Do Re Mi Fa So La Paz

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!