If one had to pick the most notable Bolivian characteristics it would be their resilience and determination. It is not uncommon to come across marches in La Paz; Bolivians chant and protest with an unbreakable zeal, and you can see that they are not about to give up. Bolivia will probably survive any of the incoming end of the world scenarios that are looming over us. There is a good reason for this.
As the immortal chuños on our cover illustrate, there are things in Bolivia that will survive us all. The chuño, a lyophilized potato, goes through successive freezing and sun-drying cycles in order to become the ultimate survival food. It is the epitome of Bolivian nature and exemplifies an intrinsic Bolivian trait. We never give up.
This month, we are celebrating our 75th issue of Bolivian Express. As we have explored in the previous 74, Bolivia has an undeniable rich history and culture. But it also has an heritage that it struggles to preserve. The crumbling architecture of Sorata can attest to that. And optimum preservation demands maximum toil.
Undoubtedly, Bolivia’s past is filled with lessons for the present, such as Sebastiana, who has come back in 2017. The eponymic heroine of the iconic 1953 film, Vuelve Sebastiana, is returning in graphic novel form, breathing new life to her story and to the Chipayas. Different lessons were learnt when we traveled to the disaffected ski resort of Chacaltaya, to watch olympic participant José Manuel ski down the slope in his Calgary 88 ski gear. Still dusting the snowflakes from our pens, we eased into conversation with La crítica y el poeta, whose critical analysis of distant Bolivian poets leaves further food for thought.
While the critics revive the classic, the green areas of La Paz and Bolivia are left to both Bohemia, an initiative that produces biodegradable paper with seeds inside, and Emaverde, who works hard to maintain and replant the trees of La Paz.
Behind these efforts at preservation and regeneration we found people whose work can seem in vain, but whose passion and hope inspired us to produce this issue. Individuals who, against all odds, and in an uncompromising and unfavourable world, fight for a cause: the skiers of Chacaltaya, a city official in Sorata, poets, a film director, a young entrepreneur, green space workers in La Paz and jugglers in Cochabamba.
We invite you in, to read about the past, to understand how it is shaping our present and future. But the future may not be as certain as we would like. Temperatures are rising. And like the glacier on Chacaltaya, the chuños of the Cumbre may become another casualty of global warming. With revival comes conservation - otherwise all these efforts will have been short-lived. We can learn from these lessons, to preserve our present and prepare for the future.
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Photo: Iván Rodriguez
A classic of Bolivian cinema receives new life as a graphic novel
Flipping through the pages of one of the two copies in existence of ¡Vuelve Sebastiana! Los Chipayas, a graphic novel based on Bolivia’s first internationally acclaimed film of the same name, one sees Bolivia’s simultaneous gravitation toward celebrating tradition and looking beyond its borders toward a globalised world. The tale of the fading Chipaya indigenous population is rendered through anime-like art, meant to appeal to younger, contemporary audiences.
The late Bolivian director Jorge Ruiz filmed Vuelve Sebastiana in 1953. Despite being filmed over 60 years ago, the issues shown in the film are still relevant today.
‘We are in an age in which cultures are almost disappearing,’ says Guillermo Ruiz, the director’s son. ‘Documents like [the graphic novel] are all we have left. They revalue and rescue culture.’ Like his father, Ruiz is also a filmmaker and makes documentaries. ‘The book and film go hand in hand,’ he continues, adding that the screenplay has been adapted for the graphic novel, word for word. ‘Children can view them for assignments and learn about other lifestyles,’ he says.
The graphic novel’s artist, Juan Ariel Camino Aparicio, adds, ‘We want to use the book as a method of teaching kids, as a larger part of modern Bolivian education...By rescuing these ancient cultures, we learn about our identity. We are forgetting who we are as Bolivians.’
Vuelve Sebastiana is the story of a Chipaya girl, Sebastiana, who ventures away from her impoverished tribe and runs into an Aymara boy who is brandishing lots of food. Her grandfather sets out to find her. Once he does, he recounts the glory days of their tribe, days of celebration and fertility, to persuade her to come back. This story resonates with contemporary audiences as it calls for a return to one’s roots. For most Bolivians, that means returning to these ancient cultures.
Vuelve Sebastiana is more than a love story between the indigenous youths. It is an important anthropological work that echoes traditions of oral and visual storytelling. Since the Chipayas were not familiar with cameras at the time of filming, the filmmakers first spent time with the tribe and involved themselves with their quotidian life. Slowly, they started taking out their cameras without filming, and eventually they started recording. According to Ruiz, the Chipayas were unaware that they were being filmed, resulting in a heightened authenticity that is uncommon in the field of anthropology.
It won the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal in 2006, due to its ‘contributions to visual anthropology’ and earned Jorge Ruiz the title of ‘father of indigenous cinema’. Apart from the medal bestowed by the Smithsonian Institution, the film has obtained many other awards and was one of the first Bolivian films to rise to international fame.
According to Ruiz, it is crucial to preserve Chipaya culture due to its rich history. The Chipayas are the oldest peoples of the Andes, descendents of the ancient Chullpa tribe. When Jorge Ruiz filmed Vuelve Sebastiana, there were only about 1,000 Chipaya people alive in the region. To this day, the population is still low, at about 2,000 people. Ruiz attributes the decline of this culture to migration and poverty.
The poverty and struggles conveyed in the film are still relevant to Bolivian politics regarding indigenous people. The issues it presents ring truer than ever. ‘Under the government of Evo Morales, there is more healthcare and education for indigenous people, but not enough,’ Ruiz says. Years after the film came out, ‘Sebastiana’s husband died from a lack of medical attention in his community,’ Ruiz says. ‘He died from appendicitis, a disease that is very easy to cure.’ According to the Bolivian newspaper La Razón, Sebastiana herself has not been able to escape poverty, despite her starring role in the film.
Aparicio, the graphic novel artist, plans to visit La Paz this October to promote the work, hoping to find a publisher. He also has ambitions for future projects adapting Jorge Ruiz’s cult films into more graphic novels. Mina Alaska (1968) is part of the series of pending projects aiming to rescue and preserve Bolivian culture and history.
Like Sebastiana, it seems many Bolivians have powerful reasons to return to their cultural roots. ‘The film still has an impact, even on children,’ Ruiz says. ‘We screened it at some schools and the children were touched. The teachers were also happy to see it because it shows culture reflected through the eyes of a little girl.’
Photo: Hannah Chukwu
Planting seeds of hope for Bolivia’s sustainable future
Walking into the Bohemia Papel workshop feels a little like walking into Wonderland. Every surface is covered in a miscellany of objects – dried orange peels lie amongst coca leaves and cards imprinted with the words Pʟᴀɴᴛ ᴍᴇ! are scattered around the room.
The quirky feel of the workshop carries into the unique products Cecilia Tapia creates: handcrafted recycled paper infused with raw renewable materials. Some of the paper is infused with seeds, which creates a perfect metaphor for the renewable ethos behind Bohemia. After Bohemia Papel’s seeded paper outlives its usefulness, the sheet can be planted into the earth and the cycle of life begins anew, as the seeds germinate and sprout.
Founded in 2011, Bohemia Papel is a manifestation of Tapia’s passion for handicrafts and her desire to reduce waste. This passion is the manifest driving force behind Bohemia Papel’s success. ‘My dream for the project is that the success of Bohemia Papel will work as a reference for the topic of recycling paper across Bolivia,’ Tapia says.
Bohemia Papel is not just sheets of paper though. Tapia’s products include cards, bookmarks and handcrafted journals, including a calendar for ‘Environment Lovers’ – marking out days such as International Women’s Day and World Environment Day. The journals also include instructions for how to replant the paper from which they are made.
Whilst the handmade aspect of Bohemia Papel products give them a characteristically rustic charm, Tapia’s dream for her company is to be able to upgrade to industrial-sized blenders and pressers, so that the products can be produced on a larger scale. Tapia competed in the Latin American Green Awards in Ecuador this year, highlighting Tapia as an innovative creator – and her ethos behind the project deserves recognition. When Tapia founded Bohemia Papel, she ran workshops for local women to teach them how to make renewable paper.
Cecilia Tapia is sowing seeds – figuratively and literally – for future projects to sprout up across the country.
Tapia is also reaching beyond the corporate production bubble to spread her message. She’s looking to work with universities, collecting used paper for reuse. ‘This collaboration is incredibly important to me,’ Tapia says, ‘but I also love that the project helps to generate sources of employment in my neighbourhood. For example, when I have had large jobs I have sought the help of young people in my community.’
But the toughest part about running a sustainability-driven small business in Bolivia, Tapia says, is the lack of help from the government. She laments the fact that Bolivia’s commitment to reducing waste is rather minuscule. ‘My environmentally oriented peers in Chile and Peru are receiving support from the authorities,’ Tapia says, ‘but here in Bolivia there is very little support. When you want to promote something like environmental sustainability, you have to do it alone. There are not many allies.’
Bohemia Papel is leading the charge for recycling and environmental sustainability in Bolivia, and Cecilia Tapia is sowing seeds – figuratively and literally – for future projects to sprout up across the country.
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Photo: Courtesy of EMAVERDE
Emaverde’s mission to protect and create parks in the city
La Paz, which spreads across 472 km², is fairly big by Bolivian standards. While its little sister, El Alto, gives the impression of being even larger, the valley in which La Paz is situated affords striking panoramas of the city that reveal its true size. However, one of the things you notice when gazing at both cities is the lack of parks and green spaces. There are many reasons for this, political, social and cultural. But this is starting to change. Green spaces are being preserved and created throughout the city, despite the many challenges.
The slopes of La Paz can be deceptive. Many of these green spaces are tucked away from prying eyes. But the city still lags far behind World Health Organisation guidelines, which state that urban environments should have at least 9m² of green space per person. La Paz currently has 2.5m²; El Alto is worse. This has cultural roots, according to Yorema Gutierrez, a biologist and local advocate for public spaces. ‘People don’t grow up seeing green spaces, so when building and creating new neighborhoods, the space for greenery isn’t allocated,’ she says.
Gutierrez suggests some tentative solutions for this, pointing out how much more effective grassroots action can be, compared to that of the municipalities. ‘Neighbours can create their own communal projects and spaces. It’s about education,’ she explains. ‘There are plants and trees that don’t need much maintenance, you need to teach people how to create spaces cheaply.’
Emaverde, a local company that stems from the municipal government of La Paz, has a different stance. Under its managing director, Julio H. Linares, the organisation has been working hard for the past 14 years to revive the dearth of La Paz’s greenery. Despite the damning statistics, Linares is optimistic. ‘We have been given a mission by the government of La Paz: to maintain the 500 green areas in the municipality, to create green spaces and to manage the recreative spaces of the city,’ he says. This is an enormous task, with those 500 green areas amounting to about one million square metres of land. In 2005, Emaverde only administered 200,000m².
The fight to make La Paz greener has not been an easy one. Linares cites the numerous struggles they have faced, from the topography of the city to fighting with landlords. ‘It becomes difficult to find terrain to build more parks,’ he explains. ‘We work with what we have. Improve them, re-purpose them, modernise them.’
The recent water crisis in La Paz has been yet another challenge. Shrinking glaciers have dramatically reduced the city’s, and Emaverde’s, water supply. Luis Revilla, the mayor of La Paz, instructed the company to refrain from watering plants with drinkable water. This prompted Emaverde to radically rethink how to manage its parks and adapt their methods. ‘We had to use fewer plants and use more inert materials, like rocks and wood,’ Linares says. ‘It was difficult. Using rocks was new for us and more complicated than what we were doing before.’ Emaverde also began using wastewater and planting species with less water absorption.
The main challenge for Emaverde, however, remains financial. Only 35% of the company’s income comes from private sources, including Doppelmayr, the Austrian-Swiss company behind Mi Teléferico. The rest of its resources comes from the municipal government. Unfortunately, with the decline in the price of oil, local government funding has dropped between 30-40%, impacting Emaverde’s finances. ‘We haven't been able to increase the number of green areas this year,’ Linares says. ‘We are mainly maintaining what we have.’
‘It becomes difficult to find terrain to build more parks. We work with what we have. Improve them, re-purpose them, modernise them.’
—Julio H. Linares
This does not necessarily spell the end for the expansion of green spaces. Apart from maintaining parks, Emaverde also works in reforestation. ‘Every year we plant between 5,000 and 10,000 plants,’ Linares points out. ‘Only 70% turn into trees, but we take care of them. They are the lungs of the city,’ he says.
For this endeavour, Emaverde partnered with Banco Bisa and the social responsibility departments of several other companies. While the central government has also tried its hand at reforestation, it has only achieved limited success. Linares recounts the government initiative, Mi Árbol, which planted hundreds of trees in rural areas. According to Linares, in communities around Oruro almost no plants survived a few months after planting, due to a lack of supervision. Emaverde’s method prevents this problem, ‘We plan, we oversee closely the plants for at least 4 months, to make sure the trees don’t die,’ Linares explains.
By regional standards, La Paz has a lot of work to do. Asunción in Paraguay has 10m² of green space per person. Cities in Brazil have 20m² on average. These neighbouring countries do benefit from more favourable weather conditions, but La Paz has made admirable progress, both statistically and in the hearts and minds of its citizens. ‘Our work has captivated the people,’ Linares says proudly. ‘Emaverde has been transforming abandoned areas into gardens.’ Trees are becoming a more frequent sight in the city, and paceños are starting to see the value and benefits of having them around.
