For the past few days I´ve been watching my boss´ family wade through the bureaucratic swamp that is getting an American visa in order to attend their daughter´s wedding in August. Yesterday the family had to interview for their visas and in addition to compiling dozens of official letters, passport photos, and copies of everything, the cost ran into several hundred dollars. The Cornejos were lucky enough to have a straight-forward interviewer and will now be able to attend Rommy and Dave´s wedding and visit the US for the first time. Despite their ultimately positive experience, they told me that many of the families appying, many with identical reasons and documentation, were turned away.
To put this in perspective, Americans entering Bolivia have to buy a $135 visa and are supposed show proof of financial solvency, file an application with a passport photo, bring a letter of invitation, and be vaccinated against yellow fever. In reality only the money and a passport are required and the process is relatively stress-free. Traditionally American travelers are used to a free pass in Latin American countries and working in the shop I hear several tourists complaining about the costs of their Bolivian visas. The "eye for an eye" entrance policy of the Bolivian government poses hard questions about American entrance policies and the role of American money in Bolivia.
It´s a difficult situation politically speaking. One one hand the experience of the Cornejo family was incredibly expensive and filled with seemingly random bureaucratic hoops. The system is designed to make them feel like 2nd-class citizens and if anything, worsens international sentiment toward the US on an individual level. Knowing the difficulties of Bolivians entering the US, Evo´s reciprocal visa policy seems about right. Charge those imperialist Americans!
On the other hand, those Americans who are turned off Bolivia by the visa costs had the potential to pour lots of money into the country. Like it or not, tourism is a major sector of the Bolivian economy and several of the tourist operators I´ve talked to have mentioned a dip in the numbers of previously lucrative Americans. I guess this visa situation is just one example of the myriad problems between the US and Bolivia (the ouster of the American ambassador being another toward to the top of the list) but it seems like Bolivians are losing in the situation regardless. Not only are they unfairly prohibited from visiting the United States, but they are cheated out of American tourist money which, while sometimes harmful, could also do some good here.
Coming Soon: my suitcase full of money
26 January 2010
12 January 2010
Two Introductions Personal and Political
Before I left for Bolivia I read newspapers, blogs, and asked around for information about Bolivian history and current events. After my research and bearing experience in other areas of Latin America I felt sufficiently aware of the general social situation in Bolivia. My passive understanding of Bolivian politics was catapulted to in-your-face awareness yesterday with two drastically different introductions to two figures who will play important roles in my time here. The first, our landlady at the store, introduced me to one side of Bolivian politics and my neighbor provided balance with an opposing perspective.
Yesterday as I was closing up the store, my boss Mario called to remind me to pay this month´s rent. I grabbed the money and ran up to the office of our landlady, the misnomered Doña Lili. She was in a meeting but assured me that she would be down to the store "prontísimo," or "really, really soon." 30 minutes later she walked in, knocked over a couple of displays and looked at my co-worker Alex as if to say, "you gonna get that?" She then proceeded to introduce me to old-school Bolivian racism and elitist politics. After showing disappointment that I would voluntarily move to Bolivia, she lamented the current state of country and waxed poetic about the "old times." I have to at least give her credit for not mincing her words in her explanation of those times; things were much better when the "indios" (a pejorative term for indigenous peoples) knew their place in the country and didn´t meddle in politics or economics. She asked me if the "indios" had given us any trouble in the store (apparently those wily folks can strike at any moment) and because the universal rules of etiquette regarding landladies apply here as well, I told her only, "No, I don´t know what you´re talking about."
This unsettling interaction was followed by my introduction to my neighbor Raquel and her family. I went over to introduce myself and within minutes found myself on the family´s couch with a bowl-full of fresh strawberries in my lap and her 2-year-old son playing with toy trucks at my feet. Where Doña Lili maintains an us-and-them outlook on Bolivian society, Raquel shared a much more nuanced and pragmatic ideology with me. She´s excited about the increased emphasis on multiculturalism in the country, distrusts international organizations but concedes the importance of foreign investment, and hopes Evo creates positive change even if she doesn´t like him (a sentiment completely lacking in the US at the moment). She didn´t make any assumptions about my political opinions and openly questioned my misunderstandings and her own.
These two meetings in the span of only 2 hours provided a pretty accurate, if condensed, round-up of the current political situation in Bolivia and much of Latin America. In this example I´m missing the hard-core leftists who have dominated the scene in recent years, but the dramatic differences in worldview between Lili and Raquel highlight some of the problems faced by Bolivian citizens and politicians. As long as a certain percentage of the population insist on the continued existence of two Bolivias, one which has and one which hasn´t, one rural and one urban, one mestizo and one indigenous; whatever hopes for improvement either side harbors will fail. I´m looking forward to talking with Raquel more in future to better understand how she keeps her cool when settling into one of the political poles seems like the much easier and acceptable option. My conversations with Lili will also continue, not only out of necessity, but because on some level I need to be able to empathize with her, if not sympathize.
Yesterday as I was closing up the store, my boss Mario called to remind me to pay this month´s rent. I grabbed the money and ran up to the office of our landlady, the misnomered Doña Lili. She was in a meeting but assured me that she would be down to the store "prontísimo," or "really, really soon." 30 minutes later she walked in, knocked over a couple of displays and looked at my co-worker Alex as if to say, "you gonna get that?" She then proceeded to introduce me to old-school Bolivian racism and elitist politics. After showing disappointment that I would voluntarily move to Bolivia, she lamented the current state of country and waxed poetic about the "old times." I have to at least give her credit for not mincing her words in her explanation of those times; things were much better when the "indios" (a pejorative term for indigenous peoples) knew their place in the country and didn´t meddle in politics or economics. She asked me if the "indios" had given us any trouble in the store (apparently those wily folks can strike at any moment) and because the universal rules of etiquette regarding landladies apply here as well, I told her only, "No, I don´t know what you´re talking about."
This unsettling interaction was followed by my introduction to my neighbor Raquel and her family. I went over to introduce myself and within minutes found myself on the family´s couch with a bowl-full of fresh strawberries in my lap and her 2-year-old son playing with toy trucks at my feet. Where Doña Lili maintains an us-and-them outlook on Bolivian society, Raquel shared a much more nuanced and pragmatic ideology with me. She´s excited about the increased emphasis on multiculturalism in the country, distrusts international organizations but concedes the importance of foreign investment, and hopes Evo creates positive change even if she doesn´t like him (a sentiment completely lacking in the US at the moment). She didn´t make any assumptions about my political opinions and openly questioned my misunderstandings and her own.
These two meetings in the span of only 2 hours provided a pretty accurate, if condensed, round-up of the current political situation in Bolivia and much of Latin America. In this example I´m missing the hard-core leftists who have dominated the scene in recent years, but the dramatic differences in worldview between Lili and Raquel highlight some of the problems faced by Bolivian citizens and politicians. As long as a certain percentage of the population insist on the continued existence of two Bolivias, one which has and one which hasn´t, one rural and one urban, one mestizo and one indigenous; whatever hopes for improvement either side harbors will fail. I´m looking forward to talking with Raquel more in future to better understand how she keeps her cool when settling into one of the political poles seems like the much easier and acceptable option. My conversations with Lili will also continue, not only out of necessity, but because on some level I need to be able to empathize with her, if not sympathize.
08 January 2010
On my own
Two weeks ago I sat in my bedroom surrounded by boxes and piles containing all of my earthly possessions. And it felt good. Really good. Rather than packing my bags, as I should have been, I spent several hours looking through the things I´ve accumulated in the past few years. I found mementos from past trips, pairs of underwear I´d thought were lost, and stacks of pictures from high school and earlier. As fun as it was to look through the old correspondence and take stock of my material situation, there was something even more satisfying about putting it all in a box and leaving it behind. Although I´m not planning on becoming a forest-dwelling ascetic any time soon, my recent move to Bolivia with two backpacks gave a similar thrill of feeling like I´m really flying solo. Until a few days ago I maintained the relaxed "OK, I´m on my own" mentality but recently I´ve felt a slight tilt toward, "Oh shit, I´m on my own."
I landed in La Paz at 7:00 am on Tuesday morning and by 12:00 I was working at The Spitting Llama Bookstore and Outfitter learning the Spanish words for various camping implements, negotiating prices with suppliers, and navigating our surprisingly unintuitive bookkeeping system. For the next year I will be working in/managing(?) the bookstore, organizing a community outreach project, and helping produce a weekly podcast on Bolivian news, politics, and culture. Although I´m going to be working a lot, I´m hoping that this experience will give me a unique perspective on Bolivian life and a better understanding of global tourism and cultural exchange.
Because I´ll be living here for the next year I´m envisioning this blog as less of a travelogue and more of a record of observations and thoughts about the experience. I also hope that the trajectory of my perspective will slowly progress from the, "Oh shit" mentality to something maybe more akin to, "Oh my goodness." Or maybe even, "What was the big deal? Thinking I´m on my own is just a naïve vanity trip anyway."
I landed in La Paz at 7:00 am on Tuesday morning and by 12:00 I was working at The Spitting Llama Bookstore and Outfitter learning the Spanish words for various camping implements, negotiating prices with suppliers, and navigating our surprisingly unintuitive bookkeeping system. For the next year I will be working in/managing(?) the bookstore, organizing a community outreach project, and helping produce a weekly podcast on Bolivian news, politics, and culture. Although I´m going to be working a lot, I´m hoping that this experience will give me a unique perspective on Bolivian life and a better understanding of global tourism and cultural exchange.
Because I´ll be living here for the next year I´m envisioning this blog as less of a travelogue and more of a record of observations and thoughts about the experience. I also hope that the trajectory of my perspective will slowly progress from the, "Oh shit" mentality to something maybe more akin to, "Oh my goodness." Or maybe even, "What was the big deal? Thinking I´m on my own is just a naïve vanity trip anyway."
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