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La Paz, the highest capital city in the world can leave you breathless. It is not the remnants of Spanish colonial architecture nor the witches’ market in Sagarnaga with its potions to advance job prospects or boost your love life, that has any visitor gasping for air. Nor is it the dried llama fetuses hung from stalls to be buried under new homes as an offering to Pachamama (the earth mother) to protect the occupants.
Perched at just under 4,000 metres above sea level even walking up a stairs can induce aching limbs and headaches. Negotiating the capital’s hilly streets can require the resolve of a mountain climber. You need attitude to take on the altitude.
Less than 10 per cent of the roads in Bolivia, the landlocked heart of South America , are paved and few places on earth will require the visitor to walk as much.
Bolivia, like the national sport, football, is a land of two halves. Barren Andean heights, fertile rain-sodden lowlands. It even has two capitals, La Paz the legislative centre of power, Sucre the judicial. The most obvious contrast though, an impoverished majority above ground yet vast resources beneath. La Paz may be the highest capital but it is not the highest city in Bolivia. The teeming city of El Alto (The Height) with a similar population of one million residents overlooks the capital. More than a million men women and children eke out a living on the land high in the clouds taking itinerant work where they can get it and scavenging through the rubbish dumps of the city below. But there is a glimmer of hope for the residents of El Alto where chequered pre-Inca flags flutter in the stilted breeze.
Until recently Bolivia’s presidents were part of a rich elite clique who ran the country on behalf of the ”white” Spanish-descendant minority. Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, is trying to change the economic structure. Bolivia has the highest indigenous population of any country in South America with just over 60 per cent of the nine million residents claiming Amerindian blood with Quechua and Aymara speakers making up the majority.
Ironically, the most impoverished nation in South America has an abundance of natural resources including the usual suspects, gold, silver, oil, gas and the world’s largest reserves of lithium vital for the electronics industry. But it is in Potosi , an eight hour overnight bus journey from the capital, at 4,200 metres the highest inhabited city on the planet that confirms that resources are no guarantee of wealth.
Potosi is a Unesco world heritage site and towering over the town is the Cerro Rico (rich mountain) – a menacing cone, once teeming with silver, now riddled like a Swiss cheese with half a millennium’s worth of miners’ tunnels.
A century after the Spanish arrived in 1546 Potosi was one of the largest cities in Latin America and the world´s wealthiest. In Potosi´s cobbled streets there is little to indicate its former wealth or that it was, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the largest site of brutal human endeavour on the planet.
Records of fatalities were not kept, miners lives were not worth recording. Indigenous people were forced to work along with slave labour from Africa. Estimates of fatalities range between six and eight million.
The silver found in the hills of Cerro Rico bankrolled the Spanish empire for 250 years and indirectly Europe as Spanish galleons were plundered by English and Dutch pirates. The mines remain operational. Guided tours, about US$50 for an hour, take visitors deep into its bowels an unsettling experience especially during one of the frequent mine blasts that shake the entire mountain causing support beams to shudder producing a dust shower.
“You could build a silver bridge from the mountain to Madrid from what was mined here,” miner turned guide Jorge Suarez said. “I first worked in the mine as a 10 year old for 20 years. There is still as much silver in there as has been taken out, but it’s getting harder to get to and more dangerous. Tunnel collapses are common.”
Working conditions are still primitive. Pneumatic drills instead of pick axes and patchy tunnel lighting instead of candles. Containers filled with ore are still hand pushed and the mines are badly ventilated. Crude sticks of dynamite mixed with amonia ´´to give a bigger bang´´ are used to blast the rock.
Atrocious working conditions still take their toll as they did in colonial times. Lung disease, mercury poisoning, exhaustion, accidents especially with dynamite and falls from ladders are the main causes of death. Life expectancy for a miner in Potosi is a little less than 40 years.
There are constant reminders of poverty, from the shawled, bowler-hatted women begging on the streets to the shanty towns that cling to La Paz but there are also signs of change.
In the unlikely setting of the wrestling ring stereotypes are being turned on their head and left in a half-nelson. A macho sport has become an expression of female empowerment. And Carmen Rosa, with pigtails and gold front teeth, is the undisputed champion.
“We train with men, we fight the men and we beat the men,” Rosa said. “After the bouts, women come up to us and thank us for showing that women can break out of their typical roles. It gives them pride and hope.”
Indigenous women – cholitas – used to the demands of heavy manual labour and often looked down upon in society, rule the ring. There is no discrimination here.
“We are role models for a new generation who want to be seen and heard,” said Rosa, 39, whose real name is Polonia Ana Choque. “Men used to mock us, say we were easy to beat, that we were not worthy. But not any longer. They have learnt their lesson.”
Women’s wrestling is growing in popularity, especially among tourists, and this prompted Rosa to set up a ring in La Paz to accommodate larger crowds. Now based in the capital’s San Francisco neighbourhood, in the heart of the tourist area, Rosa and her fighters enjoy international exposure.
“We are gaining popularity but the government has not given us any help. Sometimes I think they do not realise we exist. It’s funny because they are reforming society for the better but here we have our own reforms in the ring. We are showing the way.” Originally women wrestlers were seen as a novelty feature to add a bit of colour to male bouts when they were introduced in 2001. But amid massive social unrest in 2003 they became centre stage as the men were protesting on the streets. “Now we are the main attraction,” Rosa said.
As theatrical and entertaining as the wrestling is, it is also being hailed as a social and cultural breakthrough.
Cholitas, in their bowler hats and brightly coloured skirts, were meant to be seen and not heard first by Spanish conquistadores and then by their descendants who ruled the country for centuries. Marginalised in their own land, except when hired for menial jobs as maids, nannies or manual labour, they were denied education or any chance of social progress.
“The system wanted us to be peasants all our lives,” said Celima Torrico, Bolivia’s first indigenous female justice minister. “We were kept in the darkness for so long.”
Copyright © 2009 Tom Clifford
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