen to the albums from first song to last, and find out what it is that we have wanted to be for the last 20 years. You are going to find many surprises. We may have decided to split for now, but the music is still there. It is never going to die.’

Photos : William Wroblewski and Adriana Murillo

Alternative facts in the aftermath of the referendum

It is clear from my initial drive down from El Alto airport that this is a turbulent time for politics in Bolivia. Even at a bleary 6 am, the bellicose graffiti lining my descent unequivocally suggest a public at loggerheads. ‘No Es No’ in fresh red paint is slashed by the countering message, ‘El Alto Dijo Sí’. This is not simply a hangover from last year’s referendum, this is a nation engaged in a lasting debate leading up to a landmark anniversary.

More than one year on from the 21 February referendum of 2016, where a slim majority (51.3% to 48.7%) of voters decided against allowing President Morales to run for a fourth term, the scars of the polarising campaigns are etched into the fabric of the city.

My own recent political past has been dominated by two referenda: Scottish independence and UK membership to the European Union, binary votes that split the UK into opposing halves. By opening the vote up to the public, the government had hoped to draw a line under these respective debates. However, both were campaigns run on divisive rhetoric, fuelled by public hoodwinking and baseless speculation. Consequently, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the results have been marred by renewed calls for a ‘free Scotland’ and hope that bureaucracy could block Brexit, thus preventing any closure for the victors.

In Bolivia, President Morales has relentlessly sought to distance himself from the ubiquity of both Western politics and Western politicians. In his words, ‘we are anti-liberal, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist’; or, to put it otherwise, the diametric opposite of our UK counterparts. However, across La Paz, last year’s referendum is casting an all-too-familiar shadow.

Reflecting on his losing 2016 campaign, Morales reverted to one of his now-characteristic footballing analogies to claim the result represented merely the ‘first half’, and that the second was yet to come. Scarred, in his words, by a ‘dirty war’ on social media, the president vowed: ‘This struggle will continue… It will never be abandoned.’

It was after, presumably, 90 seconds of heated discussion, that the staff of the Oxford Dictionary agreed that the ‘Word of 2016’ should be ‘post-truth’. Following in the not-so-watershed footsteps of ‘GIF’, ‘Selfie’, ‘Vape’ and ‘Emoji’, this accolade might best be taken with a pinch of salt. Yet, day by day it seems that ‘post-truth’ will prove to be an era-defining term. Rhetoric and sentiment have ‘trumped’, so to speak, any necessity for plain honesty.

What strikes me about this anniversary of the vote, or 21F in the local shorthand, is that it smacks somewhat of Republican Counselor Kellyanne Conway’s now-notorious pivot phrase, ‘alternative facts’. As if to reinforce this, in an example of somewhat ironic polarisation, 21F is alternatively labelled the ‘Día de la Mentira’ or the ‘Día de la Democracia’ by those on either side of the political fence. The past year, it seems, has served to divide the Bolivian public into two separate camps: those who believe Morales to be the victim of a dirty campaign, and those who believe he is the architect of a conspiracy to devalue the referendum result.

Much of the controversy and contention is centred around one woman: Gabriela Zapata. Martyr, scapegoat, hostage, the peroxide-blonde pin-up girl for contradiction has played many parts in the past year, most with less credibility than her adopted hair colour.

First, she alleged that Evo had fathered her son. He confirmed, claiming that this son had died in infancy. Shortly afterwards, Zapata told the press that her son was alive, later appearing in public with a young child claimed by the government to be ‘a fake’. After an inquest, Zapata was arrested and charged with influence-peddling, illicit enrichment, and money-laundering, and accused of colluding with the opposition to soil the president’s name. Two days before the one-year anniversary of 21F, a weeping Zapata was interviewed for TV network ATB. In the interview, which was edited by Jaime Iturri, the network’s major shareholder with perceived ties to the government, Zapata debunked all of her previous claims, stating that her son had never existed and absolving the president of any wrongdoing. Samuel Doria Medina, Eduardo León and Walter Chávez were instead blamed for orchestrating the scandal.

If last year’s referendum, following Morales’ football analogy, was the ‘first half’ of the piece, the two marches on its anniversary felt a lot like its penalty shootout.

At midday, I linked up with staunch Morales supporters in their parade from Plaza San Francisco to Estadio Hernando Siles. The first impression I got from this lunchtime show of solidarity was that many were going through the motions. Initially, those I spoke to seemed to have convened here as a matter of course, as representatives of their respective politicised factions. Indeed, there seemed a more pressing threat provided by the midday sun than the people’s indignance.

Yet, as we approached the stadium, where just moments before the cocaleros had wreaked havoc with official preparations, the emotional temperature among the crowd intensified. There, I spoke to a long-haired man in his 30s sporting sunglasses and a fitted leather jacket: ‘This is the inevitable culmination of a decade of lies,’ he barked over disjointed chanting from sections of the crowd. ‘We are here to say that we support Evo and we do not believe this conspiracy.’ These true Evo supporters had converged in number to defend their man, their president – a victim, in their eyes, of a mud-slinging scandal that warped the results of the referendum.

Hours later, after sunset had been and gone, I joined the ‘Día de la Democracia’ pilgrimage to Plaza San Francisco. A year ago, the cities of La Paz and El Alto voted in favour of enabling President Morales to run again in 2019. That evening, this could not have seemed further from the case. Firecrackers exploded in all directions; effigies were burnt in the streets; a deafening loudspeaker riled up the crowd with battle cries of, ‘No Es No! Bolivia Dijo No!’

Above the stage there was an electronic advertising billboard that seemed entirely out of place. That is, until the new Samsung Galaxy arrived on screen: much like the phone’s predecessor, this march had the feeling that, at any moment, it could spontaneously combust. Judging by the volume of posters, banners, and chants featuring Gabriela Zapata, the ATB interview had merely poured petrol on this fire. This riotous crowd was at least twice as large as its afternoon opposition. The masses, it appeared, had converged to defend their fundamental right to a respected democratic voice.

With anti-MAS chanting ringing in my ears, and the faint echo of firecrackers following me back to Sopocachi, I found it impossible to reconcile these two jarringly opposed marches. More than anything, they served as an unambiguous illustration that, where 21F is concerned, we are not merely dealing with alternative facts but with alternative narratives; two versions of events utterly at odds with each other. Yet, marchers from both sides tell an edition of the ‘truth’ with such untempered conviction that it is impossible to see any common ground between the two.

As things stand, the final official word – ‘official’ in the loosest possible sense – has come from the side of the government, courtesy of Gabriela Zapata’s most recent U-turn. The case, though, as the anniversary marches will testify, is anything but closed. Zapata’s starring role as eponymous anti-hero of ‘The Blonde Who Cried Wolf’, whether willingly or not, has so effectively evaporated any value of the truth that either side is able to choose the version of reality that fits their existing opinions.

When the ‘truth’ is left up to the eye of the beholder, it merely serves to reinforce the already established prejudices of the public. In such an environment, political polarisation can only intensify. And that is exactly what I witnessed on 21 February, 2017.

Photos: Sophie Hogan

Uber's Introduction to La Paz is turning. . . not that many heads

It would be rare for one to not have heard of it. Founded in March 2009, UberCab, as it was then known, quickly expanded in its birth country of the United States and gave way to a new kind of easy and safe transport. Riders could now use a smartphone app to hail a ride, and pay too. Later renamed Uber, the transportation app has subsequently planted its roots all over the world. La Paz isn't the first city of Bolivia to be introduced to it – Santa Cruz's Uber fleet has been plying that city’s streets since November of last year. Now a month old in La Paz, it seemed time that I gave it a try here. It was easy enough, as many drivers in La Paz had adopted the new system. The car that picked me up was clean and well-kept, the driver courteous, and there were no problems with payment. What's more, my ride actually turned out to be cheaper than the city’s traditional taxi service. The idea seems simple and spotless.

Of course, no company this massive can flourish throughout the globe this quickly without some pushback. Theoretically, Uber possesses the power to damage La Paz’s venerable taxi fleet. In the United States, this problem didn’t seem so toxic (at first – the company is now knee-deep in allegations of unfair business practices and technological skullduggery), but in other countries where Uber has made its mark, local taxi populations are incensed. In 2014, when Uber was introduced to the streets of Paris, that city’s drivers took a stand, coming out in force to block the streets of the French capital and postponing the company’s arrival.

After years of tumultuous success, Uber has faced more competition in the form of an ad-hoc alliance among Ola Cabs in India, Lyft in the United States, and Didi Kuaidi in China. Together, these companies have acted as a check to Uber’s meteoric growth. But Uber wasn’t about to stop. . . In 2016, it expanded into South America, moving into Buenos Aires despite strong protests from the taxi firms in that city, and then, in early 2017, Uber came to La Paz.

‘It’s my first week on the job and it’s good,’ says Enrique, an Uber driver new to the trade. ‘There were a couple of clients who cancelled at the last minute, but after that it was pretty simple.' Enrique’s car is nicer than many of the city’s traditional cabs (Uber has strict rules on cleanliness and how new a car must be). 'For me, Uber is just safer, too, because it’s all done on the app,' Enrique says. He’s right: I felt much more secure getting an Uber than I have when hailing some of the other taxis around the city. 'I think it might take time,’ Enrique tells me, ‘but Uber will have an impact because we’re just advancing with technology and all that stuff.’

There have been hiccups, though, in Uber’s expansion. In late February, the city imposed fines on and confiscated registration plates from five Uber drivers, deeming the service ‘illegal in the city of La Paz’. However, just days later, the municipal government held talks with the company, finally allowing it to operate in the city. This quick turnaround left many people confused, but it continues to operate for now. Most drivers I’ve spoken to suggest they don’t feel threatened by the ride-sharing behemoth from the north. 'I have heard about it coming here, yes,’ says a driver from a private taxi company when asked about his opinion on the transport giant. ‘Honestly, I'm not well informed about Uber,’ he says. ‘I know it works through a cell phone, but that's about it. I think it's giving us an opportunity to improve our company more than anything else.’

There are some people who might have had a stronger opinion on Uber: members of the various sindicatos in La Paz and El Alto that have traditionally controlled the taxi industry.  Bolivian Express visited one of the members of the sindicato, Pedro Domingo Murillo, to get his take on what could be big competition for them. ‘We have micro buses, minibuses, trufis, taxis – so it’s running all the time, we are always busy. I don’t think Uber will affect us that much, because really it seems to be more for private vehicles, sort of for particular people,’ says Manuel, the secretary of the sindicato. He’s even installed the app on his own smartphone – as a driver. However, he continues to defend his sindicato and the benefits of working with one. ‘I work with the trufis, and I’m on from seven in the morning until midnight. We have steady working hours, unlike Uber. . . which is why I only work with Uber on Saturdays and Sundays. It isn’t a stable job.’

Far from what would normally happen when Uber comes to a city, both radio and street cab drivers are relatively unalarmed. But, judging from Uber’s history in other markets, perhaps they should be. Three years after Uber started operations in San Francisco, Time magazine reported that Uber had ‘pretty much destroyed regular taxis’ in that city. So the question is: will La Paz’s transport industry suffer the same fate? In most cities, people were reluctant to move over to the Uber model at first. But both customers and drivers find the Uber model to be easier and more secure, and if so many people here in La Paz seem unperturbed by its presence, perhaps Uber will grow more quickly than in other markets. It will be interesting to see if any protests regarding the transport giant crop up in the coming months.

Uber is available for download on the App Store and Google Play.