[more notes from buenos aires it looks like i wrote with the intention of sending to all of you. these do more to describe the feel of the city that week.]
it was an intense week, to say the least. over 70 people died during the week, i think the actual number was 74, none in my city, cochabamba, although we did have a lot of protests. tons of our roads were blocked off, and protestors put a ton of stuff in the street: chipped off pieces of concrete from the sidewalk, garbage bins, burning mounds of trash, etc.
we (the students in my group and i) weren’t allowed to be out much because a gringo can be a pretty vulnerable target in an anti-government rally (the current government has, to make an understatement, some pretty serious ties to the american government), so i watched a lot of tv. i had to take a lot more cabs, too, which usually took longer because we had to take so many alternate routes due to the fact so many roads were blocked off. police usually had to guard the bridges to keep them from being blocked off. around the university where i live, they strung barbwire between posts on either side of the streets, too, which was an odd sort of thing to have to look out for when i was riding my bike, but they usually propped things like palm leaves up on them so you could see them easily.
one night, i went with a friend and her host family down to walk through downtown. we wore running shoes, just to make sure we wouldn’t be held up by broken heels in the possible case we ran into some drunken (or just belligerent) mob, but there was almost no one in the streets, a really eerie feeling, given all that we knew the streets had witnessed that day. they were filled with rocks, tree branches, and trash, some which was still smoldering. windows of the prefecture in la plaza principal were broken, a rag dummy with the president’s party written in red across its chest hung from a lamp post. with the smells and the debris, it felt at times like the streets were just too tired to clean themselves up after such long, emotional days.
it was an intense week, to say the least. over 70 people died during the week, i think the actual number was 74, none in my city, cochabamba, although we did have a lot of protests. tons of our roads were blocked off, and protestors put a ton of stuff in the street: chipped off pieces of concrete from the sidewalk, garbage bins, burning mounds of trash, etc.
we (the students in my group and i) weren’t allowed to be out much because a gringo can be a pretty vulnerable target in an anti-government rally (the current government has, to make an understatement, some pretty serious ties to the american government), so i watched a lot of tv. i had to take a lot more cabs, too, which usually took longer because we had to take so many alternate routes due to the fact so many roads were blocked off. police usually had to guard the bridges to keep them from being blocked off. around the university where i live, they strung barbwire between posts on either side of the streets, too, which was an odd sort of thing to have to look out for when i was riding my bike, but they usually propped things like palm leaves up on them so you could see them easily.
one night, i went with a friend and her host family down to walk through downtown. we wore running shoes, just to make sure we wouldn’t be held up by broken heels in the possible case we ran into some drunken (or just belligerent) mob, but there was almost no one in the streets, a really eerie feeling, given all that we knew the streets had witnessed that day. they were filled with rocks, tree branches, and trash, some which was still smoldering. windows of the prefecture in la plaza principal were broken, a rag dummy with the president’s party written in red across its chest hung from a lamp post. with the smells and the debris, it felt at times like the streets were just too tired to clean themselves up after such long, emotional days.
