Excursion to Sucre and Potosí

Sorry for The delay in posts! The speed of life here has picked up steam, with friends to hang out with, essays to write, and independent research projects to plan. But I will try to give a review of our first excursion here, and then share about what I've been up to since in a following post. 

Well, I didn't expect to be so excited to come back to Cochabamba after a week away! But it's amazing how much my attitude has changed about the city from spending time in two much more touristy cities of Bolivia. For the first few weeks in Cocha, I felt defined by my foreignness. I constantly felt stared at because of my height, blond hair and pale skin. There was always a nagging feeling of "you don't belong here." I knew that I had picked this location partly for that reason - I didn't want to go to a city that was full of tourists and have that assumption define my interactions with locals. But it's hard to remember that when everyone is staring at you all the time! However, this excursion provided a glimpse of what it would have been like to spend the semester in a tourist destination. And I am now much happier about my location decision because of it! In Sucre, everywhere we went there were tourists, so we were assumed to be tourists as well. (Which, technically, we were, although our purpose was different from that of most others.) As we learned, people treat tourists very differently - not nearly as warmly and openly as what we've experienced in Cocha. And the assumption that you are a tourist carries a very different weight than the acknowledgement that you are a foreigner but here to live/work/volunteer/study. Cocha is not a tourist destination and for that I am glad because people do not assume they know what we're doing here. My time away has allowed me to come to appreciate that, and I am glad to be back in my at-times-uncomfortable but mostly entertaining place in this city. 

So the trip: we first headed up to Potosí, the highest city in the world (there are other towns in the Andes that are higher, but not cities). 

The landscape on the drive up - very dry!

Potosí was the silver mining capital of the world back in the colonial era - the wealth of Europe literally came from one hill in the city: Cerro Rico. 

There it is - the landmark that defines Potosí, and facilitated the inequality of wealth distribution in the world today. 

Some scholars consider Cerro Rico to be the birthplace of capitalism in action: through the enslavement and repression of the native people, the Spanish colonizers sacked the riches of Bolivia, creating the monetary wealth of Europe and impoverishing the land and the people from which it came. Bolivia is living the legacy of this era, as it tries to act on a world stage while the countries of the Global North exert their dominating power that is derived from the wealth extracted from Bolivia's own resources. This is similar to the story of many countries, but I think the trauma is particularly painful for Bolivia because it literally supplied the money whose legacy continues to define power relations in the world today. 

So, while in Potosí, we visited one of the 300 some mines that are still active on the Cerro Rico today. Most of the silver is gone, but there is still a mixture of minerals - tin, zinc, platinum. The experience of visiting a mine was emotionally challenging in many ways - confronting the history that the hill contains, understanding the dangers and difficulties of work there, but also feeling extremely uncomfortable for entering at all. 

A vein of ore running across the rock above us. 

On one hand, leading tours gives some men the opportunity to stop mining, stop spending twelve hours every day inside the hill. But the nature of a tour - entering for an hour, talking to miners who were very generous and accommodating but who we know will likely die in fifteen years of silicosis, then exiting to the light and to return to our normal lives - feels just as extractive in some ways as the mining itself. While it is important to confront the privilege in our lives and learn about the industries that underwrite that, such an experience needs a time for reflection afterwards, which is not part of the package! As a program, we took that time, and our discussion was probably even more important in my opinion than the tour itself. But for the majority of people who entered the mines on tours, I wonder what they take away and how they process it. 

The new hill that is growing next to Cerro Rico - composed of all the material that has been extracted from the mines. As Cerro Rico shrinks (and it is shrinking), its new neighbor grows. 

After a mostly-sleepless night for me - the altitude wasn't a problem for me during the day, but when I tried to sleep I had a psychological problem of feeling like I couldn't breath in enough air - we descended to Sucre. Because Potosí was too high for the Spanish to feel comfortable, they built their administrative capital down in a valley. Sucre is thus the most colonial city in Bolivia, and sucreños still hold onto the ideal of European cosmopolitanism the most. 

Lots of churches and whitewashed buildings!

In Spanish, people call crosswalks "zebras" because of the stripes. So in some cities in Bolivia, there are groups of volunteers who dress up in zebra costumes and facilitate pedestrian crossing! How great is that!

The two highlights of Sucre were visiting a museum of traditional Andean weaving and an education center that teaches traditional folkloric music to kids. 

The weavings of the area are gorgeous and intricate, made for both festivals and daily life. The museum is run by an organization that has helped to revitalize traditional weaving by promoting the products so that the weavers are paid their true value. In the past, merchants bought up much of people's heirlooms for next to nothing, then sold them at high prices around the world. So this organization has had a tremendous impact by facilitating more direct sales so that people can make a good living off of their amazing handiwork. 

The music school is similarly trying to revitalize traditional instruments and songs of the region by teaching them to younger generations. We learned how to play a basic version of their instrument similar to a pan flute, and then had an incredible private concert with the band that runs the school, Los Masis! They come to the US to play sometimes, so if anyone ever has the chance to see them, they are fabulous!

My flute with the song we learned to sing (in Quechua). 

Besides the scheduled visits, we spent a lot of time just wandering around the city. It was nice to explore a different place, but now I am happy to be back in Cochabamba where I know the streets, how to take a trufi, and can eat a delicious lunch with my family every day without worrying about getting sick!