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. . . .