While waiting for our train with Jen and Andrew, we composed a few lines of "You know you're in Bolivia when..."
- you order a litre of beer and a ten-year-old serves it to you, popping the top like he does it every day.
- at your local store, you are given a few pieces of candy in lieu of change.
- restaurants run out of food by 1 p.m.
- stores close from noon until 2, or later.
- when you run out of gas for your kitchen stove, you have to listen for a truck with guys banging on gas tanks, which could take several days while your meal gets cold.
- you stay in a hotel room in the winter at 16,000 feet altitude, and there is no heat.
- a bill worth $1.13 is too large to spend.
- your main goal when you go to the market is to hoard as much change as you can.
- you are pickpocketed and your biggest disappointement is that you lost all the change you had been hoarding.
- you can get a three-course meal for $1.50.
- the same CD is playing on any bus.
- to get some local news on any given day, you can go to the plaza to see who is protesting.
- people in the plaza pay money to receive flyers and pamphlets from activists who are tabling.
- people have read their constitution.
- when you take a collective taxi, you ride with 11 other people in a Toyota hatchback for four hours before reaching your destination.
- you have to look both ways before crossing the sidewald because you might be hit by a motorcycle.
- cars have the right of way over pedestrians, but are more curteous to dogs, and stop lights are optional.
- when a motorist almost hits a pedestrian, the motorist yells at the pedestrian.
- for two weeks a year, it's completely acceptable to throw water balloons at any woman on the street, and even to dump buckets of water on her.
- fresh vegetables are much cheaper to buy than processed food.
- you can buy more than 200 varieties of potatoes, and they're best at your local market!
- you make the shower hotter by decreasing the water flow.
- you are glad to see a squat toilet.
- you can buy fresh squeezed orange juice on the street for 25 cents.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Tupiza and the Salar
After a cold visit to Oruro, at 12,000 feet, warmed by a visit to some nearby hot springs, we took a 13-hour train ride to Tupiza. We saw many flamingos migrating. We descended to Tupiza, at about 9,000 feet. Tupiza is where outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are said to have spent their final days.
Butch and Sundance fled from the U.S. to Argentina with Sundance's girlfriend Ethel Place. They bought a ranch and also engaged in cattle rustling until someone figured out that they were wanted in the U.S. They fled to Bolivia where they robbed more trains and banks, and they were stealing the payroll on its way to the miners when they were finally killed in a shootout, according to legend. Some say that only Sundance was killed and that Butch made it back to the U.S. In any case, the final robbery and the shootout were near Tupiza, and you can see why U.S. wild west outlaws would like this place.
The land is like Utah, full of red rocks shaped like spires and hoodoos. We hiked in a canyon similar to Utah's slot canyons. We watched a man collect gravel by shoveling dirt through a screen held up by a stick, collecting only the larger stones. The same technology would have been used during the time of Butch and Sundance.
The next morning we left for a four-day 4WD tour of the country between Tupiza and Uyuni, ending in the salt flat. From Tupiza we climbed up onto the altiplano, or high plane, which is mostly between 12,000 and 16,000 feet, with peaks up to 19,000 feet. We shared the tour with another couple, Jen and Andrew, who are also from the U.S. and living in Cochabamba. And we were guided by Jose and his wife Berta, who cooked delicious meals for us.
On the first day we visited several tiny villages, some subsisting on mining and others on llamas. We saw beautiful red rocks and scenery that reminded us of Canyonlands in Utah. We saw a mule train going from one village to another, and at night we played soccer by moonlight with Quechua-speaking children, at about 14,000 feet in altitude.
The hotel is what is called basic, but we did have a bed in a room with Jen and Andrew, whose thermometer recorded that it got down to 41 degrees in our room at night. It was well below freezing outside. Even at this altitude, Bolivians don't have heat. There is little to burn on the altiplano.
So that the Landcruiser would start the next morning, our guide covered the engine with blankets and started it every two hours during the night. And he woke us up at 4:30 the next morning for a day of visiting beautiful startlingly-colored lakes surrounded by mountains that are also colored by the minerals in this region. We saw geysers, flamingos, and had one flat tire. We also got to soak at a beautiful hot spring overlooking a lake backed by mountains. At times, we were as high as 16,000 feet.
On the third day we saw more beautiful lakes, more flamingos, a fox, many guanaco (the wild ancestor of the llama), and had four flat tires! Jose and Berta can change a tire in about five minutes time usually, although on one occasion the jack tipped over and the wheel crashed down onto the sand, fortunately not on top of anybody. At night we stayed in a hotel made entirely of salt! Even our bed was made of salt. Check out our pictures at flickr.com/photos/kimigary.
On day four we got up at 4:30 a.m. in order to watch the sun rise over the salar, a beautiful experience. The salar is the hugest salt flat in the world. I was surprised at how hard the salt was. Our vehicle left no tracks on it. We hiked on the "island", an outcropping of coral and cactus that used to be an island when the salar was a lake. And we took many silly depth of field pictures, because on the salar everything is flat and white and you can't tell how far away things are.
We ended our tour in Uyuni, and took the train to Oruro. On account of a roadblock by students who wanted health care, no buses were running from Oruro to Cochabamba, but we found a mini-van that would take us to the road block. From there we walked for about 15 minutes, with many other people doing the same thing, through the roadblock. We got in another mini-van on the other side, and we enjoyed the sunny warm weather as we arrived in Cochabamba. (During winter, every day is the same in Cocha. 80 degrees during the day and 50 degrees at night. No precipitation).
Back in Cochabamba, we discovered the American clothing section of the market. Several city blocks contain stall after stall of used American clothing. This clothing comes from U.S. thrift stores. Some of the clothing even bears price tags from thrift stores that I recognize. You can get almost anything for a dollar or two, and it's even in American sizes, big enough for us!
Also back in Cochabamba, our housemate's brother is visiting from Scotland, and he brought two packs of REAL CHEDDAR CHEESE! I hadn't tasted anything like that in the nine months that we've been in South America! Yum!
Butch and Sundance fled from the U.S. to Argentina with Sundance's girlfriend Ethel Place. They bought a ranch and also engaged in cattle rustling until someone figured out that they were wanted in the U.S. They fled to Bolivia where they robbed more trains and banks, and they were stealing the payroll on its way to the miners when they were finally killed in a shootout, according to legend. Some say that only Sundance was killed and that Butch made it back to the U.S. In any case, the final robbery and the shootout were near Tupiza, and you can see why U.S. wild west outlaws would like this place.
The land is like Utah, full of red rocks shaped like spires and hoodoos. We hiked in a canyon similar to Utah's slot canyons. We watched a man collect gravel by shoveling dirt through a screen held up by a stick, collecting only the larger stones. The same technology would have been used during the time of Butch and Sundance.
The next morning we left for a four-day 4WD tour of the country between Tupiza and Uyuni, ending in the salt flat. From Tupiza we climbed up onto the altiplano, or high plane, which is mostly between 12,000 and 16,000 feet, with peaks up to 19,000 feet. We shared the tour with another couple, Jen and Andrew, who are also from the U.S. and living in Cochabamba. And we were guided by Jose and his wife Berta, who cooked delicious meals for us.
On the first day we visited several tiny villages, some subsisting on mining and others on llamas. We saw beautiful red rocks and scenery that reminded us of Canyonlands in Utah. We saw a mule train going from one village to another, and at night we played soccer by moonlight with Quechua-speaking children, at about 14,000 feet in altitude.
The hotel is what is called basic, but we did have a bed in a room with Jen and Andrew, whose thermometer recorded that it got down to 41 degrees in our room at night. It was well below freezing outside. Even at this altitude, Bolivians don't have heat. There is little to burn on the altiplano.
So that the Landcruiser would start the next morning, our guide covered the engine with blankets and started it every two hours during the night. And he woke us up at 4:30 the next morning for a day of visiting beautiful startlingly-colored lakes surrounded by mountains that are also colored by the minerals in this region. We saw geysers, flamingos, and had one flat tire. We also got to soak at a beautiful hot spring overlooking a lake backed by mountains. At times, we were as high as 16,000 feet.
On the third day we saw more beautiful lakes, more flamingos, a fox, many guanaco (the wild ancestor of the llama), and had four flat tires! Jose and Berta can change a tire in about five minutes time usually, although on one occasion the jack tipped over and the wheel crashed down onto the sand, fortunately not on top of anybody. At night we stayed in a hotel made entirely of salt! Even our bed was made of salt. Check out our pictures at flickr.com/photos/kimigary.
On day four we got up at 4:30 a.m. in order to watch the sun rise over the salar, a beautiful experience. The salar is the hugest salt flat in the world. I was surprised at how hard the salt was. Our vehicle left no tracks on it. We hiked on the "island", an outcropping of coral and cactus that used to be an island when the salar was a lake. And we took many silly depth of field pictures, because on the salar everything is flat and white and you can't tell how far away things are.
We ended our tour in Uyuni, and took the train to Oruro. On account of a roadblock by students who wanted health care, no buses were running from Oruro to Cochabamba, but we found a mini-van that would take us to the road block. From there we walked for about 15 minutes, with many other people doing the same thing, through the roadblock. We got in another mini-van on the other side, and we enjoyed the sunny warm weather as we arrived in Cochabamba. (During winter, every day is the same in Cocha. 80 degrees during the day and 50 degrees at night. No precipitation).
Back in Cochabamba, we discovered the American clothing section of the market. Several city blocks contain stall after stall of used American clothing. This clothing comes from U.S. thrift stores. Some of the clothing even bears price tags from thrift stores that I recognize. You can get almost anything for a dollar or two, and it's even in American sizes, big enough for us!
Also back in Cochabamba, our housemate's brother is visiting from Scotland, and he brought two packs of REAL CHEDDAR CHEESE! I hadn't tasted anything like that in the nine months that we've been in South America! Yum!
Monday, May 12, 2008
Road block, mining
Today we hitched a ride with our new friends Laura and Matt, a brother and sister pair from Denver who are driving from Chile through Argentina and north all the way back to Denver.
Matt and Laura drove us to Oruro, from where we will take a train to the Salar de Uyuni. It was a nice change of pace, and somehow a different way of life, to ride in a private car with friends. A few hours down the road we were very glad to be in a private car rather than a bus, as we ran into a bloqueo, or road block.
A group of campesinos (peasants) had blocked the highway, and trucks and buses were lined up in both directions. This is a common form of protest here, although in this case I have no idea what the protest was about. We approached the road block cautiously, and one of the campesinos told us that the road block does not target tourists, and that there is a special road for tourists.
We followed another private car on this "special road" which consisted of a dirt trail through gullies and fording a small stream. The other car was having some trouble with the terrain, and we pushed them a couple of times when they got stuck. They were tourists from Peru. We were lucky to have had the opportunity to push them because soon we encountered a small group of men blocking the dirt road with rocks and poles. Just as we were discussing whether we should try to talk our way through this or pretend we don´t speak Spanish, the Peruvian tourists negotiated our passage through for a cost of 20 Bolivianos, or U.S. $2.26. The money was ostensibly so that the protesters could buy some coca leaves to chew.
Only as we were driving through did the protesters realize that we were gringos. We wondered if we would have paid a lot more if that had been apparent from the beginning. We´ve been told that if you try to pass without permission, the protestors will break the windows of your car, or worse.
Twenty minutes later, and after pushing the Peruvians one more time, we were back on the highway to Oruro. If we had been on a bus, we would still be sitting at the road block.
In Oruro we said goodbye to Laura and Matt, and we visited a mining museum. The mine tunnel, strangely, starts in the back of a church. We walked through the church and down into the tunnel, where we saw lots of mining equipment and two statues of "El Tío," the god of the underground -- some people call him a devil -- and protector of miners. The Bolivian family who toured the mine shaft with us put a lit cigarette in El Tío´s mouth, adding to the many offerings of tobacco, coca and alcohol that surrounded El Tío. The section of the mine that we visted has been closed for 80 years, but other sections of the mine are still in operation.
Many travelers visit the working mines in Potosí, another Bolivian mining town. The women and men and children who work in Potosí´s cooperative mines work under the most primitive conditions and normally die of silicosis pneumonia within ten to fifteen years of entering the mines.
Since cooperative mine are owned by the impoverished miners, they must purchase all of their tools themselves, and all of the work is done by hand with explosives and primitive tools. At one time Potosí was the largest and richest city in the Americas, due to the silver extracted by millions of indigenous and African slaves.
The slaves worked, ate and slept in the mines, remaining underground without seeing daylight for four months at a time. Between 155 and 1825, eight million Africans and indigenous Bolivians died from the appalling conditions. Today, conditions have improved little, and I am not sure whether I want to visit the mines in Potosí.
Matt and Laura drove us to Oruro, from where we will take a train to the Salar de Uyuni. It was a nice change of pace, and somehow a different way of life, to ride in a private car with friends. A few hours down the road we were very glad to be in a private car rather than a bus, as we ran into a bloqueo, or road block.
A group of campesinos (peasants) had blocked the highway, and trucks and buses were lined up in both directions. This is a common form of protest here, although in this case I have no idea what the protest was about. We approached the road block cautiously, and one of the campesinos told us that the road block does not target tourists, and that there is a special road for tourists.
We followed another private car on this "special road" which consisted of a dirt trail through gullies and fording a small stream. The other car was having some trouble with the terrain, and we pushed them a couple of times when they got stuck. They were tourists from Peru. We were lucky to have had the opportunity to push them because soon we encountered a small group of men blocking the dirt road with rocks and poles. Just as we were discussing whether we should try to talk our way through this or pretend we don´t speak Spanish, the Peruvian tourists negotiated our passage through for a cost of 20 Bolivianos, or U.S. $2.26. The money was ostensibly so that the protesters could buy some coca leaves to chew.
Only as we were driving through did the protesters realize that we were gringos. We wondered if we would have paid a lot more if that had been apparent from the beginning. We´ve been told that if you try to pass without permission, the protestors will break the windows of your car, or worse.
Twenty minutes later, and after pushing the Peruvians one more time, we were back on the highway to Oruro. If we had been on a bus, we would still be sitting at the road block.
In Oruro we said goodbye to Laura and Matt, and we visited a mining museum. The mine tunnel, strangely, starts in the back of a church. We walked through the church and down into the tunnel, where we saw lots of mining equipment and two statues of "El Tío," the god of the underground -- some people call him a devil -- and protector of miners. The Bolivian family who toured the mine shaft with us put a lit cigarette in El Tío´s mouth, adding to the many offerings of tobacco, coca and alcohol that surrounded El Tío. The section of the mine that we visted has been closed for 80 years, but other sections of the mine are still in operation.
Many travelers visit the working mines in Potosí, another Bolivian mining town. The women and men and children who work in Potosí´s cooperative mines work under the most primitive conditions and normally die of silicosis pneumonia within ten to fifteen years of entering the mines.
Since cooperative mine are owned by the impoverished miners, they must purchase all of their tools themselves, and all of the work is done by hand with explosives and primitive tools. At one time Potosí was the largest and richest city in the Americas, due to the silver extracted by millions of indigenous and African slaves.
The slaves worked, ate and slept in the mines, remaining underground without seeing daylight for four months at a time. Between 155 and 1825, eight million Africans and indigenous Bolivians died from the appalling conditions. Today, conditions have improved little, and I am not sure whether I want to visit the mines in Potosí.
Salar de Uyuni
We are off on a short trip to the Salar de Uyuni, a beautiful salt flat with flamingos and hot springs, today. We won´t have email access there, but we´ll post some pictures when we return in a couple of weeks! Hasta luego.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Change
Anyone who travels or lives in Bolivia learns to hoard change. There just isn´t enough change to go around in this country, and many vendors and small business people don´t have enough money to allow them to keep a supply of change on hand. Consequently, I try to get rid of my 100 Boliviano notes (worth about U.S. $13) as soon as possible because they can be very hard to spend.
Even small change like the one Boliviano coin (U.S. 13 cents) is hard to come by, and store clerks will try to get customers to part with their small change even if the store has change. I have learned to retrieve my money carefully from my coin purse because a clerk who sees my change or hears it jingle will invariably try to get it rather than accepting a 10 Boliviano bill, worth U.S. $1.30. Several times I´ve made a purchase in a store and been given a few pieces of candy in lieu of change.
Gary and I were in Santa Cruz a few weeks ago, and we sat in the plaza and listened to the street musicians play for coins. Meanwhile, coffee vendors scurried around selling cups of coffee to the people in the plaza. We noticed that every few minutes a coffee vendor would take the change out of the musicians´ tip jar and exchange it for a larger bill. The musicians seemed to accept that it was part of their role to provide change for the coffee vendors.
Some months ago, Gary was pickpocketed in a local market. He lost his wallet containing money worth about U.S. $15. He came home upset not because he lost money but because he had lost all of the change that he had been carefully hoarding!
Not everyone in Bolivia knows how to make change. Many of the street vendors haven´t had an opportunity to go to school and to learn basic math. But penny capitalism thrives in Bolivia and when there is a need, someone will fill it. Last week in the plaza I saw a man with a table and a sign saying that he teaches mental math.
Not everyone in Bolivia has a place to poop, either. Yesterday my house mate saw an old man pooping next to church wall near our house. Something about Bolivia makes one acutely aware of life´s most basic needs.
Even small change like the one Boliviano coin (U.S. 13 cents) is hard to come by, and store clerks will try to get customers to part with their small change even if the store has change. I have learned to retrieve my money carefully from my coin purse because a clerk who sees my change or hears it jingle will invariably try to get it rather than accepting a 10 Boliviano bill, worth U.S. $1.30. Several times I´ve made a purchase in a store and been given a few pieces of candy in lieu of change.
Gary and I were in Santa Cruz a few weeks ago, and we sat in the plaza and listened to the street musicians play for coins. Meanwhile, coffee vendors scurried around selling cups of coffee to the people in the plaza. We noticed that every few minutes a coffee vendor would take the change out of the musicians´ tip jar and exchange it for a larger bill. The musicians seemed to accept that it was part of their role to provide change for the coffee vendors.
Some months ago, Gary was pickpocketed in a local market. He lost his wallet containing money worth about U.S. $15. He came home upset not because he lost money but because he had lost all of the change that he had been carefully hoarding!
Not everyone in Bolivia knows how to make change. Many of the street vendors haven´t had an opportunity to go to school and to learn basic math. But penny capitalism thrives in Bolivia and when there is a need, someone will fill it. Last week in the plaza I saw a man with a table and a sign saying that he teaches mental math.
Not everyone in Bolivia has a place to poop, either. Yesterday my house mate saw an old man pooping next to church wall near our house. Something about Bolivia makes one acutely aware of life´s most basic needs.
The Autonomy Vote
People told us to stay at home on Sunday, not to go in the street, and for the most part we did stay in our house.
Sunday was the day of the autonomy vote in Santa Cruz, a Bolivian department (equivalent of a state) just to our east. Santa Cruz is the richest department of Bolivia, and many of its residents do not like Bolivia´s socialist indigenous president who has nationalized certain industries and who is implementing land reform. So the people of Santa Cruz, on Sunday, voted to be autonomous.
That doesn´t mean that Santa Cruz is seceding from Bolivia, or that there is a civil war happening. Santa Cruz is saying that it wants more governmental control. For example, Santa Cruz wants to raise its own police force, which is now only federal. It wants to control its highways, and to control the sale of its oil. The autonomy vote was illegal, and Santa Cruz won´t be able to implement all of its plans. The vote mainly was a bargaining tool for Santa Cruz.
Meanwhile, on the day of the vote a huge protest took place in Cochabamba. Tens of thousands of people came from the country to form many marches in Cochabamba, all meeting near the center of the city. The protesters in Cochabamba support MAS, the party of Evo Morales, Bolivia´s president. They marched for unity in Bolivia, and against autonomy of Santa Cruz and the other departments that are demanding it.
The protesters were mainly indigenous people -- factory workers, farmers, etc. -- and marched in traditional clothing, some playing traditional instruments. The protests in Cochabamba were peaceful, and it would have been fine for us to be on the street. However, the two houses operated by the NGO where I work are both full of our traveling friends, so hanging out in the house together wasn´t a bad way to spend a Sunday.
If you want to read more about Bolivian news and politics, check out democracyctr.org.
Sunday was the day of the autonomy vote in Santa Cruz, a Bolivian department (equivalent of a state) just to our east. Santa Cruz is the richest department of Bolivia, and many of its residents do not like Bolivia´s socialist indigenous president who has nationalized certain industries and who is implementing land reform. So the people of Santa Cruz, on Sunday, voted to be autonomous.
That doesn´t mean that Santa Cruz is seceding from Bolivia, or that there is a civil war happening. Santa Cruz is saying that it wants more governmental control. For example, Santa Cruz wants to raise its own police force, which is now only federal. It wants to control its highways, and to control the sale of its oil. The autonomy vote was illegal, and Santa Cruz won´t be able to implement all of its plans. The vote mainly was a bargaining tool for Santa Cruz.
Meanwhile, on the day of the vote a huge protest took place in Cochabamba. Tens of thousands of people came from the country to form many marches in Cochabamba, all meeting near the center of the city. The protesters in Cochabamba support MAS, the party of Evo Morales, Bolivia´s president. They marched for unity in Bolivia, and against autonomy of Santa Cruz and the other departments that are demanding it.
The protesters were mainly indigenous people -- factory workers, farmers, etc. -- and marched in traditional clothing, some playing traditional instruments. The protests in Cochabamba were peaceful, and it would have been fine for us to be on the street. However, the two houses operated by the NGO where I work are both full of our traveling friends, so hanging out in the house together wasn´t a bad way to spend a Sunday.
If you want to read more about Bolivian news and politics, check out democracyctr.org.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Au pair
Our friend Carolina, a young woman from Cochabamba, will go to New Orleans to work as an au pair, or nanny, in a few weeks. She will work for an American family, taking care of their three children, for a year while she hopes to improve her English.
Carolina is nervous about the food in the U.S., and the timing of the meals. Here in Bolivia people eat a huge lunch and not much of a dinner, often just bread and tea.
She will be required to drive the children in her care to school, etc., and she is nervous about driving a car. She doesn´t know anybody who owns a car in Cochabamba, but she has taken driving lessons. I told her it will be easier in the U.S., where the streets are wider and more orderly.
I told Carolina about libraries in the U.S. I told her that she can get a library card and then borrow books and movies for free, as well as use the internet. She was amazed, and she was amazed when I told her that in the U.S. I have many boxes of books, stored with my good friends Angela and Joe. Books are expensive in Bolivia. Instead of buying books, most people buy photocopies of books. I can take my friend´s travel guide book to any photocopy shop and have it copied and bound with a spiral for about U.S. $4. University students are probably the biggest consumers of photocopied books.
I´m excited for Carolina, and if all goes well she will work a lot but also have time to work on her English. Having worked with immigrant guest workers who were horribly abused in the U.S., I can´t help but fear that Carolina´s employer may not pay her as promised, may make her work many more hours than stated in her contract, may treat her badly in in a worst case scenario may threaten her and forbid her from leaving the house. But I can´t tell Carolina any of this, and I can only hope that her host family is good to her and that she has a good experience in the U.S.
Carolina is nervous about the food in the U.S., and the timing of the meals. Here in Bolivia people eat a huge lunch and not much of a dinner, often just bread and tea.
She will be required to drive the children in her care to school, etc., and she is nervous about driving a car. She doesn´t know anybody who owns a car in Cochabamba, but she has taken driving lessons. I told her it will be easier in the U.S., where the streets are wider and more orderly.
I told Carolina about libraries in the U.S. I told her that she can get a library card and then borrow books and movies for free, as well as use the internet. She was amazed, and she was amazed when I told her that in the U.S. I have many boxes of books, stored with my good friends Angela and Joe. Books are expensive in Bolivia. Instead of buying books, most people buy photocopies of books. I can take my friend´s travel guide book to any photocopy shop and have it copied and bound with a spiral for about U.S. $4. University students are probably the biggest consumers of photocopied books.
I´m excited for Carolina, and if all goes well she will work a lot but also have time to work on her English. Having worked with immigrant guest workers who were horribly abused in the U.S., I can´t help but fear that Carolina´s employer may not pay her as promised, may make her work many more hours than stated in her contract, may treat her badly in in a worst case scenario may threaten her and forbid her from leaving the house. But I can´t tell Carolina any of this, and I can only hope that her host family is good to her and that she has a good experience in the U.S.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
May Day
We´re settling back into life in Cochabamba, and last night we went bowling with our house mates and friends in Cochabamba. Apparently, I have a distinctive form in bowling, and pretty soon everyone in all three of our lanes was trying to do the "Kimi Hop"! (It´s a fun, if not effective, style of bowling!) We went dancing later and had a late night, but fortunately nobody had to work the next morning because today is the International Day of the Worker.
May 1 celebrates the struggles of workers and the labor movement and stems from the workers´ struggle for an eight-hour day culminating in the arrest and sentence to hanging of eight anarchist labor organizers in connection with Chicago´s 1886 Haymarket Bombing. Seven years later, Illinois´ governor pardoned the labor organizers, noting that they were innocent and that they and their colleagues who had already been hanged were the victims of hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge.
May Day is observed in Bolivia (the Haymarket Workers´ Proclamation and a history of the Haymarket Martyrs was published in Cochabamba´s paper yesterday) as well as in most of the world, but not in the U.S. where it originated. In an attempt to obliterate the history and significance of May Day and the struggle of workers, the U.S. government declared May 1 to be "Law Day" and established Labor Day in September which falls on a day of no historical significance.
Those interested can read more about the history of May 1 here:
http://communicatinglabourrights.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/history-of-may-1st-international-workers-day/
On a lighter note, we are moving toward winter in Cochabamba which means that temperatures are in the 80s during the day and the 50s at night, perfect weather if you ask me. And since the rainy season is over, there is not a cloud in the sky! Today we hung a hammock in our back yard. Yay for winter!
May 1 celebrates the struggles of workers and the labor movement and stems from the workers´ struggle for an eight-hour day culminating in the arrest and sentence to hanging of eight anarchist labor organizers in connection with Chicago´s 1886 Haymarket Bombing. Seven years later, Illinois´ governor pardoned the labor organizers, noting that they were innocent and that they and their colleagues who had already been hanged were the victims of hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge.
May Day is observed in Bolivia (the Haymarket Workers´ Proclamation and a history of the Haymarket Martyrs was published in Cochabamba´s paper yesterday) as well as in most of the world, but not in the U.S. where it originated. In an attempt to obliterate the history and significance of May Day and the struggle of workers, the U.S. government declared May 1 to be "Law Day" and established Labor Day in September which falls on a day of no historical significance.
Those interested can read more about the history of May 1 here:
http://communicatinglabourrights.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/history-of-may-1st-international-workers-day/
On a lighter note, we are moving toward winter in Cochabamba which means that temperatures are in the 80s during the day and the 50s at night, perfect weather if you ask me. And since the rainy season is over, there is not a cloud in the sky! Today we hung a hammock in our back yard. Yay for winter!
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