Cooling Our Heels During the Blockade

In La Paz During the Cocalero's Blockade of the Roads Into the Yungas

A trail cutting through the last switch-
back on the way to the upper campus

As the spring semester (August through December here in Bolivia) at UAC-CP progressed, Lynn and I felt increasingly more pressed as we tried to plan and conduct effective classes on the upper and lower campuses.  The daily treks up and down, despite my knee and back pain, were a welcome relief.  No matter what the weather, the surrounding terrain is just too beautiful not to lift your spirits even when we were behind schedule and hustling up and down the steep cut-throughs to save time from travelling the entire switchback road. There were enough cancelled classes that we sometimes had to re-motivate ourselves against the loss of momentum.  This was complicated by our need to understand our students' levels of ability, interest and determination.  The intercarreras and faculty retreat were enjoyable and were probably needed breaks, but they also seemed to widen the gap between us and our students as we tried to maintain class schedules.

We were then stranded in La Paz for a week during the cocaleros' blockade of the roads into the Yungas. We didn't need a break from classes, but that was what we had. During that time we tried to take care of personal business (we spent most of one morning using Skype to verify the validity of our health insurance) and to learn more about Bolivian society and culture. We also made friends with the waitresses in the Banais, a restaurant on the street beside San Francisco Plaza. They gave me a copy of their bilingual menu that I could use for the English language students in the Department of Ecotourism.

During most of the week we stayed at the Maryknoll House in Barrio Sopacachi. Besides getting to talk about Bolivian history with Fathers Mike and Joe, both of whom live in the house and have years of mission experience in Latin America, we got to know the staff there--Irma, Rosemary, Grover, Paula, Freida and her sons, and Dora. They were sympathetic about our desire to return to Carmen Pampa but assured us that it was best not to cross the blockade lines. With their hospitality it was much easier to accept this unscheduled vacation.

Three priests from the United States at the Maryknoll House
in La Paz. Larry, on the right, served 50 years on mission
 in Bolivia and accompanied Jack Higgins as one of the
original Maryknollers to come to Bolivia
from the United States in the 1950s. 

Among the guests we met while we were there at the Maryknoll House was Barbara.  Originally from Germany, she had lived for years in Coroico and La Paz, was now living in California near her children and was visiting friends in Coroico when she got out just ahead of the blockade.  Barbara wore her long white hair in a braid. She had a broad smile and a twinkling eye that seemed to squint if she doubted what you were saying. With me, she seemed to squint frequently.

Some of the other guests we met there fit the small world category. For example, Larry, a retired priest with fifty years of mission experience in Bolivia, had also returned to visit friends.  With that many years of service in Bolivia, I thought Larry might have come across Jack Higgins, a Maryknoll priest and the brother of Bitsy Thompson, a member of one parish we belonged to in Nashville, Holy Rosary. When Lynn and I were about to leave the US for Bolivia Bitsy contacted us to wish us good luck in a country her brother had journeyed to about a half century earlier. "The colonel?" Larry said. "Oh, sure, we came down here together--the first group of Maryknollers to come here.  Jack was a great guy, academic type too, great with languages." Later we were able to get his address in the US so Bitsy could contact him.

We also met two priests from England, Mike from Liverpool and Joe Bibby. Joe asked us about our organization, Franciscan Mission Service. Then he said that a few years ago while trying to raise funds in the US he met Lee and Jean Lechtenburg just before they were about to come to Bolivia for mission. We said they were back in the US now and seemed to be doing well.  We told him that part of our work was with the children's library that Lee and Jean had started and that we conducted a morning liturgy of the hours service in the chapel on the upper campus where Lee and his son painted a beautiful mural of the North Yungas mountains on the wall behind the altar.

A portion of the mosaic honoring
Bolivia's desaparecidos.

On one of our walks around Sopacachi we came to a park with memorials to honor Beethoven and also Bolivia's desaparecidos. This park left us with mixed feelings.  I'm not sure why Beethoven in particular was selected for honor in this park, but the beautiful vistas of the city and the mountains nearby seemed to echo the splendor, power and tranquility of his compositions. This was a spirit of hope in contrast to the terrible reality of Bolivia's talented young people destroyed for their ideas and opposition to political authority.  I tried to imagine how difficult it was for their families and friends to endure this needless waste, a dark reality they would carry throughout their lives. This deserves far more than a passing comment from me and the many other visitors casually strolling through the park on that beautiful day.

For three days during our stay in La Paz we toured art museums. I felt guilty doing this at first, thinking that at least a decent conversation with any of the numerous street beggars in La Paz would be more to the Franciscan point.  However, during the last year we have done little of what could be called vacationing while here.  Also, just as our studying a shared language helped us to communicate in this society, viewing some of its art could only deepen our appreciation for some of Bolivia's complex cultural heritage.

We walked to the Museo Nacional de Etnografia y Folklore (MUSEF) and moved slowly from room to room viewing the extensive collection of textiles. The styles represented there were Aymaran, Quechuan, Incan, and other less-well-known groups inhabiting the area now called Bolivia.  The method of display was interesting.  Typically a representative example was prominently encased in glass. Additional examples were viewable in rows of drawers about two inches thick.  If Barbara from the Maryknoll House had not told us about the system of drawers, we might have wandered through and missed the greater part of the collection. Lynn and I had time, so we tried to look at examples from each type.¹

I could provide a catalogue of the types and dates represented by the textiles exhibit from ancient Bolivian indigenous groups, but what struck me most about them was the great difference between them and the aguayo worn and sold in the streets everywhere.  The older stuff seemed much more complex in design. Of course, the Incas may not have bothered to save the kitsch from Tijuanaku for a joke, or maybe they did and when the Spaniards showed up they just didn't get the joke. But overall, compared to the fineness and subtle intricacy of the weavings on display--to the point that they seemed to strain the capacity of hand and eye--much of the materials now in the street were a mass-produced parody of a destroyed heritage, now all linear sameness and impossibly hyperchromatic gaudy. So.......what happened?

__________

¹Still perusing textile samples along the first wall of the first room, I was quickly reminded of a joking comment years ago by Fr. Hebert, one of my three English teachers at Little Rock Catholic High School for Boys.  He was simply remarking on the difficulty of gaining much understanding of works of art if you were on a time-controlled tour and had to step quickly through, for example, the Louvre because the tour bus was parked outside with the motor running. I don't think he meant to make fun of people on tour or even the tour companies. Instead, I think he meant to point out the need for time and concentration to pursue deeper understandings of those objects that society deems art worthy of preservation.

Probably 15 years after that remark a religious from a contemplative order, Sister Wendy, demonstrated on PBS how valuable time is for comprehending the messages in art by showing great insight into paintings by looking at and thinking about picture postcards of masterpieces. I think one of my too-much-to think-about-in-too-little-time moments was when our daughter Emer, Lynn and I went into York Minster and cast our eyes over the richly carved stones and patterned stained glass windows, the charred roof beams from recently having been struck by lightning (some actually claimed--I think--that it was because the Archbishop had uttered some blasphemy which at that time had occurred about a month before we got there and I can't recall at the moment) and knew right way that we could only grasp a scrap of what we were standing in: "Wow.  It sure is big."

Art needs time for close scrutiny because it reflects life.  Though I'm certain that I don't have time for the task, surely all the street beggars in La Paz and Cochabamba also have unique stories to tell about the circumstances leading them to this or that of life's curbs.