La Paz

Yesterday I visited La Paz. There are not much sights in the typical sense: The Murillo square with the cathedral and the Presidential Palace, San Francisco church and monastery, some colonial houses which now host museums (but most of the colonial houses are already destroyed or about to fall apart..). In one of the museums, they display the few gold and silver juwelry which was found in Tihuanaco (see separate chapter). Unfortunately most of it was stolen either by the Spaniards or by others later... One of the museums is the former house of Murillo, the leader of the 1809 revolution against the Spaniards. This revolution will have its 200th anniversary next year and this is already announced everywhere on posters.. That will be quite an event... Another nice mansion (19th century) has a glass roof and stained glass panels which were designed by Gustave Eiffel...

It is more the city´s life and dynamic which makes it interesting.. especially the life in the streets and on the markets. At the so-called "witches' market" you can find herbal and folk remedies for all kind of troubles you might have.. the ingredients, such as dried Toucan beaks or Lama fetus... (not so cute actually), are intended to supplicate the various good and bad spirits. The Lama fetus is widely used. For example it is buried beneath one of the cornerstones of a newly built house as an offer to Pachamama, the Mother Earth, to bring luck and happiness to the people living inside. For each illness or spook, the "witches" assemble coulourful plates of herbs, seeds and other stuff. This is then taken to a "Yatiri", an Aymara priest/witch doctor (depends on your perspective..), who uses it for a ceremony and finally burns the whole stuff in the presence of the people concerned.

I also visited the Coca-museum, which I found extremely interesting.. it shows the coca leaf's role in the traditional societies, its discovery and use by the soft drink industry and then the pharmaceutical industry as well as the production of cocaine as an illicit drug.

The atmosphere in La Paz is however extremely tense as on the 10th August there will be a referendum on whether or not there will be anticipated presidential elections. Current president Evo Morales, the first president of the country being an indigenous, faces quite some opposition, mainly in the south of the country. If I understood well, he actually organised this referendum himself, which is intended to become a vote of confidence for him... There is propaganda (and it is really just that - nothing to do with election campaigns in Europe..) everywhere, but for both sides: posters, on the TV and on the radio. However, Morales' propaganda outweighs by far.. There are also demonstrations everyday, as the guide of the San Francisco monastery explained to me. Actually, there was a demonstration going on while I visited the monastery and at some point we could hear shots and smell the lacrimonic (??) gaz which the police used.. Today, there was even a bigger demonstration of miners, supported by employees of the city of La Paz, teachers and organisations of retired people, who all called for a "solution" to their problems, mainly increases of their pay (if I understood correctly the slogans). They seem to use this crucial moment before the referendum to get concessions from the government.... The whole city center was blocked, which ended in a super-chaos as the traffic during rush-hour (which is already bad enough) got completely stuck... They shouted: "Fuerza compañeros, la lucha es dura pero venceremos" ("Strenght, comrades, the fight is tough but we will win") and "Evo y Alvaro, queremos solución" ("Evo (the president) and Alvaro (the Vice-president) we want a solution"). Then they entered the terrace of the building of the central post office, which even a massive presence of police could not prevent. I observed the event from a certain distance. It was also interesting to see, that quite some "ordinary" people gathered around and supported the demonstrators.. others walked by, ignoring completely what was going on.. there was also a lot of national and foreign TV and journalists present... Will all this lead to a change in Boliva ?? Well, we will see on the 10th August, when I will already be back in Peru...

By the way: again, I lost plenty of time with the photo stuff and still I am not able to share new photos with you.. I am just computer illiterate it seems.. there must be some better and more efficient way to do all this.. anyway...