Palos Blancos

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

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

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

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

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 ....