ISSUE 32

RELEASE DATE: 01 Sep, 2013

EDITORIAL BY Amaru Villanueva Rance

For why is gambling a whit worse than any other method of acquiring

money? How, for instance, is it worse than trade?

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler

Games seem just as popular on the playground as they do in the prison courtyard. Why is this

so? ‘It’s about making use of time which to them feels eternal’ says Colonel José Peña, San

Pedro Prison’s maximum authority. Luis, one of the inmates we spoke to for this issue also

appreciates the importance of games in his day-to-day life: ‘Because our time is often spent in

boredom, it’s important to keep people busy and relieve the tension. People can get stressed

and even violent if they have no way having fun and letting it all out’.

We’re told doing sport gives us endorphins, that taking risks gives us adrenaline. One doesn’t

need to be a chemist or a molecular biologist to understand how much happiness and

excitement games can bring about. But it’s not just about joy; games are also cathartic and allow

us to deal with anger and suffering. And of course, the passions generated by games such as

football are often catalysts to displays of violence between fans. Whatever emotions they

generate, games tap into the core of our humanities, turning us at once into brutes and

aesthetes.

Today, games are hardly the province of children, if they ever were. In an age where all phones

and computer screens seduce and plead to be interacted with through touch, it’s precisely

children who are forgetting what playing is all about (in a traditional sense). We explored the

city’s parks in the quest to find typical bolivian games, lost in time or merely forgotten. To our

surprise, it was these very games—many of them homemade—that were able to bridge

generations, connecting the youngest members of our society with the oldest. In the age of

Angry Birds, a small girl can still fall prey to the allure of learning how to make her own kite with

her grandfather.

But we also discovered that the semantics of gaming (along with coextensional words such as

playing) in Bolivia are stretched to include activities such as rotating credit associations.

Bolivians, many of them middle-aged women, talk of playing the game of pasanaku, in which

they take turns collecting the proceeds from a community chest made up of individual

contributions. This may seem surprising to those used to associating these activities with

financial institutions which are un-fun almost as a rule (no-one really chooses their bank based

on how fun it is). But the idea certainly has its logic. Like other games, these groups involve

friends abiding by a set of rules, and doing so not just for the prize, but to spend time and share

with one another.

ARTICLES FROM THIS ISSUE

PINK FLOYD SINFÓNICO

24 Sep, 2013 | Izzy Smith

I sit here writing this review with Dark Side of the Moon pounding through my headphones, inspired by the performance last night. Last night’s show can only be described as incredible; bursting wit...

CHOLITA FOOTBALL: The Key to Transforming Women's Football in Bolivia?

24 Sep, 2013 | John Downes

When contemplating football in South America, one automatically thinks about those countries steeped in World Cup tradition such as Brazil, Argentina, and even Uruguay. One would be forgiven for ne...

SIMPACHAMAMA - Helping to reduce deforestation in Bolivia, one click at a time

24 Sep, 2013 | Izzy Smith

I played SimPachamama for the first time 4 hours after landing in La Paz. In my zombie-like state, I found the game strangely addictive and continued to play it in a quest to become a better virtua...

BOLIVIA MAR

24 Sep, 2013 | Alexander Conesa-Pietscheck

Alexander Conesa-Pietscheck walks into one of Bolivia’s most established toy shops to discover that education and fun come hand in hand for all children, young and old. What makes a toy...

A PASSION SHARED BY YOUNG AND OLD - ANTAÑO

24 Sep, 2013 | Christina Grünewald

Christina Grünewald roams the streets of La Paz and El Alto in a quest to discover some of the city's most traditional games.  ThunkuñaThursday, 9.30 am. Destination: El Alto. Th...

PASANAKU - Saving With the Heart

24 Sep, 2013 | Miranda Slade

Pasanaku devises a game out of saving money. A group of players is formed, made up of family, friends or colleagues. Each member of the group puts in an agreed amount of money each time the group m...

DO NOT PASS GO - Do not collect two hundred bolivianos

24 Sep, 2013 | Sophia Vahdati

Sophia Vahdati visits San Pedro prison to learn that the games of life played by inmates are not all that different to those played on the outsideDescribing all this now makes it sound like a game of...

WAYRA PHAXSI

24 Sep, 2013 | Alexandra Meleán

Voladores sail in the sky, like vessels of the wind, soaring on the breath of Pachamama. Flyers forge a stronger connection with la madre tierra. Kites harmonize intergenerational dissonance, br...