A Miner's Luck

In Santa Cruz, in the Wind

2009-10-10T15:27:00.004-04:00

I'm in an internet cafe in Santa Cruz, with the wind blowing dust everywhere. I still don't have the hang of this city. Don't know what to make of it yet. We spent a couple of days in the Chiquitania, working on productions with Chiquitanos as part of an NGO project.

They really got the hang of it, which was nice to watch. They went from "lets go film some stuff" to "here is the list of things we need, here are the quotes we need, here are the images we need, how do we get them." Which is a big step. I'm a little sad that we won't have much more time in the campo with them because their communities were just beautiful. I would love to spend more time there, in communities.

We'll see what I can come up with as an excuse to hang out around there.

From Concepción

2009-09-18T20:46:00.002-04:00

Just finished a week of workshops with a group of Chiquitanos and Ayoreos in video production. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed teaching, especially a group that was as driven as they are. We dove right in to the middle of it, and did a short video in small groups on the first day of workshops. This meant that the participants had to work on editing right away, without a real course on how to run the program.

One of the fun things was to watch them start, slowly, to get the hang of it and get into trying to detail their videos... wanting to stay late to work through dinner, etc.

lindo al final.

Next month I come back and we'll produce material that they will edit into a final project.

News from Nevada

2009-08-27T22:18:00.003-04:00

Paid a call on Hugh today. We talked most of the afternoon. He asked me about Bolivia and the situation down there. When I said that the government was so small and couldn’t really bother the little guys, he said “I wondered about that. I thought it might be that way”.

He showed me some of the work he has been doing on his maps. He’s opened four portals and gotten in 270 feet on the GW claim, but hasn’t gotten past that because he doesn’t have a loader and can’t hall it over the dump. He said he’s had to fight off a few claims, one from a Canadian exploration company that looked like a nuisance claim, and one that was a mistake, where they mapped the claim way out in the wrong place. But it’s all time wasted. And on top of that, they dropped four thousand dollars on the claims, that the claims this year are up to one forty, which is a lot of money, but there you go.

Also his mother hasn’t been well, and he’s had to be with her, taking care of her. It was a little sad to see her struggling, but it was also really sweet to see Hugh taking care of her, helping her walk around, etc. She was watching "Shane" at full volume in their den when I got there, which made me happy.

And we talked politics a bit too. He’s worried about America, about the military. What was interesting was to hear him repeat one of the things that Peter, among the WASPiest of my WASP friends (sorry Peter), said, namely that if we don’t start supporting manufacturing, we won’t last very long as a super power.

And he surprised me, as he often does, with a comment he made when we were talking about the social problems that often plague the international companies that work down there. He said "they won't figure out how to work it out. You've got to work with the people, and you can't expect them to see things the way you do. You've got to understand that... And you may want them to change the way they think, but you can't expect that right away."

How does a miner from Nevada who's never been to Latin America understand that in a way that mining companies that have worked there for dozens of years can't manage to figure out?

And he worried, and he railed against the environmentalists, and he complained that the last good truck that he got was a 1978 Ford, “Not that I’m complaining about that truck that I got out there, but the last really good truck I got was a 1978. They used to make trucks for working.”

So it was good to check up on an old friend. We agreed to keep in touch to send letters every now and again.

This is what I'm working on right now

2009-08-14T16:02:00.009-04:00

This is a video on the use of debt entrapment by outsiders to access and extract wood from the TCO Mosetén (the Mosetén Original Communal Lands). Currently in post.

Baking Bread

2008-10-26T17:15:00.003-04:00

I baked bread today for the first time since I got to Bolivia. When I lived in Vermont, all those years ago, I baked at least once a week. I’m still surprised at the lessons that baking bread have to offer.

The first thing bread taught me was the organic nature of redemption and growth. I kept a starter in the fridge – a foul smelling, yellow soup of sugar and yeast. I marveled that you could take this bubbling, rotting stew, add flour, let them rot some more, and this somehow yields marvelous results. In my university days, organic processes of rotting – making bread, making beer, making compost, planting tomatoes – offered a solution to the waste that I saw around me in American life, and gave me perspective about my own personal growth.

When I moved to Vermont, I learned to love how it tasted. I loaded each loaf of bread with butter and buttermilk. I made cinnamon rolls that even my granny wouldn’t have wanted to butter. I baked apple pies that relied entirely on the quality of Vermont’s apples and the butter in the crust. I worked hard, kept a garden, played in the long summer days, skied and camped in the bright winter snows and baked rich, savory loaves of bread every couple of days.

Last night, among the idas and venidas of my life in Bolivia, I made a pair of loaves and a pizza, using packaged dry yeast. The result was a loaf of bread that, while it lacked a little flavor, had a nearly perfect texture and color. It toasted well. I ate a piece with butter and honey while I listened to Johnny Cash sing “If We Never Meet Again.” Bolivia is a country where people move to chase economic opportunities wherever they may appear. Cortadores and lomeadores who I met in the Alto Beni last month go where there is work cutting and hauling wood. I know people who haven’t seen their own brothers for years and who don’t know where - or whether - they are living.

Suddenly a depression era hymn promising reunion with your loved ones faraway on that beautiful shore – and faith in another meeting place in heaven – seemed more lovely and appealing than it ever had before.

Fresh, homemade bread, without preservatives, doesn't keep. By tomorrow morning, the bread I baked yesterday will be to stale for anything but french toast.

All's Fair in Love and Politics

2008-10-15T08:55:00.003-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I had, oddly enough, a moment of solidarity with the ex-ambassador, Philip Goldberg. My ex girlfriend sent me an email declaring me persona no grata in her house, expressed her desire to deposit my things on the curb and conclude that she sincerely desired to have a friendly relationship with me.

I'll let you all draw your own conclusions ...

Tit for Tat

2008-09-26T15:23:00.001-04:00

A few quick comments on the situation in Bolivia. The first and most obvious topic is the political tit for tat of ambassador expulsions and declarations of non-compliance with the drug policy.

Actually a question. What would have happened if a foreign ambassador to the US met with armed groups who later attacked US government facilities? Suddenly being declared persona no grata seems trivial. It's an important question because we tend to measure our actions in foreign countries by a different standard than the actions of foreign countries in the USA. We tend to forget that a place like Bolivia is a sovereign country with a democratically elected and very popular leader, whether you like him or not.

And in a context that ambassadors past never met with Evo before he was president, one can't just say the ambassador's job is to meet with everyone. Meeting with the opposition leaders is a definite and aggressive act.

Not that I think the Bolivian government played their hand wisely - a whole range of escalating pressures on the US State Department might have achieved the goal of getting the US to back down on its support for the opposition, without as much drama. But it was justified, and Bolivian politics are all about the drama.

btw, I sent a complaint to American Airlines asking why they had taken a political stance on the social unrest and what their position had been in 2003 when Goni was thrown out of office - whether that was also the government's fault. I haven't heard back from them yet.

American Airlines condemns the Bolivian government

2008-09-10T21:22:00.005-04:00

I got stuck in Miami. I seem to be the representative barometer for political tensions in Bolivia. When I travel, somebody will take over an airport. (or forget to buy jet fuel, but that's another story).

So I wasn't that surprised my flight to Bolivia was canceled due to civil unrest - we'll use the neutral term rather than say because "armed protesters took over the Bolivian airport." But I was a little surprised that the airline took an overtly political position on it.

Three separate employees told me (and I heard another tell another customer) that it was the fault of the Bolivian government. Now four people in three separate locations on two different shifts did not make that up on their own. Somebody told them to say "It's the government's fault."

Now, I wish I could remember what they said when the cruceños took over the airport, installed their own manager and the manager promptly tried to charge American Airlines an extra $2,000 airport fee in cash that morning (American, properly, pays through bank transfers), but they can't possibly prefer that kind of treatment to Evo's treatment.

And I was pretty damned annoyed that they would insult my political perspectives out of the gate as a company policy.

Why it's shocking

2008-09-10T21:22:00.001-04:00

I think I've put together a piece of the puzzle about why I find my (re)introduction to the US so jarring every time I come back here. Airports are one of the places where most of us (at least most educated white people from rich backgrounds) are most exposed to the repressive aspects of state apparatuses (uniformed guards who look at our bags and our shoes and our medicines). Take out your computer) and constantly reminded to be afraid of the "terrorists" - through announcements about your bags, and parking and all of that stuff.

Where else would it be okay for uniformed government employees to strip off our shoes and jackets. It's not. It's precisely the kind of government oppression that we cite in other countries as evidence that they are repressive dictatorships. Leaving aside the questions of why "they" need to keep us fearful and what that does to us, why smart people who I respect seem to have drunk the cool aid, how long the history of using some imagined threat to keep us scared, how deeply the what other groups have been used to represent that threat (communists, blacks, drug-dealers, etc), I realized that this is always my first and last impression of the US whenever I travel here.

Sure, I managed to watch the television nightly news and catch a short allergy season report - complete with labcoated experts and biologists pointing at plants - about someone who was scared because she was walking down the street and started sneezing heavily - sandwiched between pharmaceutical company adds - and get my daily dose of fear.

But I can turn that off any time I want to. I can't leave the country - or come back should I want to ever - without the heavy message that I am at risk and that the government is hear to protect me. "They" pepper me with this message of fear every time I walk in or out the door, lest I forget to be afraid while I'm in Bolivia. It's literally the first and last thing I see when I travel to the states and that's' part of the reason it's so jarring.

Perspectives

2008-09-07T21:42:00.002-04:00

Went to see a movie with a great friend from high school. We saw a documentary about the french guy who tight-rope walked between the twin towers in 1974, when they were finishing up the construction of them. Wild story. Beautiful documentary.

What struck me though, is that my friend, who lives a yuppy life in DC and is working for the government, etc. and I had such different reactions to it. I think it says a lot about where each of us is, not just in our personal lives, but also where each of us lives and what we see on a daily basis ... what advertisements we see, what news filters into our heads, how the people act around us and all of those intangibles that are around us all the time.

I saw the film and I saw a story about aging, about moments in our lives that we can never go back to, about changing, and, to a certain extent, about healing. I saw a blueprint for dealing with our national sorrow and reaction to the attacks on the twin towers and a path for healing.

He saw a blueprint for planning a terrorist attack.

It may not be a conspiracy, but it's no coincidence.

One of Life's Mysteries

2008-08-20T16:50:00.003-04:00

So, I may not have realized when I worked so hard to achieve this privelege, but ....

Having spent weeks of my time, having visited offices all over la paz, and finally having achieved the privelege of bolivian residency, I arrived at the airport only to discover that the privelege of Bolivian residency afforded me the opportunity to pay fifty dollars more leaving the country than I used to as an illegal.

There are two things I can't figure out. One is why Bolivians pay more than tourists to use the airport. The other, and I am still working away on the book about anthropology of the state, hoping it offers some kind of insight, is why the fees associated with operating legally are higher than the penalties for operating legally.

I am not even saying that it's cheaper to bribe officials, I am saying that the full penalties, completely transparent, are higher. One of life's little mysteries.

No News is No News

2008-08-11T08:30:00.002-04:00

The much anticipated referendum to revoke the mandates of Bolivian President and the departmental prefects went off yesterday with many fewer hitches than Florida or Ohio has been able to manage for the last 8 years. And nothing has changed in any way. Okay, a handful of the most corrupt prefects lost their jobs, but aside from that, the basic division of power is the same today that it was Saturday.

The highlands back Evo, and the East is against (to oversimplify drastically). There are a lot of reasons for that, but the most important may be that the government is presented, and in fact presents itself, as a government of the indigenous poor, which feeds right into the right's strategy of amplifying Santa Cruz's non-indigenous self-perception and feeding racism.

So the referendum confirms exactly what we already knew, that the country is in a stalemate, with two regional poles of power that still haven't figured out how to compromise on anything.

One other tidbit

2008-08-09T23:51:00.005-04:00

I am, after how many years as a wetback in Bolivia, finally a legal resident. The tramite for my residency visa was, as I have noted earlier, a pain in the neck and a little absurd.

Nevertheless, having vanquished the beast, I have to admit that there is something of a sick pleasure in tramites. It's like a game. It rewards persistence, patience and, especially, good humor. It helps to remember that nobody on the other side of the desk is in any way obliged to help you, but they might if they like you. That joke you tell them in the first thirty seconds might make all the difference.

Still, though, You never know when you're going to get stuck with starting over ten spaces back, or jump five spaces ahead. You step into an office, and you never know what office they will send you to next, or whether that will be the right office. What it is, really, is a twisted, real life game of shoots and ladders.

Where I've been the past two months

2008-08-08T08:04:00.003-04:00

I've been out of touch for a while. I just got back to La Paz after a trip to the Alto Beni, where we were working on a doc about the indigenous group the Mosetenes. The Mosetenes are the owners of the a large communal territory, which is one of the largest and most accessible forest reserves in Bolivia. This should put them in a position to be able to manage their forest resources for the benefit of the whole community, providing a source of income and work opportunities.

But, as you know by now, Bolivia is more complicated than that. For a range of cultural, economic and historical reasons, the Mosetenes find themselves trapped in a cycle of debts owed to the merchants that buy wood from them. The system works like this:

The merchant and the Mosetén agree in advance on the price for a certain amount of wood. The Mosetén almost certainly doesn't have the capital available to extract that wood, so the merchant delivers goods from his (or her) store at inflated prices. These goods include chainsaws, food, gasoline, transport by boat and anything else that the Mosetén might need to extract the wood.

When the Mosetén delivers his wood to the merchant, he usually finds that he owes more than he earns. The merchants are obviously well aware of this.

So the project aims to explain this system of debt enslavement.

Protest in La Paz

2008-06-09T15:10:00.007-04:00

La Paz is a very misnamed city. Today I went out to film a march on the US Embassy. Carlos Sanchéz Bersaín was the Minister of Defense in the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. The Bolivian Government and powerful social movements would like to see Sánchez Bersaín stand trial in Bolivia to take responsibility for the deaths that occurred during the social unrest of October of 2003, but on Thursday he was awarded political asylum in the US.

The first reaction to this would be that this is a typical project of President Bush... protecting right wing politicians from prosecution in their home countries, under the argument that foreign countries don't have a fair system of due process. right. never mind the logic of whether the U.S. has the moral authority to determine what counts as due process.

But a little investigation and you figure out that one of Sanchéz Bersaín's lawyers is Gregory B. Craig, who is a major bundler for Obama, and an early defector from the Clinton camp. Read more about Craig in the New Yorker. Craig has something of a checkered past, with a list of controversial clients.

Obama is frequently seen from these parts - that is countries with significant anti-US sentiment - as a president who would likely be much more open to dialogue and much more likely to pursue joint interests. But this begs the question whether that is really the case.

Video of the protest coming shortly.

Palos Blancos

2008-05-26T14:29:00.002-04:00

I took a three day break from tramites to come to Palos Blancos to visit Daniela were she is doing her field work. Palos is, well it's a hole. the town itself that is. It's a market center for the agricultural towns around here and for the sawmills that process the hardwood harvested illegally in the territory around here. It is populated by migrants from the altiplano, whose vision of what the landscape should look like is based on the arid deserts and grasslands of their homes. as a testament to that, somebody just cut down the last three trees next to the main intersection. So much for shade.

The colonists who have arrived from the altiplano have brought with them, not only their love of open spaces without trees, but also their frugal economy, their windowless brick houses and heavy, warm clothing. The whole town feels out of place in these hot, forested tropics.

Which all changes the minute you get out of the town and out of the colonies and into the Original Community Lands of the Moseten indigenous people. The Moseten TCO (from its Spanish acronym for "Tierra Comunitario de Origen) just has a different feel. I remember it from the first time I visited here almost three years ago. I barely spoke Spanish, but the moment I set foot in the first Moseten community, I felt something different from all of the other towns around here. It had to do with a different pace of life, with a sense of economy that is adapted to their surroundings. But I couldn't know that at that point. It just felt like a community of people who were at peace in their environment and surroundings.

"Special" Forces

2008-05-16T11:41:00.001-04:00

My task this morning involved presenting three documents to the FELCC, or Fuerza Especial para la Lucha Contra el Crimen .... the Special Force for Fighting Crime.

That the police decided to create a "Special" Force for Fighting Crime says a lot about what the police do (or rather don't do). All over El Alto, in the poorer sections of La Paz, in hundreds of communities throughout the country you will see effigies hanging from light poles, trees, houses, anything. They are graphically depicted, bleeding and all with painted with the word "ladron" or "thief".

There are advertisements taken out in major newspapers that implore people not to engage in lynching, saying it is not "community justice," but rather a crime and a human rights violation that should be prosecuted. In several instances, under murky circumstances, several police have been kidnapped and lynched in remote communities.

So given all this, if the "Special" Force for Fighting Crime occupy themselves with wasting peoples time with paperwork, creating a denigrating and disrespectful environment and taking people's money for the pleasure, then what exactly is it that the rest of the police do?

an accomplishment

2008-05-15T17:22:00.002-04:00

so I achieved something in my continuing struggle with the "tramites" for residency in Bolivia. I accomplished the first step.

I knew that I needed to leave the country, go to a consul's office and get a "visa de objeto determinado." No dice at the consul in Puno. But my neighbor had gotten hers done with almost no trouble at another consul's office. So I went their, and after realizing that they had forgotten to ask me for my work contract. I gave them the contract that I had invented with some friends, and ten minutes later they returned my passport with a visa for 60 days, 30 more than they should have.

The secretary's comment was, "most of these things are just designed to make your life difficult, so we won't ask you for them." Which is really interesting, given my anthropology of the state readings.

And since I got back last night, I've been jamming on the rest of my tramites...

State Aparatuses

2008-05-12T18:06:00.003-04:00

so I'm trying to get my residency done, which according to everyone I know except the consul in Peru, requires leaving Bolivia to the nearest consul's office (in Puno, Peru). At any rate I've been stymied

But it's given me the chance to read some of the Anthology of Anthropology of the State that I recently copied from a La Paz city council member, I'm currently on the reading an Essay by Luis Althusser, who is talking about the difference between Ideological State Aparatuses and Repressive State Aparatuses. Repressive State Aparatuses being things like police and army and courts and most of the things that one usually thinks of as the State, and Ideological State Aparatuses being things like family, religion, trade unions, political parties, etc.

Haven't gotten to the part where he gets into what might be behind the Ideological State Aparatuses, but I have an idea or two.

So I've been taking advantage of my time here in Puno, walking around, being a tourist. I walked up Condor hill, where there is a very good and lifelike statue of condor on one side, and a big blue glass cross on the other. From there I strolled down through the old section of town, where the nice old houses are and to the church, which is an enormous and intimidating cavern with a hugh ceiling and dome. imagining what sort of awe you were meant to feel when you walk into a building like that. The whole time pondering relationships between the various kinds of state aparatuses and contemplating the question that has been plaguing me for some time, namely whether the government of Bolivia wants me to get out of the country or to get married.

Corrupting Logic

2008-05-08T18:27:00.004-04:00

So I am working (slowly and reluctantly) on legalizing my residence here in Bolivia. It's a pain in the neck. One office sends me to the next office, which sends me back to the first office, and then to another office, then back to the first office, etc....

But it brought back a memory from when I first got to Bolivia. I was at a party at a gringo friend's house and met a Bolivian neighbor from the same condominium complex (who spoke English - I wasn't yet able to meet anyone in spanish). The subject of corruption came up because someone had stolen the brain of his car out from under the nose of the security guard outside the complex.

After a good several minutes of railing against the corruption and how upset he was that the guard had been obviously bought off (which seemed a logical reason to be angry), he changed course (it should be noted that his father was in the military and active in politics during the dictatorships). He finally concluded that maybe corruption isn't such a bad thing and gave the following example:

If you want to open a factory that will employ a hundred people, and you can either take six months to get the paperwork to wind it's way through the bureaucracy or pay a thousand dollars and get it done tomorrow, then corruption is obviously better for Bolivia.

Which is an interesting argument.

What I find even more interesting is that if I tell this story in mixed company, i.e. Bolivians and gringos, only one of those groups laughs ....

Scramble

2008-04-23T13:41:00.001-04:00

My mother just sent me an email asking about my legal status in Bolivia. This was my response:

At migrations they told me I need a NIT (tax ID number) to get residence, and at the Tax office, they told me I need a residence card to get a NIT. Fortunately the fine for overstaying your welcome for a year is less than the cost of the paperwork for a yearlong residency....

- chuck

Back on the Horse

2008-03-27T12:57:00.001-04:00

So, it’s been a good bit of time since the last post, and frankly it’s been a discouraging couple of months for this particular project. I headed to the states last October with high hopes that a few leads would pan out into at least a few more leads.

It wasn’t to be.

On the bright side, I’ve had a fair amount of work since I got back from that trip – a couple of short pieces for Plaza Sesamo (the Spanish language version of Sesame Street), a video for the International Organization for Migrations, and a video for the largest cement company in Bolivia.

And I’ve got a handful of shorts in the works also.

And I’m picking up a few more leads for A Miner’s Luck. It’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s time to pick up the torch again on this project. So I’m off in search of a few small family foundations.

Wish me luck.

Inside the Mines

2007-10-25T19:15:00.000-04:00

A Short video of the guys I have been working with in Siglo XX. No narration, but it will give you an idea of what their day to day is like.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/4/12/977104/MinersOfSigloXXWeb.mov

El Che is Dead. Long Live El Che

2007-10-22T09:35:00.000-04:00

Everybody wanted to get to Valle Grande, Bolivia on the weekend of the seventh of October, to celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the death of Che Guevara. Hippies from around South America (often referred to as “artisans”) showed up in droves, the Venezuelan embassy sent its staff in a chartered jet, several ex-guerillas with expanding waistlines returned to the fields of their glory days and the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, took the opportunity to make a speech. It’s what presidents do.

It is the first time a Bolivian president has attended the anniversary and the first time the event has been supported and promoted by the national government. The negative reaction to Che in Bolivia is often more pronounced than it is in the Untied States because, well while we may get sick of distant gazes and star-spangled berets, Che is an Argentine guy who came to Bolivia to kill Bolivians.

But even as the revolutionary hero has finally achieved a degree of institutional support from the Government of Bolivia, and in spite of mythic – and even holy – status he has achieved in the world, the event proved just how thorough has been his ultimate downfall. The communist ideals and armed struggle he advocated were nowhere to be seen in Valle Grande. The official discourse and the chatter on the street lauded Che for his "human qualities" and his sense of justice, largely without reference to armed struggle against capitalist imperialism.

In fact, a host of people viewed the event, as well as Che, as a marketing opportunity. An army of vendors hawking Che-related knick-knacks and handicrafts invaded the plaza. A more complete appropriation of Che's image by modern capitalism could be found on a truck painted with a scantily clad beauty, posing on a beach clasping a two liter bottle painted with Che's photo. "Cuba El Che," a prepackaged rum with cola, is targeted at the rebellious age group of 15 to 20 year olds. This mating of an icon of rebellion and an entirely unoriginal sex symbol got good reviews in marketing studies.

The owner of Cuba El Che is Fernando Porras, who has worked for five years to open his company, and, though he describes himself as a leftist and admires Che's humanism, his goal is clearly to make money. "A company that is formed to make money doesn't have anything to do with socialism. And this is a company that is here to make money. I'm not an NGO for handing out gifts."

He has big plans for the company. If Cuba El Che goes well, he will move on to soft drinks: Che Cola, Che Piña, Che Papaya.

Not to be left out, the vice-ministry of tourism has also developed a tourist circuit called the "Ruta del Che," which includes several of the sites related to Che's ill-fated guerilla war in Bolivia. The vice-ministry hopes that this route will help foreign tourists spread their dollars a little wider within Bolivia so that the economic benefits of tourism reach poor people in remote areas.

President Evo Morales used the occasion of the anniversary to condemn "savage and inhuman capitalism," imperialism and neoliberalism, but he quickly moved on to tout his successes in gaining national control of natural resources. Rather than reminisce about the glory days of armed revolution, Morales looked forward to the more complicated struggle to control global warming. He warned that even the capitalists who benefit from the "sacking of Latin America's natural resources" won't escape the natural disasters that global climate change may be bringing.

It seems that since his visit to the UN General Assembly, the President has found an international cause to support. This is surprise in a country that regularly suffers a range of natural disasters, including floods, droughts, landslides and forest fires.

As for why the glory days of armed revolution – if not their principal icon – have gone out of style, a traveling artisan who left her home in Colombia seven years ago and goes by the name Pili offered the closest thing to an answer that the author has heard. She lamented the slow sales of handicrafts, saying simply "Communists don’t have much money."

Virgin of the Snows

2007-08-10T12:26:00.000-04:00

Just back from the tropics Caranavi, where I wasn't working, but rather celebrating the day of the virgin of the snows, patrona of Caranavi. My friend Pancho, one of the drivers from my days at ACDI/VOCA was the preste, otherwise known as the guy who is in charge of the fiesta. When I was first working for ACDI/VOCA, pancho and I and a couple of other gringos toured the whole Yungas region interviewing beneficiaries of ACDI/VOCA's projects. Pancho, even more than most of the drivers, was the guy who served as the bridge between us and the local community. Throughout my time at ACDI/VOCA, I was continually impressed, more than anything else, by the drivers and their hard work, ingenuity and grace under pressure.

On sunday morning, after a night of drinking and dancing, all of the dancers crammed into the church for the mass, all fanning themselves and sweating. Lots of hymns and Ave Marias and the usual blahblah about the virgin of the snows, the patrona of Caranavi and Mary a that sort of stuff. And then the padre went on with the sermon, which consisted basically of four messages. Thanks, by name, to the various people who donated the cross, and the light fixtures, and the benches, and the flowers, and etc. Also if anyone feels inspired to donate flower vases, that would be welcome of course. And if anyone is an architect, we would welcome their support designing a larger church in Caranavi. And lastly, please don't offer the priests beer... they'll drink one or two, and the next thing you know, they are up dancing and everyone is making fun of them, so it's better if you offer them soft drinks.

Then they took the statue of the virgin of the snows, patrona of Caranavi, out to the plaza and paraded her around in the sun, stopping at every corner to bless the virgin and sprinkle holy water on the crowd and light off fireworks and sing a hymn. The major purpose of this seemed to be to get the rest of the people, who were still drinking at one o'clock in the afternoon, to stop for at least as long as the procession went around the plaza. Everyone stopped and stopped playing music and let the procession pass. Then the virgin went back into the church and they started the party again.

And after all of that, I'm still not sure where the snows are that the virgin is virgin of, but I did eat a tasty coconut icecream.

Back in Siglo XX

2007-07-31T16:17:00.000-04:00

Just taking a quick turn through Siglo XX to show my face again after three months and deliver the shorts that I made of a bunch of these guys. It's been too long since I've been here and I'm not sure when I will make it back here, though I hope I can come back again before the end of August. Meantime, this is really just a quick turn through town and say hello to my friends befor its back to la paz. maybe even tomorrow.

2007-07-24T15:20:00.000-04:00

Getting ready to travel again. I've got some visits to make with my friends in Siglo XX and some visits in the Yungas, and I still need to head down south to check out what kinds of possibilities there are down there. Not sure whether I will be able to head out by the end of this week, but if not, then first thing next week.

Meantime, it's winter in La Paz, which means chilly at night and bright sunshine all day.

Welcome Back to Bolivia

2007-07-02T11:16:00.000-04:00

On the cab ride from the airport, four taxis (including mine) arrived at an intersection at exactly the same time. All four sped into the intersection until each had to stop, inches from the drivers side door of the taxi that had entered from its right. None could move forward. In Bolivia, you only need four cars to make a traffic jam. And if only one car had had the patience to wait until another car passed, everyone would have gotten by faster.

For anyone who wants to understand Bolivia, the lesson is there, five minutes from the airport gate.

Trailer!!!

2007-06-11T21:44:00.000-04:00

The Trailer is up. Thanks to Taylor for the footage of Nevada and the help editing.

It sure is some pretty pictures.

www.fileden.com/files/2007/4/12/977104/a%20miners%20luck13mb.mov

You may need the latest version of QuickTime Player to see it, which you can download free from apple:

here for windows:

www.apple.com/support/downloads/quicktime716forwindows.html

or here for apple:

www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

DC rat race

2007-06-08T16:33:00.000-04:00

I'm in DC doing the ugly, ugly business of making documentaries. Which is to say, asking friends and family to make donations to the project and trying to get some larger institution involved, as a philanthropic venture. It's ugly, and it makes me really just want to climb back into a dark hole in the ground and look at miners.

But we got a trailer that is pretty good and shows some nice pictures of kids digging in the dirt and pretending to be miners for a day, and drilling with a four pound single jack hammer, and talking about how nobody does that any more. Which is a good thing to show next to some of the footage I already had of Bolivian miners working in the mines.

In other news, I pitched the story to a film production company, which I knew wasn't going to be interested, but it was a really useful practice pitch. Good feedback about the trailer, from the kinds of people I need to be able to pitch to.

heading up to the mountains tomorrow, and looking forward to being out of this game for at least a day.

'Neath the Sagebrush and the Cactus

2007-05-28T19:10:00.000-04:00

I am in Hawthorne, Nevada. Hawthorne is out in the middle of the desert, and the main business for Hawthorne is the reservation where they store ammunition. From where I am sitting, I count at least nine flags, not to mention the bunting and streamers and other red white and blue themed items.

Hawthorne is also about twenty miles from Hugh's mine, where we did another shoot this morning. It was another really good shoot, along with the stuff we did yesterday at his home and the shoot we did in Tonopah on Saturday.

It's real wild west country and wild west people. I had to chuckle when Hugh said of a valley where he had worked a talc mine had "some real colorful characters." As if Hugh weren't colorful.

It's beautiful stuff to take pictures of though, and I think we have about what we need to cut together a trailer. So look for an update from Boston, next week.

No Sleep till Brooklyn

2007-05-21T18:28:00.000-04:00

So I am back in DC already. I got back much earlier than I thought I would, in order to be back for my grandmother's funeral. I miss her dearly. She was always so curious and a little bit dumbfounded by what I am doing in Latin America. But she always understood that it was something I love to do and supported me for that reason if for no other reason.

This is already promising to be a really busy trip, with work to do for "A Miner's Luck" and for a handful of other projects that I am involved in. One is regarding a World Bank Rural Development Project in Bolivia that was terminated and never received any follow-up or support for the maintenance and operation of the project. The other is to help Guillermo Ruiz publish the works of his father in the US in order to generate a little bit of revenue for his retirement.

Both of these are really interesting projects, and I am working with really good people on them, but they sure do take a lot of time. At any rate, I think I have most of the pieces of the puzzle ready for Nevada. The only thing that I am a little bit sad about is that I didn't get the short piece about the miners in Bolivia done to the point where I should have gotten it. It's almost ready, and it will have to do for Jim Butler Day, but there are just a handful of things that should be better.

Fortunately we will get a chance to work a little more on that in Boston before I show it to anyone else in DC. But it does mean another thing to do.

I Get by with a Little Help

2007-05-12T19:32:00.000-04:00

It's been, to say the least, a busy couple of weeks, and things have been progressing well.

I have finished a pretty good version of the treatment (click the link in the last post). You will note the beautiful cover, which my friend Gisel put together. She took a photo that Taylor shot and decided that it looked best as a dime store western cover.
And that is just what I'm after, with a few roles reversed here and there. A number of people read it, including Jeff, his dad, Heather and Carolina. Little by little, it gets better and better.

I also went to Siglo XX with Sixto Choque, who helped me get some production photos for the film. I shot a little bit of video, and sixto shot a bunch of photos, which I think will be really good for future graphic design needs and for video stills. I've been working with a cuadrillo of miners who keep inviting me back to their workplace again and again. It's their friendship and welcome most of all that makes this kind of work possible.

We also went to Macha, where the communities from the region celebrate the fiesta de la cruz by banding together and beating the snot out of each other. It's kind of a weird spectacle -- it happens at this time of year in Macha and in a number of other communities, and it happens throughout the north of Potosi throughout the year.

What struck me most from this spectacle is the lack of understanding between people who live in the campo and people who live in the city. The people who are from the town of Macha, where the festival happens every year, just lack any in depth understanding of the festival or the communities around Macha. Yes, they speak Quechua, but they can't identify the community relationships or even explain what the fiesta means to the people who participate. Not that I can either, but I'm not trying to be part of this multicultural, multiethnic society of Bolivia.

At any rate, I hope to post some of Sixto's photos in a subsequent post.

And we've been editing. Carolina has been helping me to cut together a short trailer for the film and a ten minute short of miners in Siglo. She has a very good eye, a remarkable capacity to deal with schedule changes and she instantly understood the project and what I am aiming for. I think that we'll get a really good trailer, once I finish getting the footage I'll need from Taylor in Nevada in a couple of weeks.

Also, Daniela just helped me move all of my stuff into her house.

Project Treatment

2007-04-30T10:43:00.000-04:00

Check out the treatment of the project:

A Miner's Luck

I'm Not Crazy. No really, I'm Not.

2007-04-24T10:28:00.000-04:00

Just got back from a short trip to the Yungas of La Paz. These are the steep tropical foothills of the Andes, a description that hardly does them justice. It is a landscape that doesn't exist in any other context of the imagination. You can't really photograph it because there isn't a center of focus. Are you looking at the mountains -- long finger ridges that go on forever in all directions -- or are you looking at the valleys -- the negative space between the mountains. Or the clouds, which move across the sky in every different angle all at the same time. It's not a landscape I can explain or even understand.

This trip include a visit to Santa Rosa de Lima and a community called Chillata. Chillata is about a two hour walk from the main road. No cars, no nothing. It's a pretty heavily traveled road though, because there are a number of gold mines up above the town. I saw at least eight people and two mules.

The community itself operates a mine too, which seems to be their principal cash income. At the bottom of the valley, the hillsides are covered in all coca fields. Though they said they had them here too, I didn't see any at all. The terrain is so steep and hilly that they may easily have been hidden out of eyesight from the road, but certainly it is nothing like the volume in other parts of the Yungas.

It was nice to be out of the city, and nice to be walking around in the country. And it's a challenge to find individuals and communities that are really interested in presenting their community and their reality in a documentary. How do you explain to someone who has never seen a documentary that this documentary will present a comparison between mining in the US and mining in Bolivia? How do you explain that I'm not doing this to make money, that I may break even if I get lucky, but that really what I am interested in is telling a story? Their story really.

What I am doing lies so far outside of their vision of the world and of what is possible, that it's hard to convince people that I this is really what I am doing. Come to think of it, I imagine that a number of you feel the same way.

What's interesting (and reassuring, sort of) is that in the mining towns, like Siglo XX, I found a number of people who said they wouldn't mind if I filmed them, they just wanted me to make a documentary that showed their reality. It's reassuring because it took me at least three visits to find these people and get to know them. So I think that with a little time and a lot of walking, I'll be able to find the same thing here in the Yungas.

The Most Boring Post Ever

2007-03-23T19:54:00.000-04:00

This post will be boring. This is the other half of filmmaking, and its much less appealing than crawling around on my hands and knees in the mud, in a dark, uncomfortable crack in the rock, a mile underground. But its as important as getting the footage.

This week, I started fundraising.

I hate asking my friends and family for money, but the film won't go forward if I don't. It's ugly. It's dirty. It's uncomfortable. But until I win the lottery, there's no way to make the film without it.

I need to go to Nevada to film the Nevada State Mining Championships over Memorial Day weekend. And I need to go back to Yerrington to film another interview with Hugh. These two shoots are key to the film, and the last two ingredients that I need in order to cut together a promotional trailer to bring to Foundations and other large-scale funders.

This is all going to cost a little less than $3,000. Which is about $3,200 more than I have right now.

So I sent a handful of emails out, and I will continue sending them out handful by handful. If you haven't had a note on the subject yet, don't worry. You will. Or you can head me off at the pass by sending a check to Wicked Delicate Films, at:

65 Old Harbor Street,
South Boston, MA 02127

Just make sure you put a note on it that it is for A Miner's Luck, and it will probably be a good idea to send me a note so that I can expect it. Those of you who would benefit from a tax deduction on donations, let me know that also. I can make arrangements for this donation to be made through a tax exempt fiscal sponsor.

And thanks to Ella, who was the first person to donate, in spite of the fact that I told her med students are exempt. She promised me a check for $25, and, maybe more important, wrote me some encourging words.

Another Trip to Siglo XX / Llallagua

2007-03-16T16:09:00.000-04:00

Just spent another week in Siglo XX / Llallagua. In spite of everything going wrong while I was trying to leave -- I had lent my lights to a cameraman with a drinking problem -- this was a really productive trip. We got some very good footage of the working conditions of the cooperative miners. I think the folks I know in Nevada will be surprised to see men working in conditions more primative than what is celebrated at events like the mining championships.

We followed a miner named Jorge through a days work, from his house in the weak light of the early morning, in a trufi (a land rover packed with miners, and four hanging off the back), "picchando" coca and talking politics with his workmates, and working the vein with a hammer and steel bit. I think the footage we got will get the sense of how primitive, brutal and difficult this work really is.

Actually, the vein we filmed isn't the vein that Jorge normally works, but for the sake of safety and in order to have enough room to work and film at the same time, he volunteered to work on a smaller vein nearby. Even so, he said he got four or five pounds of tin, which is worth ten to twelve dollars once he has it ground and concentrated. Not a lot of money.

This is the footage I need to have in order show it next to the footage of the Nevada State Mining Championships, in the end of May. Now all I have to do is raise three thousand dollars by the end of May to be able to go film that.

Back to Bolivia (at last)

2007-02-11T15:59:00.000-05:00

I wrote this on the tenth of February, when I got back to Bolivia. Only I didn't have a blog to publish it on yet. You should also visit the Wicked Delicate Films website, where there are photos and a bunch of other interesting films:

wickedelicate.com

Follow the link for "Documentaries" and then for "A Miner's Luck"

Text of first post below:

So I've finally gotten back to Bolivia, and back into the hustle of La Paz. Seems like the minute I stepped off of the plane I had a million things that I need to do. And I also learned that I missed a major miner's protest against the governments proposal to raise taxes. There were apparently some thirty thousand cooperativistas here in La Paz on Tuesday marching and throwing dynamite. I'm particularly sad that I missed it because there aren't that many times when thirty thousand miners march peacefully. It would have been a good moment to film and from everything that I understand miners on the march is a pretty intimidating sight.

I am also worried that this may be a sign of the conflicts escalating between the cooperativistas and the government. I'll see what I can learn when I go back to Siglo XX.

Meantime, I'm exhausted. Six weeks is a long time to be away, and I seem to have lost any acclimatization to the altitude that I might have had. Though running at sea level last week was pretty darn hard, too. Even so, it's good to be back.