Returning from the hospice, going to Plaza Principal

(I intended to post this entry two weeks ago.)
Yesterday, I saw a man and woman repairing a truck tire, putting it back on the rim. Though they seemed about the same age, they may or may not have been married. Still, for the way they were working together this had to be more than a casual relationship. To return the tire to the rim, the man used a large crowbar or makeshift tire lever to force the bead back over the rim. When his full strength was bearing down on the lever she, positioned on the opposite side, pounded the sidewall of the tire with a sledge hammer. She was grinning with each swing--I could tell because the grin remained after delivering each blow--and the tire was acquiescing to their guidance. Each time she delivered a forceful whop the man shouted encouragement. Soon the tire was re-rimmed, and he and she leaned on their tools and fetched big breaths in the intense midday sun. If they had not enjoyed their work, they seemed glad that it was done.

I travelled on toward the Plaza Principal at the center of town, noting the new signs for ingress and parking regulations posted near the silent statue of General Barrientos as vehicles--trucks, minibuses, taxis, buses, motorbikes, bicycles, and pushcarts--all jockeyed for position in the usual moiling midday crush at the traffic circle at Avenida Barrientos and 6 de Agosto.

Here, traffic was at least moving, but I wondered what new blockade or protest march awaited me at Avenida Heroinas at the city center.

Before I reached Herionas I had my answer: a group of angry-faced campesinos crowded each of the intersections leading into Plaza Principal. Most were clutching the handles of axes and adzes--turned away from their intended use--as though the protesters intended to clobber anyone who tried to drive a vehicle through their human barricade. Riot police were at the ready, but despite the regularity of protests at the plaza, it was always filled with so many uninterested or uninvolved passersby that it seemed an unlikely target for tear gas.

 On my way to the meeting of our afternoon English conversation group at Espresso, a small coffee bar behind the Cathedral, I asked several people if they knew who the protesters represented. They all replied that these were students from San Simon University, striking in solidarity with the doctors and other healthcare professionals to protest the government'a plan to impose on them a mandatory 8-hour workday in addition to their private clinic work and university teaching. Somehow these guys with the axe handles didn't look like the university type, not even the technical school type. Some lay sprawled in the street, their tools turned cudgels close at hand, others crouched on the newly color-coded curbs (indicating whether parking vehicles there were legal, this regulatory advance indicating another form of growing pain for Bolivia's urban centers), and still others stood in the middle of the street, chanting and forming an impassable throng.

I later learned from some of the students (J-J, F, and M) at Carcel Abra that these club-toting protesters represented the coca growers who, allied to President Evo Morales, were marching-blockading-protesting against the anti-government stance of the other three aforementioned groups, the doctors, other healthcare professionals, and students.

If dissent signifies a healthy democracy, then Bolivia is thriving. However, I am reminded of October 2010 when Lynn and I were stranded in La Paz for more than a week because the coca growers of the North Yungas (where we lived) blockaded the main road to protest the cultivation limit being imposed on them by the government. One consequence of this was that truckloads of other produce such as fruits and vegetables, which, like coca, were grown primarily for domestic consumption, rotted because the trucks transporting them could not pass through the blockades in time to reach markets.

Toward the end of the meeting of the English conversation group I received a telephone call that A, the man from Mali who is being detained at Abra, had his hearing that morning. Based on a plea bargain, his crime was reduced from narcotics trafficking (25-year sentence) to narcotics transporting (8-year sentence).

This news could be good or bad. I know that A, still insisting that he is innocent, was disappointed to receive even an 8-year sentence. Of course, with good behavior, such as attending classes, he can reduce further his prison time even further. At the hearing, as proof of his current good behavior he presented a certificate verifying his participation in my class. I had signed the certificate. It felt good that I had been able to help him. However, later today I was told that to receive the certificate he had to pay an official at the prison 50 bolivianos. This disturbs me because my effort to donate teaching time and his effort to work legitimately to reduce his sentence seem to be entangled in a process to extract profit from prison labor. Fifty bolivianos is not a lot of money, but the men at Abra are not able to earn much money from their work there, and the sale of certificates must lessen the motivation for either teaching or taking classes. I'm sure that if I ask for an explanation I will receive one.

Tonight Lynn and I attended an ecumenical service at a Methodist church in Cochabamba. This was my first visit to the church.  I was tired and would've preferred to go home and relax. When we arrived we knew only two other people there, two Franciscans. Appropriately, unity was the focus of the service, and while I thought this would be preaching to the choir, after my experiences on the day before, I thought that wouldn't be so bad.  Here's an excerpt from the Oracion Comunitaria used at the service:

That every human heart
Be attentive to the frontiers of divisions,
That suspicions be cleared,
That hatred and sin cease,
That we may heal the wounds of disunity,
And that we may live in justice and peace. . . .

Continuing Education

The English class at the Santa Vera Cruz hospice is challenging for me to teach because the students do not always attend.  The class is small--usually only 5 at most--so any absences alter the interaction and also make the overall progression uneven. This is just one of the realities to be accepted. Sometimes students must be away in order to visit the hospital for testing. This is the case with the AIDS patients.¹ Sometimes their level of pain makes it hard for them, and admittedly unrealistic, to focus on communication through any  language other than their own wincing.² Sometimes their medications make it hard for them to focus, so the effectiveness of my own teaching efforts is relative to the challenges of the moment,³ which include my own limitations. When I consider all of these potential obstacles I am happy when I can just walk in and teach the class.

However, circumstances sometimes arise when I'm glad that a student does not attend. This was the case last week when R2⁴ was not there when I arrived at the hospice to discuss the film War Horse. When I did not see him in class I presumed that he either was too ill to attend (he has told me that his doctors estimate his time to live as less than a year) or that he was at the hospital for tests. Neither was the case, which I found out when I had left the property and met him as two of the staff were returning with him to the hospice.  Despite his condition, he wanted to add his name and voice to the protest of the discapacitados (handicapped), a group that feels its members are not receiving fair consideration by the Bolivian government.

I thought about this as I went back down the road toward the intersection where I would enter the main highway north toward Cochabamba to return home. I was impressed that R2 wanted to join with other political activists and defend the right of the discapacitados to adequate care and acceptance by mainstream society. It was good to see him lean partway out of the car window and wave to flag me down.

As I approached the intersection, passing from the dirt road to the road paved with rocks, I saw the disassembled sections of several carnival rides--a ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and a spinning cup and saucer ride.  These rides were not made of a very heavy-gauge metal, nor were they newly painted.  They obviously had been assembled and disassembled many times as part of a traveling carnival. The rides had been disassembled this time after the completion of the celebration at Santa Vera Cruz in the past week to pray for health and increase for everything from livestock and crops to families and personal health.  This was a celebration rooted in traditions predating the arrival of the Spanish a few centuries back. Three children from the barrio were laughing as they strained to turn the base of the merry-go-round for just one more ride.

In a moment I was passing through carnival memories from my own childhood and from the childhoods of Emer and Norbert. It was hard to think of how many things had changed since the passing of all of the events that formed those memories, and it did seem ludicrous to think that the children might actually make the merry-go-round spin just by their own effort, but who could blame them for wanting to make it go just one more time?

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¹ The regularity of this may have been strained by the current conflict between the Bolivian government and the country's doctors and healthcare workers. The doctors and other healthcare workers, as well as those supporting them, such as the country's university students, have been protesting the government's efforts to ensure that the doctors provide an 8-hour-day's worth of their services to the public, this in addition to their hours of teaching as well as meeting the requirements of their own private clinics. I had a personal taste of the conflict last week when, attempting to pass through blockade lines across the highway to the men's prison to the east, I was first engulfed by a throng of fleeing students and then, after glimpsing a line of shield-and-truncheon-armed police advancing double time and shoulder to shoulder toward me, by a wave of tear gas that left me and most of the students gasping, wincing, and retreating to the side streets for untainted air. I suppose I had been taken in by the frequency with which I have been allowed to cross these barricades in the past and by my ludicrous confidence that the new ordinance requiring all blockades to be opened by 1 pm (my prison class meets at 2 pm) would be cheerfully and punctually honored by all protesting groups.
² At those times it always seems remarkable that they might be in class at all.
³ Of course, there are occasional unexpected challenges such as my arriving early only to find that E, the gatekeeper, is away and so I cannot enter to begin the class. Like many buildings here in Bolivia the hospice is enclosed within a wall that extends around the entire property, and the acreage of the property places the hospice beyond my shouting range. I do not have a telephone number to call the administrators of the hospice, the Calcutta Sisters, so when the gatekeeper is away my best option is to travel the quarter mile or so to the lower gate where usually someone within will hear when I press the door buzzer and will let me in. This is made more difficult in any season because the road to the lower gate is unpaved.  In the dry season the dirt turns to loose reddish dust about a half of a foot deep, especially challenging for me to navigate on foot because of the steep hill and the fact that my knees keep me from responding quickly if I stumble.  The same hazards exist in the rainy season but with the additional difficulty of having to progress cautiously even though each step adds more mud to the increasing weight of each shoe.  In the wet season it really is best if E is at the front gate.
⁴No, his last name is not D2. I refer to him as R2 (and I use that only to write about him here) because I have four students whose first names sound very similar to me, all begin with the letter R, and because R2 was the second R to join the class. Thus, R2.