Chillin' in Coroico

So I got a job. I'm remodeling hotel rooms in Coroico, which is a little town a couple hours from La Paz. I work 5 hours a day, doing pretty simple stuff - painting, sanding, spackling, wood finishing - and in return I get room, board, two 22oz. beers or a bottle of wine a day, and access to hotel facilities, which include pool, sauna, internet, and pool table. It's pretty plush. The bathroom in my room is about the size of the room I had in La Paz, and it has excellent hot showers; I've got cable TV with a choose-your-own movie channel; walk in closet; foyer (sure, just a wood-paneled room with no lights or furniture, but a foyer nonetheless); and king-sized bed (actually it's big but not that comfortable). I saw the ad online and decided it was an opportunity not to be passed up. Coroico is tucked into the Yungas, the jungle-covered foothills of the Andes, and has a sub-tropical climate; it's about 85 during the day and 65 at night. It's too high up for mosquitoes. Even when it's raining it's beautiful, with the mountains shrouded in a mysterious mist. There are scores of hawks riding the thermals around the hotel (which is perched on the hills and has a fantastic view), wild parrots, lots of exotic looking bugs, and supposedly Andean condors, although I haven't seen any yet.

So aren't I supposed to be making a movie? Well, there's a film school in Cochabamba that goes on break at the beginning of the year, and my idea is to head there just before the break starts and try and find someone to travel around with me and translate and help with technical issues. I think I've decided to film about the oil and gas nationalization here, which I can easily incorporate with other political issues in Bolivia if I want. The congress here just (narrowly) passed a land-redistribution law, with the goal to redistribute 20% of Bolivia's land (about 77,000 acres) from "idle" or "illegally held" lands to landless peasants. I thought I would film about that, since it's current, but I think it's too current. One university commentator said he thought it would take the government a year to build the institutional capacity to actually enact the legislation, and not much is expected to happen for a few months at least apparently. Already the issue of what land is "idle" is contentious. The law says any land that has not been used for two years or more, but soy farmers are complaining that they have to allow their fields to lie fallow for five years in order to rotate their crop properly.

Push is really coming to shove here I think; Evo said that if congress didn't pass his land bill, he would put it into effect via presidential decree, which opponents say smacks of despotism. I really have no idea, since I don't know what powers of decree are granted a Bolivian president. Also, the bill only passed because three senators were not present to vote, only their aides, and allegations of bribery to the aides have been made. Meanwhile, about half of the 9 provinces here (led by Santa Cruz, by far the richest) are pushing for more "independence" from the central government. They are trying to incorporate these ideas into the new constitution currently being written. And since Evo's party, Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement for Socialism, or MAS - an acronym which means "more" in Spanish) lacks the 2/3 of elected Constitutional Assembly seats required to approve a new constitution, MAS must at least listen to those demands (in the meantime they hope to change the rules so the new constitution requires only a simple majority vote, which MAS has. No wonder the opposition views MAS as despotic).

Politics here work the same as everywhere - you can't please all the people all the time. Even Evo is accused in newspapers of reverting to "old neoliberal ways", and not having done enough to fulfill his election promises. I wonder what the people here expect? He technically nationalized the oil and gas almost immediately upon taking office, although it took the state oil company, YPFB, nearly a year to figure out how to actually do that and renegotiate contracts - this due to lack of political infrastructure and funds to do so. But the contracts did eventually get negotiated at the 11th hour before the year-long deadline, and Bolivia now receives four times as much revenue for each unit of oil and gas sold (Bolivia sells mostly gas, but has a very small internal market - mostly they sell to Argentina, Chile and Brazil). The government is now using some of that money to distribute 100 Bolivianos ($12) to all schoolchildren for uniforms and supplies. That could be mere window-dressing, but prima facae it's a good way to begin investing in human capital in South America's poorest nation.

So now it's a year later, and the effects of nationalization are beginning to be seen. I think that makes it a good topic to film, especially since I think the way Bolivia nationalized their assets was particularly clever: they took control of the resources themselves, but none of the infrastructure that removes the resources and takes them to market. In that way they avoided the catastrophic idea that YPFB actually has the money and expertise to market the oil and gas itself, and they didn't alienate their largest investors/customers as much as they otherwise might have. In essence, what Evo called "nationalization" was a cancellation of old contracts that heavily favored foreign investors. The new contracts are short-term (only two years I think), but the government has demonstrated that the oil and gas companies will pay substantially higher prices for the fossil fuels. I wonder how much of this will be passed to consumers in Brazil and Argentina, and how much will just be reduced profit rates for companies like Petrobraz (the state oil company of Brazil). Bolivia's customers are pretty wealthy; Chile is the richest in South America and Brazil is the world's ninth largest economy - but also the world's most unequal (top ten percent of population represent about 1/3 of consumption, bottom 10 percent 3/4 of one percent; this is compared to 30 percent and nearly 2 percent for the US, or 20 and 4 percent for Sweden. These numbers come from the CIA World Factbook, which also publishes the Gini index on family income. Brazil's number is 59, Swedens is 25. The US scores a 45, although in the explanation of the Gini index, the Factbook says that "the more unequal a countries income distribution... the higher its Gini index, e.g. a Sub-Saharan country with an index of 50. OK, so the US compares with corrupt-as-fuck Sub-Saharan African countries. But not that I guess I'm surprised at a pro-US bias at the CIA. Who doesn't love Uncle Sam, Latin American Death Squads, and musicians with fleets of private jets that complain of "intellectual property theft"? Lars Ulrich, I'm looking in your direction. Jackass).

Today I wanted to buy a dust mask in town, and that was fun. This is what I could communicate: "I need this," hands cupped over mouth, "for when is very dirty here," make talking motions with hands around face to indicate dust, "for protecting here," breathe deeply, place hands over chest. I thought that was pretty good. One store thought I wanted mosquito repellent (in a town with no mosquitoes, no less). The pharmacy told me to check at the Hotel Esmeralda (the place I'm working at - the irony). Anyways, I need to chip some paint and sand some stuff, and I don't know if the "lead-paint-bad" message made it this far south or not.

I eat buffet three meals a day, which is not as bad as it sounds, although not surprisingly, the dishes are variations on what was served earlier that day. There's lots of veggies, like eggplant and broccoli, which is nice. Damn good cole-slaw. Generally it's pretty tasty. Tuesdays and Fridays are Pizza Night, which is excellent, and Sunday is Chopstick Night (I haven't been here for Sunday yet). The beers here are the coldest on the continent I think, which is great (the condensation is frozen to the bottle by the time it gets to your table), and there's a good pilsner and porter available. I'm not sure what kind of grape the house red is made of, but it's similar to a pinot noir, and pretty satisfying. And let me say I had a huge grin on my face the first dinner I ordered a bottle of wine for myself. Does anything beat working for wine?

My last day in La Paz was a flurry of shopping for Christmas gifts and venturing to the post office several times (nowhere in my travel book did it mention you need a copy of your passport to paste to the outside of international packages!). I was worried it would take ages to ship stuff, but the told me five days. I'm skeptical, especially since one package was going to Alaska. Does the person at the Bolivian post office know that Alaska isn't in a white box next to Hawaii, that it's way up north? A lot of Americans don't know that. And if anyone was wondering, Bolivian postal workers behave much as postal workers tend to in the US: a little annoyed, a little bored, not particularly helpful. I guess I can see work at the Post Office as totally mind-numbing though, so the attitude is understandable.

Other last-minute La Paz adventures: $.18 hot dogs from the street. Awesome. In a "I-didn't-eat-it-but-I'm-glad-It's-there" sort of way. Running the gauntlet of barbershops who all want to cut your hair, trying to call you inside: "Amigo! Es facil (easy)!" Sure, I bet it is easy when the customer's hair is 3/4 of an inch long and you don't have to do anything. I still wonder what they would have done to my hair exactly had I gone in. You may be thinking "shave," but I still have my beard.

La Paz has great public buses: late-50's era Dodge school buses from America, painted various primary colors with white pinstripes, hundreds of rivets where the square-foot panels are attached to the frame. Probably what we called "foreign aid" for some fiscal year circa 1979. "Hey, we got a ton of these old buses rusting about, and Bolivia is poor, they'll take anything. Tell them if they buy some F-16s they can have them."

I stayed right next to a street full of mueblerias (muebles is Spanish for "furniture"), and it became my inside joke with myself while I was there. First, because muebles sounds fun, like a children's TV show, and second, because it was so funny to walk down the street, with brightly-colored signs proclaiming Se Vende Muebles! (We Sell Furniture!) and Muebles Aqui! (Furniture Here!). It's just like in the States, where furniture stores have way more exciting signs than they need, except that in a Bolivian furniture store all the furniture, even really nice stuff like Italian leather, is stacked on top of itself floor to ceiling. Sometimes it's in an alley on the way to other stores. Anyways, whenever I saw a sign I would always shout "muebles!" to myself.

My last day in La Paz (Tuesday) there was a rally for the land-reform vote. I got there too late to get close enough to see anything, but I did have some ice cream. The vendor had a brown ice cream and a white ice cream, and I got a scoop of each. Now, in my mind it's obvious that if you're selling ice cream on the street, and you only have two flavors, and one is brown and one is white, you're selling chocolate and vanilla. The base flavors, the popular ones. Anyone want to guess what I had? The white was pineapple. OK, not too shocking, white/pineapple, I can see it. And the brown? It tasted mostly like Frozen, but also like bubble gum. Who knew? And no, I haven't seen brown gum for sale here yet.

Oh yeah, I also bought a guitar to strum on during quiet Coroico nights. It's pine and jacaranda for any guitar enthusiasts reading. It was quite a task to find a decent steel-string guitar in La Paz, because although there are scores of shops, Bolivian music is played on classical guitars. Most of the steel-string ones were poorly airbrushed (to hide cheap wood?), although there were many beautiful classical guitars to be found. I eventually found a pretty steel-string made just from finished wood for $75 with strap and soft case. I don't think middle-class and up people in America appreciate the fact that we can go into most any store and buy whatever we want without thinking about it. It's fun though, huh?

Oh yeah, there's some beautiful pictures of the place I'm staying if you go here

And if anyone out there used my credit card to make $139 in purchases at a used computer store in Texas, I'm mad at you and you don't get a Christmas card.