Pictures and words

Hello,

This will be my last post for a while, at least a month. On Saturday I start my independent study project. My friend Cameron and I will be spending three weeks traveling around Lake Titicaca recording stories and myths. In the end hopefully we will have a sweet video with an original soundtrack. I’ll let you all know how it turns out when I get a spare moment. If it isn’t embarassingly bad we’ll upload it to YouTube.

This week I’ve been very busy wrapping up schoolwork and taking care of a few other things, so I’m not going to write too much. And for one reason or another I haven’t been able to think all week. My brain must be taking a rest before embarking on the next adventure. So instead of my usual long rambling diatribe about whatever is on my mind, here’s a bunch of photos and captions:

Cows.
(a.k.a. the leading cause of deforestation in Latin America)

We visited sand dunes in the department of Santa Cruz. They are a human-made creation: once a forest, the land was exhausted through the production of sugar cane to satiate a sweet tooth. No trees will grow again for decades.

I felt conflicted in finding the dunes beautiful while understanding they are the result of environmental devestation. Perhaps they are beautiful because they are surrounded by forest on all sides. If the whole of the earth was sand dune - which one day it may be at the current rate of deforestation - ’beauty’ would not be the right word. Boring, perhaps. Repetitive. Lifeless.


But definitely a ton of fun. Cameron does a backflip.

Heidi and Ismael - the academic directors - stand in front of a traditional Quechua ceremonial offering. In the last half-century plastic streamers and balloons have become a standard decoration. I wonder at what point a Quechua man or woman felt the need to supplement their tradition with nonbiodegradable commodities from the industrial world. At what point did humankind in general decide this was a good idea?

Ismael offers alcohol to the Pachamama, sprinkling a few drops on all four sides of the embers, one for each direction. Traditional Andean philosophy sees the Universe as a flowing of energy: from the earth to the sky, sky to the earth; from man to woman, woman to man; from day to night, night to day. In this tradition, energy flows from humans to the earth in the form of very hard, disgustingly hard, alcohol. ’Aguardiente’ - it means, ’fire water.’

The Masis. Their founder left me with one especially impressive line that I feel is a perfect summation of Andean cosmovision: ’Accept the goodness of evil so you can learn its songs.’

Music in a circle. Why do humans find truth and beauty in geometry? Why are the circle, the spiral, the triangle prominent in so many different systems of belief' What geomtries do we use in the United States and what can they show us about how we perceive the world? Think of the geometries we have created with our highways, our trains, our telephone lines, our shopping malls, our parking lots.

So many musical instruments; I could barely hide my arousal.

Cerro Rico: perhaps the most infamous mine in the world. Inside over eight million people - Bolivia’s entire current population - have lost their lives, in explosions, heart attacks, boulders to the head. Almost entirely for silver, something completely useless. Pretty, but useless.

A forest turned to sand for sugar; eight million dead for a shiny rock.

One economic theory - dependency theory - asserts that the First World was only able to become rich because of direct exploitation of the Third World. Eduardo Galleano compares it to the relationship between rider and horse. This is evident in the fact that Third World industry in Asia, Africa and the Americas were entirely dictated by the desires of the First World: we wanted novel fruit, we wanted rocks, we wanted servants and slaves. More than anything we wanted land. Not very much has changed. Now we just want open markets.

More and more I am starting to believe that for some people to be rich, others must be poor. Wealth and poverty only exist in relation to each other.

The miners pay daily tribute to a devil named Tio (not like uncle, but like ’dio’ for god, except the Quechua do not have the ’deh’ sound). Above ground, Jesus and God are sensical. But below the surface the Devil must be respected, otherwise he will take your life through rock slides, black lung, dynamite. It is not a matter of worshipping evil over good, as these are not terms that existed before colonization. It is a matter of understanding that the Pachamama has many different faces, some peaceful, some violent, some welcoming, some terrifying.

Me with a mouthful of coca leaves.

Two children, along with hundreds of workers, still try to make money off of the mine, even though it has long been exhausted of silver. These two try to sell sparkly rocks to tourists such as us that come to witness the terrible state of the mine. Poverty sells.

So does danger: Our guide chews live dynamite.

Another example of how industrialization and environmental devestation sometimes make the world beautiful in bizarre, alien ways. A friend told me that sunsets have become more brilliant because of all the pollution on the horizon.

The boys.

Ismael’s 60th birthday party. Theme: Carnaval. I dressed up as the diablada. In this Catholic country people seem to love dressing up as the devil.

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You’ll hear from me again in a month. After three weeks of traveling Cameron and I will be editing our film for probably 15 hours a day for eight straight days. After that I’m off to Peru for a week and a half to visit Macchu Picchu and probably spend way too much money on artisan crafts and CDs.

Hasta luego,

Tom