Sorry I´ve been such an inattentive blogger, I have to be in this special vibe to want to write and haven´t hit that in a while. Since I last posted however, life in La Paz has been pretty busy with notable new commitments, a global conference, and increased emphasis on bigger projects.
About two weeks ago I joined a sort of intense, very upper-middle class, and extremely hilarious choir called Coro Nova. My friend Nicky has been singing in the choir for about a year and got me an invite to audition. After a test-run practice and a short sing-back audition with the director, I got in! I´d been looking for a cultural group to join in La Paz and while the choir may not have been what I had in mind originally, I´m anticipating a pretty great experience. I haven´t been active in music since high school and I feels really good to sing in a talented choir again. The other choir members, besides a few other foreigners, are upper-crust Bolivians and fill just the right choir stereotypes to be entertaining. People are generally pretentious and trying to one-up each other in making sectional corrections but are also very good-hearted and welcoming. There´s this very well-intentioned 50ish guy in the tenor section with me who acts as auxilary director to our section, much to the chagrin of the director (his brother). The practice room walls are covered in awards and official proclamations so only time will tell if I can live up to not only the choir´s storied history but also the snobby (though hilarious and generally very sweet) expectations of my choir-mates.
Last week I skipped out on choir practice to attend the World People´s Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba. Even though 31,000+ people attended representing more than 100 countries, the event received practically zero press in the states or Europe (click here for details). I registered for the summit about a month ago but when I arrived my registration information had mysteriously disappeared, the first of many encounters with the mismanagement of this world-scale event. I spent the day fuming with my boss´ family, who are lovely, and resolved to attack again the next day. I arrived at the foreign ministry´s temporary office at 5:30 the next morning and after a couple hours wait, found the right person. Once I got in, the conference was a great time.
In addition to the obvious thrill of attending a global climate conference billed as the alternative to the ineffective Copenhagen Summit, I also ran into most of my favorite people in South America. That´s right, the continent of South America. Not only did I see all of my friends from La Paz, but I also ran into my good friend Hortencia (see the theater post) who I didn´t know would be there and in an incredible turn of events, literally bumped into Juan Carlos Donoso, my host dad from Ecuador. It had crossed my mind that someone I knew from Ecuador would be in attendance but I didn´t follow through on the thought in contacting them. We caught up for a bit but were both too busy and had too many other connections to meet to really talk. I attended a few boring panels and poorly organized town-hall style meetings, but the majority of the panels I saw were informative and interesting. I saw an interesting talk on policies to protect the Yasuní National Park in Ecuador and sat in on a panel featuring Naomi Klein and Amy Goodman (:-0) on the relationship between militarization and climate change. Their panel alone is something I´ll remember for many years.
In the end, despite its lofty goals of providing a constructive alternative to Copenhagen, the Cochabamba conference ended just as mired in politics and egos. I attended the closing ceremony where we saw the Cuban vice president, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and Bolivian President Evo Morales (all without being metal-scanned entering into the stadium). They all spoke passionately about the evils of capitalism and the correlation between capitalism and climate change, which is a valid political argument. However the closing ceremony of a global, supposedly representative conference is not the place to rant about politics. Most people with whom I´ve talked about the conference came away with the same conclusion that I did; great things will come out of the networking between organizations and the increased awareness, but governmentally little will happen. I had a hard time listening to President Chavez rail against American consumer culture and the eagerness with which we burn fossil fuels when Venezuela is the continent´s largest oil exporter. I think even more disappointing were the audience members, foreign and Bolivian, who applauded so vigorously without understanding the complexity of the situation, oftentimes without even understanding the Spanish. My friends and I marveled at seeing the power of charisma and mob mentality in action. I´m trying not to be too jaded about the conference and am focusing on the concrete outcomes, but it is frustrating how divisive political personalities and platforms impede necessary change in all countries of the world.
Finally I just want to tell or remind everyone about a project I´m working on in coordination with other Spitting Llama-affiliated people. Noting the lack of Bolivia in American news and the difficulty of finding Bolivian news in English, we´ve been working on a blog and podcast bringing Bolivian news to an English audience. Since seeing the news blackout of the climate conference in the US, I´ve really been reminded of the reasons we´re doing this and would love it if you could check it out. The website is www.boliviaweekly.com, thanks for your support!
27 April 2010
04 April 2010
Being the American at the Table
One of the things I enjoy the most about my core group of friends in La Paz is the international diversity. Last night I had dinner with my 6 closest friends and at one point we stopped to marvel at the fact that among the 7 of us there was only 1 country overlap. The countries represented were Canada, the UK, Sweden (2), Italy, Bolivia, and the US. Obviously with this many nationalities in the conversation, opinions and experiences land on a pretty wide spectrum. Interestingly though, the spectrum has more to do with national politics and experiences than actual personal beliefs. The typical foreign-educated, NGO worker generally has a pretty left-leaning worldview and when we talk about environmental issues or human rights, we pretty much just reinforce each other´s opinions.
But last night we wandered into a political topic which varies greatly between countries, even generally ideologically similar Western European countries: immigration. It was a really interesting and occasionally heated (heated in the way conversations become heated between friends) dinner, with a complicated mix of international representation. For example, in explaining British immigration problems, my English friend brought up the influx of Eastern Europeans to Britain. According to her, Eastern Europeans undercut the minimum wage expected by native British and took some of the lowest paying work from working-class British. This opinion, which is a pretty common one in response to current American immigration as well, was rebutted by our Polish-Canadian friend, who argued that Polish immigrants to Britain are legal and make the same minimum wage as native British.
In talking about countries impacted by immigration, it´s virtually impossible to ignore the United States either historically or currently. But as a citizen of a country which has a disproportionately influential voice in global politics, I generally adopt a policy of not bringing up American politics unless invited to do so. I´m not afraid of talking about American politics and unlike many Americans abroad, I make a conscious effort not to internalize the decisions made by our politicians and let them become a personal guilt. I think Americans need to take responsibility for the actions of our country but it´s ineffectual to do so to the extent that we´re always apologizing or rationalizing. If I always felt the need to demonize or defend the US, I would be unable to add anything substantial to the conversation. So on the topic of immigration I sort of hovered around the edge of the conversation, not wanting to disrupt interesting debate with the conversational equivalent of a 1,000 pound immigration gorilla.
And I think approaching the topic that way was really rewarding. I learned about the recent increase in Canada of requests for refugee status from Czechs. From a Bosnian-Swedish friend I learned about the emigration of Balkan citizens in the 90´s. And although they didn´t come to any kind of agreement, I learned about the complexity of Eastern European immigration to Great Britain from two equally passionate sides of the issue. At the end of the night we all looked over the entrance or naturalization exams of our countries and came to the consensus that regardless of differing opinions on immigration particulars, the global system is generally broken. On that point, we had little trouble agreeing.
But last night we wandered into a political topic which varies greatly between countries, even generally ideologically similar Western European countries: immigration. It was a really interesting and occasionally heated (heated in the way conversations become heated between friends) dinner, with a complicated mix of international representation. For example, in explaining British immigration problems, my English friend brought up the influx of Eastern Europeans to Britain. According to her, Eastern Europeans undercut the minimum wage expected by native British and took some of the lowest paying work from working-class British. This opinion, which is a pretty common one in response to current American immigration as well, was rebutted by our Polish-Canadian friend, who argued that Polish immigrants to Britain are legal and make the same minimum wage as native British.
In talking about countries impacted by immigration, it´s virtually impossible to ignore the United States either historically or currently. But as a citizen of a country which has a disproportionately influential voice in global politics, I generally adopt a policy of not bringing up American politics unless invited to do so. I´m not afraid of talking about American politics and unlike many Americans abroad, I make a conscious effort not to internalize the decisions made by our politicians and let them become a personal guilt. I think Americans need to take responsibility for the actions of our country but it´s ineffectual to do so to the extent that we´re always apologizing or rationalizing. If I always felt the need to demonize or defend the US, I would be unable to add anything substantial to the conversation. So on the topic of immigration I sort of hovered around the edge of the conversation, not wanting to disrupt interesting debate with the conversational equivalent of a 1,000 pound immigration gorilla.
And I think approaching the topic that way was really rewarding. I learned about the recent increase in Canada of requests for refugee status from Czechs. From a Bosnian-Swedish friend I learned about the emigration of Balkan citizens in the 90´s. And although they didn´t come to any kind of agreement, I learned about the complexity of Eastern European immigration to Great Britain from two equally passionate sides of the issue. At the end of the night we all looked over the entrance or naturalization exams of our countries and came to the consensus that regardless of differing opinions on immigration particulars, the global system is generally broken. On that point, we had little trouble agreeing.
01 April 2010
An Unusual Initiation
In addition to working at the bookstore for the next year, I´m also helping out with an organization called the Instituto de Rehabilitación Infantil. The institute works with handicapped children to provide them with low-cost prostheses and therapy. While so far I´ve only been calling plastics distributors around the country and handling translation projects, at some point I hope to actually be helping in the workshop. I have to say, the prospect of adding "volunteer prosthetics engineer" to my resumé makes me really excited.
The reason I´ve mainly been working with translation so far is because the head volunteer of the prosethetics project, Matt, has really poor Spanish skills. He´s a great guy and has poured himself into this project 150% but has been struggling with making contacts and calling suppliers of the various materials needed in the workshop. So a few days ago Matt asked if I would accompany him to a Rotary Club meeting here where he needed to ask for a letter of a approval. The Rotary Club is helping fund a new project bringing in some advanced prosethtic knees from the University of Texas and Matt needed me to ask the club for a letter of support for the UT team.
We arrived at the Rotary clubhouse in Zona Sur and found six middle-aged to senior citizen people seated around a conference table. Singing karaoke. And drinking Johnny Walker Red. I was sure we´d arrived at the wrong place, but the club immediately recognized Matt and demanded that we pick out our songs. Matt adamently refused but I treated the club to a rendition of "Hey Jude" with very little arm-twisting. They all got pretty excited about it and explained that they were practicing for an upcoming karaoke contest between all of the Rotary chapters in La Paz. They took a vote to nominate me their representative for the competition but since I had plans the night of the karaoke-off, I had to respectfully decline. After singing though, I think they were much more willing to listen to our opinions and requests...even if they were disappointed at missing their shot at karaoke glory.
The reason I´ve mainly been working with translation so far is because the head volunteer of the prosethetics project, Matt, has really poor Spanish skills. He´s a great guy and has poured himself into this project 150% but has been struggling with making contacts and calling suppliers of the various materials needed in the workshop. So a few days ago Matt asked if I would accompany him to a Rotary Club meeting here where he needed to ask for a letter of a approval. The Rotary Club is helping fund a new project bringing in some advanced prosethtic knees from the University of Texas and Matt needed me to ask the club for a letter of support for the UT team.
We arrived at the Rotary clubhouse in Zona Sur and found six middle-aged to senior citizen people seated around a conference table. Singing karaoke. And drinking Johnny Walker Red. I was sure we´d arrived at the wrong place, but the club immediately recognized Matt and demanded that we pick out our songs. Matt adamently refused but I treated the club to a rendition of "Hey Jude" with very little arm-twisting. They all got pretty excited about it and explained that they were practicing for an upcoming karaoke contest between all of the Rotary chapters in La Paz. They took a vote to nominate me their representative for the competition but since I had plans the night of the karaoke-off, I had to respectfully decline. After singing though, I think they were much more willing to listen to our opinions and requests...even if they were disappointed at missing their shot at karaoke glory.
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