Bolivia Quotes

Bolivia is a striking example. The mostly white, Europeanized elite, which is a minority, happens to be sitting on most of the hydrocarbon reserves. For the first time Bolivia is becoming democratic. So it's therefore bitterly hated by the West, which despises democracy, because it's much too dangerous.

Bolivians die with rotted lungs so that the world may consume cheap tin.

When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery

We're all on our own, aren't we? That's what it boils down to. We come into this world on our own- in Hawaii, as I did, or New York, or China, or Africa or Montana- and we leave it in the same way, on our own, wherever we happen to be at the time- in a plane, in our beds, in a car, in a space shuttle, or in a field of flowers. And between those times, we try to connect along the way with others who are also on their own. If we're lucky, we have a mother who reads to us. We have a teacher or two along the way who make us feel special. We have dogs who do the stupid dog tricks we teach them and who lie on our bed when we're not looking, because it smells like us, and so we pretend not to notice the paw prints on the bedspread. We have friends who lend us their favorite books. Maybe we have children, and grandchildren, and funny mailmen and eccentric great-aunts, and uncles who can pull pennies out of their ears. All of them teach us stuff. They teach us about combustion engines and the major products of Bolivia, and what poems are not boring, and how to be kind to each other, and how to laugh, and when the vigil is in our hands, and when we have to make the best of things even though it's hard sometimes. Looking back together, telling our stories to one another, we learn how to be on our own.

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano’s class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space...

Ancient Egypt, like that of the Olmecs (Bolivia), emerged all at once and fully formed. Indeed, the period of transition from primitive to advanced society appears to have been so short that it makes no kind of historical sense. Technological skills that should have taken hundreds or even thousands of years to evolve were brought into use almost overnight-- and with no apparent antecedents whatever. For example, remains from the pre-dynastic period around 3500 BC show no trace of writing. Soon after that date, quite suddenly and inexplicably, the hieroglyphs familiar from so many of the ruins of Ancient Egypt begin to appear in a complete and perfect state. Far from being mere pictures of objects or actions, this written language was complex and structured at the outset, with signs that represented sounds only and a detailed system of numerical symbols. Even the very earliest hieroglyphs were stylized and conventionalized; and it is clear that an advanced cursive script was it common usage by the dawn of the First Dynasty.

That which we allow to exist, to flourish freely according to its own rhythms, is superior to anything our little hands create.

GOOGLE VALE MAS QUE EL PIB DE BOLIVIA

What does it mean to be a leftist? Eating vegan? Marching against the banks and then posting about it online with your iPad? The only truly untenable position is to be a militant member of the KKK, or to declare you’re a proud homophobe. Capitalism has completely devoured the Left to the point where it no longer has a hold on the very thing that made up its capital: the noble causes. Now the Left is just a more reactionary form of common sense. It has nothing to do with critical thought. It’s a groupthink party for people who consider themselves to be good people and feel morally superior to everyone else. The only thing they have in common with the old-guard Left is the will to mete out justice to anyone who goes astray—like Che, when he shot all those deserters in Bolivia. It’s a groupthink party

This is how social change ultimately happens: enlightened values do not change behavior; the contours of self-interest are altered and new values rush into the vacuum.

I made a boy's mistake, common enough, of thinking that real life was knowing many things and many people, living dangerously in faraway places, crossing the sea, or starting a power company on the Columbia River, a steamship line in Bolivia.

The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women — of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.

When I was in third grade--the age of many of the boys here--my parents had debated whether or not to buy me a pair of [special soccer shoes]...Here in Bolivia most of the kids played in bare feet, and they had as much fun as we ever had. Alone, human beings can feel hunger. Alone, we can feel cold. Alone, we can feel pain. To feel poor, however, is something that we do only in comparison to others. I took off my shoes.

Ecuador era uno de los centros de operación clave del cártel por su cercanía con Colombia, Perú y Bolivia, los tres países productores de cocaína, y por su salida directa al Pacífico

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space and allowing me to travel with Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under the sea, fight with d'Artagnan, Athos, Portos, and Aramis against the intrigues threatening the Queen in the days of the secretive Richelieu, or stumble through the sewers of Paris, transformed into Jean Valjean carrying Marius's inert body on my back.

Women in Bolivia are credited with one year of pension contributions per child, up to a maximum of three children. As a side benefit (and a more long-term solution to the problem of feminised poverty), pension credits for the main carer have also been found to encourage men to take on more of the unpaid care load.60 Which raises the question: is women’s unpaid work under valued because we don’t see it – or is it invisible because we don’t value it?

In many languages there actually exists a word for “meat hunger” to show that it’s a different thing from the regular, empty stomach type of hunger. It’s called ekbelu by the Mbuti tribe of Central Africa and eyebasi by the Yuquí of Bolivia. The

Bolivia, hoy uno de los países más pobres del mundo, podría jactarse –si ello no resultara patéticamente inútil– de haber nutrido la riqueza de los países más ricos. En nuestros días, Potosí es una pobre ciudad de la pobre Bolivia: «La ciudad que más ha dado al mundo y la que menos tiene»... Esta ciudad condenada a la nostalgia, atormentada por la miseria y el frío, es todavía una herida abierta del sistema colonial en América: una acusación. El mundo tendría que empezar por pedirle disculpas.

The Tsimane people, a tribe in Bolivia, eat rice, plantains, tubers, and corn; meat and fish that they themselves hunt and pull from streams; fruit; and the occasional wild nuts. They register the healthiest hearts ever recorded, according to a global team of scientists.

Simon BolIvar is often called "the George Washington of South America" because of his role in the liberation of five South American countries (Colombia, Venezula, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) from Spanish rule. Few, if 'any, political figures have played so dominant a role in the history of an entire continent as he did.

Cuentan que hace um siglo el dictador Mariano Melgarejo obligó al embajador de Inglaterra a beber un barril entero de chocolate, en castigo por haber despreciado un vaso de chincha. El embajador fue paseado en burro, montado al revés, por la calle principal de La Paz. Y fue devuelto a Londres. Dicen que entonces la reina Victoria, enfurecida, pidió un mapa de América del Sur, dibujó una cruz de tiza sobre Bolívia y sentenció: "Bolívia no existe". Para el mundo, en efecto, Bolivia no existía ni existió después: el saqueo de la plata y, posteriormente, el despojo del estaño no han sido más que el ejercicio de un derecho natual de los países ricos.

¿cómo esos niños abandonados a sí mismos y no teniendo más víveres que los existentes en el barco, proveerían a las necesidades de la existencia? Si fuese continente, dado que no podría ser otro que el de la América del Sur, las probabilidades de salvación serían mayores, porque atravesando el territorio de Chile o de Bolivia,

si el espacio lo permitiera, podría demostrarse claramente que gracias a los balleneros se logró al fin la liberación de Perú, Chile y Bolivia del yugo de la vieja España, y se estableció la eterna democracia en esos países. Australia, esa gran América situada al otro lado del globo, fue dada al mundo civilizado por los balleneros.

I probably should say that this is what makes you a good traveler in my opinion, but deep down I really think this is just universal, incontrovertible truth. There is the right way to travel, and the wrong way. And if there is one philanthropic deed that can come from this book, maybe it will be that I teach a few more people how to do it right. So, in short, my list of what makes a good traveler, which I recommend you use when interviewing your next potential trip partner: 1. You are open. You say yes to whatever comes your way, whether it’s shots of a putrid-smelling yak-butter tea or an offer for an Albanian toe-licking. (How else are you going to get the volcano dust off?) You say yes because it is the only way to really experience another place, and let it change you. Which, in my opinion, is the mark of a great trip. 2. You venture to the places where the tourists aren’t, in addition to hitting the “must-sees.” If you are exclusively visiting places where busloads of Chinese are following a woman with a flag and a bullhorn, you’re not doing it. 3. You are easygoing about sleeping/eating/comfort issues. You don’t change rooms three times, you’ll take an overnight bus if you must, you can go without meat in India and without vegan soy gluten-free tempeh butter in Bolivia, and you can shut the hell up about it. 4. You are aware of your travel companions, and of not being contrary to their desires/​needs/​schedules more often than necessary. If you find that you want to do things differently than your companions, you happily tell them to go on without you in a way that does not sound like you’re saying, “This is a test.” 5. You can figure it out. How to read a map, how to order when you can’t read the menu, how to find a bathroom, or a train, or a castle. 6. You know what the trip is going to cost, and can afford it. If you can’t afford the trip, you don’t go. Conversely, if your travel companions can’t afford what you can afford, you are willing to slum it in the name of camaraderie. P.S.: Attractive single people almost exclusively stay at dumps. If you’re looking for them, don’t go posh. 7. You are aware of cultural differences, and go out of your way to blend. You don’t wear booty shorts to the Western Wall on Shabbat. You do hike your bathing suit up your booty on the beach in Brazil. Basically, just be aware to show the culturally correct amount of booty. 8. You behave yourself when dealing with local hotel clerks/​train operators/​tour guides etc. Whether it’s for selfish gain, helping the reputation of Americans traveling abroad, or simply the spreading of good vibes, you will make nice even when faced with cultural frustrations and repeated smug “not possible”s. This was an especially important trait for an American traveling during the George W. years, when the world collectively thought we were all either mentally disabled or bent on world destruction. (One anecdote from that dark time: in Greece, I came back to my table at a café to find that Emma had let a nearby [handsome] Greek stranger pick my camera up off our table. He had then stuck it down the front of his pants for a photo. After he snapped it, he handed the camera back to me and said, “Show that to George Bush.” Which was obviously extra funny because of the word bush.) 9. This last rule is the most important to me: you are able to go with the flow in a spontaneous, non-uptight way if you stumble into something amazing that will bump some plan off the day’s schedule. So you missed the freakin’ waterfall—you got invited to a Bahamian family’s post-Christening barbecue where you danced with three generations of locals in a backyard under flower-strewn balconies. You won. Shut the hell up about the waterfall. Sally

Aquella sociedad potosina, enferma de ostentación y despilfarro, sólo dejó a Bolivia la vaga memoria de sus esplendores, las ruinas de sus iglesias y palacios, y ocho millones de cadáveres de indios. Cualquiera de los diamantes incrustados en el escudo de un caballero rico valía más, al fin y al cabo, que lo que un indio podía ganar en toda su vida de mitayo, pero el caballero se fugó con los diamantes. Bolivia, hoy uno de los países más pobres del mundo, podría jactarse -si ello no resultara patéticamente inútil- de haber nutrido la riqueza de los países más ricos. En nuestros días, Potosí es una pobre ciudad de la pobre Bolivia: "La ciudad que más ha dado al mundo y la que menos tiene", como me dijo una vieja señora potosina, evuelta en un kilométrico chal de lana de alpaca, cuando conversamos ante al patio andaluz de su casa de dos siglos. Esta ciudad condenada a la nostalgia, atormentada por la miseria y el frío, es todavía una herida abierta del sistema colonial en América: una acusación. El mundo tendría que empezar por pedirle disculpas.

The times of empire have ended. These are times of the people.

Careful in what and how you are learning. Professors specialize in “teaching” knowledge – They do not specialize in organization and application of knowledge. This is often why modern education includes “job placement” for real-world understanding and immersion of what you learn. Listen, you can grow up in Saudi Arabia, or in Kenya, or Bolivia – and study every book available on-line about hockey. But that will NEVER, by itself, lead you to become an adept hockey player or Hockey Coach. Yet, this is exactly the kind of thing going on all across the Fitness Industry, with ‘weekend certifications’ and the like. Knowledge is more than information gathering– and knowledge is NOT power in and of itself. Knowledge and access to it, is merely the “potential for proper and expert application.

Sverige har inte haft krig på egen mark sedan sextonhundratalet och hur ofta tänkte jag inte den tanken att någon borde invadera Sverige, bomba husen, plundra hela landet, skjuta männen, våldta kvinnorna, och sedan låta något avlägset land, som Chile eller Bolivia, välkomna flyktingarna därifrån med sin stora gästfrihet och säga till dem att de älskar allt skandinaviskt och sedan fösa ihop dem i ett getto utanför någon storstad där. Bara för att få höra vad de skulle säga.

When you look at a map you’ll be struck by the fact that Chile is the longest and thinnest country in the world. While averaging only slightly more than 100 miles wide from west to east, it’s nearly 3,000 miles long from north to south: almost as long as the U.S. is wide. Geographically, Chile is isolated from other countries by the high chain of the Andes in the east separating it from Argentina, and by the world’s most barren desert in the north separating it from Bolivia and Peru.

For generations the official U.S. policy had been to support these regimes against any threat from their own citizens, who were branded automatically as Communists. When necessary, U.S. troops had been deployed in Latin America for decades to defend our military allies, many of whom were graduates of the U.S. Military Academy, spoke English, and sent their children to be educated in our country. They were often involved in lucrative trade agreements involving pineapples, bananas, bauxite, copper and iron ore, and other valuable commodities. When I became president, military juntas ruled in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. I decided to support peaceful moves toward freedom and democracy throughout the hemisphere. In addition, our government used its influence through public statements and our votes in financial institutions to put special pressure on the regimes that were most abusive to their own people, including Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. On visits to the region Rosalynn and I met with religious and other leaders who were seeking political change through peaceful means, and we refused requests from dictators to defend their regimes from armed revolutionaries, most of whom were poor, indigenous Indians or descendants of former African slaves. Within ten years all the Latin American countries I named here had become democracies, and The Carter Center had observed early elections in Panama, Nicaragua, Peru, Haiti, and Paraguay.

La natura, persino su scala ridottissima, si faceva beffe dell’informatica. Anche migliorato dalla tecnologia, il cervello umano era minuscolo, infinitesimo, in confronto all’universo. Eppure avere un cervello e camminare in un mattino di sole in Bolivia avrebbe dovuto dargli una bella sensazione. Il bosco era impenetrabilmente complesso, ma non lo sapeva. La materia era informazione, l’informazione materia, e solo nel cervello la materia si organizzava a sufficienza da essere consapevole di se stessa; solo nel cervello l’informazione di cui il mondo era fatto poteva manipolare se stessa. Il

military aggression is defined as a crime against humanity, and international courts, when they are brought to bear, usually demand that aggressors pay compensation. Germany had to pay massive reparations after World War I, and Iraq is still paying Kuwait for Saddam Hussein’s invasion in 1990. Yet the Third World debt, the debt of countries like Madagascar, Bolivia, and the Philippines, seems to work precisely the other way around. Third World debtor nations are almost exclusively countries that have at one time been attacked and conquered by European countries—often, the very countries to whom they now owe money.

Nuestra casa era una prodigiosa zarza ardiente que lamía los troncos de los árboles y avanzaba como una legión por el huerto. Supe que el sonido de esa crepitación descomunal era el de todos los esqueletos que me habían atormentado. Las calaveras de los abedules, las de nuestros padres y ahora la de tía Anita.

A clinic in Bolivia 140 kilometers from the nearest city prints out splints and prostheses when supplies are low. The cost per piece runs about 2 cents for the plastic. This might allow developing nations to circumvent having to import large numbers of supplies. Already, 3D printing is occurring in underdeveloped areas. “Not Impossible Labs” based in Venice, California took 3D printers to Sudan where the chaos of war has left many people with amputated limbs. The organization’s founder, Mick Ebeling, trained locals how to operate the machinery, create patient–specific limbs, and fit these new, very inexpensive prosthetics.

The age-old trick of transfer pricing Taking advantage of the fact that they operate in countries with different tax rates, TNCs [transnational corporations] have their subsidiaries over-charge or under-charge each other – sometimes grossly – so that profits are highest in those subsidiaries operating in countries with the lowest corporate tax rates. In this way, their global post-tax profit is maximized. A 2005 report by Christian Aid, the development charity, documents cases of under-priced exports like TV antennas from China at $0.40 apiece, rocket launchers from Bolivia at $40 and US bulldozers at $528 and over-priced imports such as German hacksaw blades at $5,485 each, Japanese tweezers at $4,896 and French wrenches at $1,089. The Starbucks and Google cases were different from those examples only in that they mainly involved ‘intangible assets’, such as brand licensing fees, patent royalties, interest charges on loans and in-house consultancy (e.g., coffee quality testing, store design), but the principle involved was the same. When TNCs evade taxes through transfer pricing, they use but do not pay for the collective productive inputs financed by tax revenue, such as infrastructure, education and R&D. This means that the host economy is effectively subsidizing TNCs.

(Afterword) In the mountains of Bolivia--one place the book has yet to be published--every year, the poorest people gather in high Andes villages to celebrate the festival of "Tinku". There, the campesino men beat the crap out of one another. Drunk and bloody, they pound one another with just their bare fists, chanting, "We are men. We are men. We are men..." They fight the way they have for centuries. In their world, with little income or wealth, few possessions, and no education or opportunity, it's a festival they look forward to all year long. Then, when they're exhausted, the men and women go to church. And they get married. Being tired isn't the same as being rick, but most times it's close enough.

Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it—talking trade balances here—once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here—once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel—once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity—y'know what?

This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it—talking trade balances here—once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here—once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel—once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity—y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery

Tamara Bunke was the only woman to fight alongside “Che” during his Bolivian campaign. She was an East German national, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 19, 1937, of Communist activist parents. As a child, her home was frequently used for meetings, hiding weapons and conducting other Communist activities. After World War II, in 1952 she returned to Germany where she attended Humboldt University in Berlin. Tamara met “Che” Guevara when she was an attractive 23-year-old woman in Leipzig, and he was with a Cuban Trade Delegation. The two instantly hit it off as she cozied up to him and, having learned how to fight and use weapons in Pinar del Rio in western Cuba, she joined his expedition to Bolivia. Becoming a spy for the ELN, she adopted the name “Tania” and posed as a right-wing authority of South-American music and folklore. In disguise, she managed to warm up to and entice Bolivian President René Barrientos. She even went on an intimate vacation to Peru with him.

Hoy esos hombres y mujeres van a Tailandia, a Filipinas, a Botswana, a Bolivia y a cualquier parte donde esperan encontrar gentes que necesitan con desesperación un trabajo. Van a esos países con la intención deliberada de explotar a los desdichados, a seres que tienen hijos desnutridos o famélicos, que viven en barrios de chabolas y que han perdido toda esperanza de una vida mejor; que incluso han dejado de soñar en un futuro. Esos hombres y mujeres salen de sus fastuosos despachos de Manhattan, de San Francisco o de Chicago, se desplazan entre los continentes y los océanos en lujosos jets, se alojan en hoteles de primera categoría y se agasajan en los mejores restaurantes que esos países puedan ofrecer. Luego salen a buscar gente desesperada. Son los negreros de nuestra época. Pero ya no tienen necesidad de aventurarse en las selvas de África en busca de ejemplares robustos para venderlos al mejor postor en las subastas de Charleston, Cartagena o La Habana. Simplemente reclutan a esos desesperados y construyen una fábrica que confeccione las cazadoras, los pantalones vaqueros, las zapatillas deportivas, las piezas de automoción, los componentes para ordenadores y los demás miles de artículos que aquéllos saben colocar en los mercados de su elección. O tal vez prefieren no ser los dueños de esas fábricas, sino que se limitan a contratar con los negociantes locales, que harán el trabajo sucio por ellos. Esos hombres y mujeres se consideran gente honrada. Regresan a sus países con fotografías de lugares pintorescos y de antiguas ruinas, para enseñárselas a sus hijos. Asisten a seminarios en donde se dan mutuas palmadas en las espaldas e intercambian consejos sobre cómo burlar las arbitrariedades aduaneras de aquellos exóticos países. Sus jefes contratan abogados que les aseguran la perfecta legalidad de lo que ellos y ellas están haciendo. Y tienen a su disposición un cuadro de psicoterapeutas y otros expertos en recursos humanos, para que les ayuden a persuadirse de que, en realidad, están ayudando a esas gentes desesperadas. El esclavista a la antigua usanza se decía a sí mismo que su comercio trataba con una especie no del todo humana, a cuyos individuos ofrecía la oportunidad de convertirse al cristianismo. Al mismo tiempo, entendía que los esclavos eran indispensables para la supervivencia de su propia sociedad, de cuya economía constituían el fundamento. El esclavista moderno se convence a sí mismo (o a sí misma) de que es mejor para los desesperados ganar un dólar al día que no ganar absolutamente nada. Y además se les ofrece la oportunidad de integrarse en la más amplia comunidad global. Él o ella también comprenden que esos desesperados son esenciales para la supervivencia de sus compañías, y que son los fundamentos del nivel de vida que sus explotadores disfrutan. Nunca se detienen a reflexionar sobre las consecuencias más amplias de lo que ellos y ellas, su nivel de vida y el sistema económico en que todo eso se asienta están haciéndole al planeta, ni sobre cómo, finalmente, todo eso repercutirá en el porvenir de sus propios hijos.

What's the story here, Karl?' Kevin asked. 'Hard as it is to believe, these people are slaves,' Karl explained. 'Slaves?' I asked skeptically. 'Well, you might not call them that but they are virtual slaves. They don't receive any pay. They are dealt with harshly. They don't have anywhere else to go' 'What about the government? Don't they help?' Marcus asked. 'The government?' Karl laughed. 'The government my eye! Those generals stay in power several years, make a bundle smuggling drugs, and once they're millionaires, they retire. Some other lousy generals take over from them, and history repeats itself. You think they give a shit what happens to a few lousy Indians?

Geopolitics is ultimately the study of the balance between options and lim­itations. A country's geography determines in large part what vulnerabilities it faces and what tools it holds. "Countries with flat tracks of land -- think Poland or Russia -- find building infrastructure easier and so become rich faster, but also find them­selves on the receiving end of invasions. This necessitates substantial stand­ing armies, but the very act of attempting to gain a bit of security automat­ically triggers angst and paranoia in the neighbors. "Countries with navigable rivers -- France and Argentina being premier examples -- start the game with some 'infrastructure' already baked in. Such ease of internal transport not only makes these countries socially uni­fied, wealthy, and cosmopolitan, but also more than a touch self-important. They show a distressing habit of becoming overimpressed with themselves -- and so tend to overreach. "Island nations enjoy security -- think the United Kingdom and Japan -- in part because of the physical separation from rivals, but also because they have no choice but to develop navies that help them keep others away from their shores. Armed with such tools, they find themselves actively meddling in the affairs of countries not just within arm's reach, but half a world away. "In contrast, mountain countries -- Kyrgyzstan and Bolivia, to pick a pair -- are so capital-poor they find even securing the basics difficult, mak­ing them largely subject to the whims of their less-mountainous neighbors. "It's the balance of these restrictions and empowerments that determine both possibilities and constraints, which from my point of view makes it straightforward to predict what most countries will do: · The Philippines' archipelagic nature gives it the physical stand-off of is­lands without the navy, so in the face of a threat from a superior country it will prostrate itself before any naval power that might come to its aid. · Chile's population center is in a single valley surrounded by mountains. Breaching those mountains is so difficult that the Chileans often find it easier to turn their back on the South American continent and interact economically with nations much further afield. · The Netherlands benefits from a huge portion of European trade because it controls the mouth of the Rhine, so it will seek to unite the Continent economically to maximize its economic gain while bringing in an exter­nal security guarantor to minimize threats to its independence. · Uzbekistan sits in the middle of a flat, arid pancake and so will try to expand like syrup until it reaches a barrier it cannot pass. The lack of local competition combined with regional water shortages adds a sharp, brutal aspect to its foreign policy. · New Zealand is a temperate zone country with a huge maritime frontage beyond the edge of the world, making it both wealthy and secure -- how could the Kiwis not be in a good mood every day? "But then there is the United States. It has the fiat lands of Australia with the climate and land quality of France, the riverine characteristics of Germany with the strategic exposure of New Zealand, and the island fea­tures of Japan but with oceanic moats -- and all on a scale that is quite lit­erally continental. Such landscapes not only make it rich and secure beyond peer, but also enable its navy to be so powerful that America dominates the global oceans.

General Mario Vargas Salinas, now retired from Bolivia’s Eighth Army Division, was one of the young army officers present at Guevara’s burial. It was his duty to accompany an old dump truck carrying the bodies of the six dead rebels, including that of “Che” Guevara, to the airstrip in Vallegrande, Bolivia. Knowing that the facts surrounding the burials were leaking out, he decided that after 28 years the world should know what had happened to “Che” Guevara’s body. At the time, Captain Vargas, who had also led the ambush in which Tamara “Tania” Bunke, Guevara’s lover, was shot dead, said that Guevara was buried early on the morning of October 11th, 1967, at the end of the town’s landing strip. After the gruesome facts became known, the Bolivian government ordered the army to find Guevara's remains for a proper burial. General Gary Prado Salmón, retired, had been the commander of the unit that had captured Guevara. He confirmed General Vargas’ statement and added that the guerrilla fighters had been burned, before dumping their bodies into a mass grave, dug by a bulldozer, at the end of the Vallegrande airstrip. He explained that the body of “Che” Guevara had been buried in a separate gravesite under the runway. The morning after the burials, “Che” Guevara’s brother arrived in Vallegrande, hoping to see his brother’s remains. Upon asking, he was told by the police that it was too late. Talking to some of the army officers, he was told lies or perhaps just differing accounts of the burial, confusing matters even more. The few peasants that were involved and knew what had happened were mysteriously unavailable. Having reached a dead end, he left for Buenos Aires not knowing much more than when he arrived….

When we came out of the cookhouse, we found the boy's father, the Indian man who had been grazing the horses in the pasture, waiting for us. He wanted someone to tell his troubles to. He looked about guardedly, afraid that the Señora might overhear him. 'Take a look at me' he said. I don't even know how old I am. When I was young, the Señor brought me here. He promised to pay me and give me a plot of my own. 'Look at my clothes' he said, pointing to the patches covering his body. 'I can't remember how many years I've been wearing them. I have no others. I live in a mud hut with my wife and sons. They all work for the Señor like me. They don't go to school. They don't know how to read or write; they don't even speak Spanish. We work for the master, raise his cattle and work his fields. We only get rice and plantains to eat. Nobody takes care of us when we are sick. The women here have their babies in these filthy huts.' 'Why don't you eat meat or at least milk the cows?' I asked. 'We aren't allowed to slaughter a cow. And the milk goes to the calves. We can't even have chicken or pork - only if an animal gets sick and dies. Once I raised a pig in my yard' he went on. 'She had a litter of three. When the Señor came back he told the foreman to shoot them. That's the only time we ever had good meat.' 'I don't mind working for the Señor but I want him to keep his promise. I want a piece of land of my own so I can grow rice and yucca and raise a few chickens and pigs. That's all.' 'Doesn't he pay you anything?' Kevin asked. 'He says he pays us but he uses our money to buy our food. We never get any cash. Kind sirs, maybe you can help me to persuade the master . Just one little plot is all I want. The master has land, much land.' We were shocked by his tale. Marcus took out a notebook and pen. 'What's his name?'. He wrote down the name. The man didn't know the address. He only knew that the Señor lived in La Paz. Marcus was infuriated. 'When I find the owner of the ranch, I'll spit right in his eye. What a lousy bastard! I mean, it's really incredible'. 'That's just the way things are,' Karl said. 'It's sad but there's nothing we can do about it.

The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta. Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: * music * movies * microcode (software) * high-speed pizza delivery The Deliverator used to make software. Still does, sometimes. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s, the Deliverator's report card would say: "Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills." So now he has this other job. No brightness or creativity involved -- but no cooperation either. Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall, your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver, take his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has been working this job for six months, a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards, and has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes.

Positive arguments for the natural possibility of absent qualia have not been as prevalent as arguments for inverted qualia, but they have been made. The most detailed presentation of these arguments is given by Block (1978). These arguments almost always have the same form. They consist in the exhibition of a realization of our functional organization in some unusual medium, combined with an appeal to intuition. It is pointed out, for example, that the organization of our brain might be simulated by the people of China or even mirrored in the economy of Bolivia. If we got every person in China to simulate a neuron (we would need to multiply the population by ten or one hundred, but no matter), and equipped them with radio links to simulate synaptic connections, then the functional organization would be there. But surely, says the argument, this baroque system would not be conscious! There is a certain intuitive force to this argument. Many people have a strong feeling that a system like this is simply the wrong sort of thing to have a conscious experience. Such a “group mind” would seem to be the stuff of a science-fiction tale, rather than the kind of thing that could really exist. But there is only an intuitive force. This certainly falls far short of a knockdown argument. Many have pointed out that while it may be intuitively implausible that such a system should give rise to experience, it is equally intuitively implausible that a brain should give rise to experience! Whoever would have thought that this hunk of gray matter would be the sort of thing that could produce vivid subjective experiences? And yet it does. Of course this does not show that a nation's population could produce a mind, but it is a strong counter to the intuitive argument that it would not. . . . Once we realize how tightly a specification of functional organization constrains the structure of a system, it becomes less implausible that even the population of China could support conscious experience if organized appropriately. If we take our image of the population, speed it up by a factor of a million or so, and shrink it into an area the size of a head, we are left with something that looks a lot like a brain, except that it has homunculi—tiny people—where a brain would have neurons. On the face of it, there is not much reason to suppose that neurons should do any better a job than homunculi in supporting experience.

Norte están el Paraguay y Bolivia, sus límites presuntos. La inmensa extensión de país que está en sus

The image of Che Guevara adorn the walls of students’ bedrooms and T-shirts the world over. Looking out over the head of the viewer he cuts a Christ-like figure. In fact, he was a murdering racist psychopath. A direct descendent of the last viceroy of Peru, he hated Black people and American Indians almost as much as gringos. Only pure-blooded Spaniards were good enough for him – despite his Irish blood He happily shot his own men in the back of the head for minor infractions. In Havana he summarily executed so many allies as well as enemies in the football stadium, Taliban-style, Fidel Castro had to beg him to stop. He helped establish labour camps in Cuba. A Stalinist, he backed the bloody suppression of the Hungarian Uprising An Argentinian, he played host to dictator Juan Perón. A hardline Communist, he back-channelled with President Kennedy. During the Cuban missile crisis he urged a pre-emptive strike against the US, though America’s retaliation would have wiped Cuba from the map. “The Cuban people are willing to sacrifice themselves,” he said. Did anyone ask them? He alienated the Cubans, the Russians and the Chinese in turn. The people of the Congo are suffering from his bungled intervention to this day. The Communist Party in Bolivia did not want him there. Nor did any of the other Communist parties in the surrounding countries. When he was captured, the only people that tried to rescue him were the CIA. Still, he takes a great photograph.

Debía cruzarlo y llegar a Bolivia, a Perú, al Amazonas. A la mierda, se dijo, pero ahora mismo. (...) -Mire, viejo: acábela, ¿quiere? Me voy a donde se me canta el culo, y me voy ya, ¿estamos?

When Castro learned of the deal made without him, he was furious and felt betrayed by what he considered his ally. Castro, acting on his own, demanded that the United States stop the blockade of the island, and end its support for the militant Cuban dissidents in exile. He also insisted that the United States return Guantánamo Naval Base to Cuba and stop violating Cuban airspace, as well as its territorial waters. The United States totally ignored him and his demands, dealing instead directly with the Soviet Union. Castro feeling slighted did the only thing left for him, and refused to allow the United Nations access to inspect the missile sites for compliance with the withdrawal agreement. Although costly, the Soviet Union thought of this entire “missile exercise” as a display of Communist power in the Americas. This was a total disregard of the Monroe Doctrine regarding foreign influences in the Americas. Although ultimately it was a futile attempt, the Soviet Union hoped that it would inspire other Latin countries to follow the move towards Communism. During the next two decades, many attempts were made by Cuba to influence other Latin American countries to accept Communism. This influence was exercised primarily by inserting sympathetic leftist leaning movements into their political structure. However most of these attempts failed with the exception of Nicaragua. In 1967 “Che” Guevara attempted such a blatant movement in Bolivia. In time however many of these Latin countries such as Venezuela, took a shift to the left through their constitutional electoral process and embraced socialistic forms of government on their own.

The safety of coca chewing and its place in Bolivian culture are why the President of Bolivia recently withdrew his country’s support for the UN convention on cocaine, to allow coca chewing to become legal again in Bolivia.

Barack Obama promised change. Then, upon election, he chose Hillary Rodham Clinton as his Secretary of State. This was an early sign that when it came to foreign policy there would be no real change – at least, no change for the better. The first real test of “change” in U.S. foreign policy came six months later on June 28, 2009, when armed forces overthrew the elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. It is easy to see what real change would have meant. The United States could have vigorously condemned the coup and demanded that the legitimate President be reinstated. Considering U.S. influence in Honduras, especially its powerful military bases there, U.S. “resolve” would have given teeth to anti-coup protests in Honduras and throughout the Hemisphere. That is not the way it happened. Instead, we got a first sample of the way Hillary Rodham Clinton treats the world. She calls it “smart power”. We can translate that as hypocrisy and manipulation. In early June 2009, Hillary flew to Honduras for the annual meeting of the Organization of American States with one thing in mind: how to prevent the lifting of the 47-year-old ban excluding Cuba, which a large majority of the OAS now considered “an outdated artifact of the Cold War”. Moreover, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador would go as far as to characterize the ban, for some strange reason, as “an example of U.S. bullying”.

Dentro de este sub-mundo de las criptomonedas, pululan los Ponzi, que desprestigian gravemente al bitcoin y a todas las monedas digitales. Hay incluso monedas digitales que son Ponzi (estafas piramidales) como ONECOIN. En el caso de ONECOIN, te exigen tu dinero en BITCOIN (por lo tanto, pretenden que les creas que su moneda revolucionará el mundo, pero quieren que les des tus bitcoins, ni ellos creen en su moneda). Otra de las estafas piramidales que se hizo conocida fue “Bitcoin Cash” en Bolivia. La promesa de Bitcoin Cash era “triplicar su dinero en menos de dos meses”. La empresa ofrecía multiplicar en poco tiempo el dinero de las personas mediante supuestas inversiones en Bitcoin, minería en el exterior o compra y venta de divisa. Luego de que depositaron el dinero, la página desapareció y nunca se recuperó. Otro de estos Ponzi que se aprovecha del prestigio de Bitcoin es Airbit Club. Como pasa con estos sistemas, una vez que “inviertes” el dinero allí, nunca más lo vas a recuperar, salvo que consigas convencer a nuevos referidos de “invertir” allí también. Entonces la única forma de recuperar el dinero –o incluso ganar- es hacer que otros “caigan” en la trampa. Airbit Club vende una suerte de “membresía” del club que supuestamente gana con la minería de bitcoins, con el trading de bitcoin y reparte ganancias entre los “socios”, pero, en realidad, el verdadero negocio es piramidal donde la única forma de recuperar el dinero es haciendo entrar a otros a la pirámide. Así como Air Bit Club, ONECOIN, BITCOIN CASH, Gladiacoin, Weifastpay, NewAgeBank y muchas otras, porque usan el prestigio de bitcoin para atraer ambiciosos y quitarles todo su dinero. Hay muchos otros de estos esquemas que prometen ganancias fabulosas pero en los que nunca se recupera el dinero (salvo que se consiga nueva gente para que caigan en la trampa). La

When it gets down to it—talking trade balances here—once we’ve brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they’re making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here—once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel—once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity—y’know what? There’s only four things we do better than anyone else music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery The

DANGER IN THE SKY In the year 2003, a tsunami of people washed away the government of Bolivia. The poor were sick and tired. Everything had been privatized, even the rainwater. A “for sale” sign had been hung on Bolivia, and they were going to sell it, Bolivians and all. The uprising shook El Alto, perched above the incredibly high city of La Paz, where the poorest of the poor work throughout their lives, day after day, chewing on their troubles. They are so high up they push the clouds when they walk, and every house has a door to heaven. Heaven was where those who died in the rebellion went. It was a lot closer than earth. Now they are shaking up paradise.

Another point of interest about the Tiahuanaco [in Bolivia] monoliths is that their garments from the waist down are patterned in the form of fish scales. Here, too, is a parallel to the Apkallus--the bearded, "fish-garbed figures" who brought high civilization to Mesopotamia [...]. Nor is it as though bearded figures are missing from the repertoire of Tiahuanaco. Two have survived, and one on the pillar in the semi-subterranean temple has been identified since time immemorial with the great civilizing deity Kon-Tiki Viracocha, [...] who is described in multiple myths and traditions as being white skinned and bearded.

The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women—of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.

la relación entre Fidel y el Che Guevara se deterioró hasta el punto en que el argentino prefirió arriesgar la vida en peligrosas misiones guerrilleras en países como el Congo o Bolivia que quedarse en Cuba enfrentado por Castro.

I knew from experience that my sensitivity to what scripture calls "powers and principalities" was stronger some days than others. As I biked through downtown (Cochabamba, Bolivia), I saw groups of young men loitering on the street corners waiting for the next movie to start. I stopped and walked through a bookstore stacked with magazines depicting violence, sex, and gossip, endless forms of provocative advertisement and unnecessary articles imported from other parts of the world. I had the dark feeling of being surrounded by powers much greater than myself and felt the seductive allure of sin all around me. I got a glimpse of the evil behind all the horrendous realities that plague our world-extreme hunger, nuclear weapons, torture, exploitation, rape, child abuse, and various forms of oppression-and how they all have their small and sometimes unnoticed beginnings in the human heart. The demon is patient in the way it seeks to devour and destroy the work of God. I felt intensely the darkness of the world around me. After a period of aimless wandering, I biked to a small Carmelite convent close to the house of my hosts. A very friendly Carmelite sister spoke to me and invited me into the chapel to pray. She radiated joy, peace, and yes, light. She told me about the light that shines into the darkness without saying a word about it. As I looked around, I saw the images of Teresa of Avila and Therese of Liseaux, two sisters who taught in their own times that God speaks in subtle ways and that peace and certainty follow when we hear well. Suddenly, it seemed to me that these two saints were talking to me about another world, another life, another love. As I knelt down in the small and simple chapel, I knew that this place was filled with God's presence. Because of the prayers offered there day and night, the chapel was filled with light, and the spirit of darkness had not gotten a foothold there. My visit to the Carmelite convent helped me realize again that where evil seems to hold sway, God is not far away, and where God shows his presence, evil may not remain absent for very long. There always remains a choice to be made between the creative power of love and life and the destructive power of hatred and death. I, too, must make that choice myself, again and again. Nobody else, not even God, will make that choice for me.

Have you ever prayed in a place where a great battle between good and evil, light and darkness, had been fought? I felt it in a chapel in Bolivia-that the very chapel where I prayed had been prepared by the faithful ones who had prayed there before me. I again experienced it while praying in a place readied for discerning, when I first visited the home of Marthe Robin (1902-81), who was born, lived, and died in a simple farmhouse on a hill not far from the small town of Chateauneuf-de-Galaure in France....I find it easier to pray in places where people have prayed long before, and harder to pray in places where seldom a prayer has been uttered....In an empty train compartment, a hotel room, or even a quiet study, there often seems to be a spirit that holds me back. I could have stayed and prayed for many hours in Marthe's room. Seldom have I felt such inner peace.

From the day I arrived in Bolivia, I wanted Bolivians to see me and to understand that I was an Indigenous person like them. But I was the one who needed to see them. I was the one coming to their country, to their community, with wealth and privilege. I was the one who needed to prove myself to them. I should have already known this, considering all the times I saw outsiders come into a Native community and assume that because they professed respect and love for Native people, they would be immediately accepted. “I’m one of the good ones,” they said. I thought I was one of the “good” North Americans, but I needed to prove it.

language. As well, temples,

Es fuerte ver como un pueblo se vuelve civilizado. Por eso vine a Bolivia, a conocer a la tierra, mi propia tierra, mi cuerpo, mi pensamiento, mi aire, mi corazón, mi fuego y mi propia sangre, mi educador especial, mi maestro personal.

for over a decade the radical Left was in power and Bolivia did not turn into Cuba or Venezuela. Democratic socialism is possible.

Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, en su gira por América Latina de julio de 2015, haría mayor justicia con la historia del continente: “Se han cometido muchos y graves pecados contra los pueblos originarios de América en nombre de Dios. Pido humildemente perdón, no solo por las ofensas de la propia iglesia, sino por los crímenes contra los pueblos originarios durante la llamada conquista de América”, y enseguida recordó a miles de sacerdotes y obispos que “se opusieron fuertemente a la lógica de la espada con la fuerza de la cruz. (…) Hubo pecado y abundante, pero no pedimos perdón, y por eso pido perdón”.

Florida panther, cougar, mountain lion, catamount, painter, mountain screamer, red tiger, cuguacuarana, ghost cat . . . It is alleged that they have over eighty recorded names, more than any other animal. But for me, in Bolivia, I knew them simply as “puma” (pronounced poo

In addition, as we age, we sleep less and wake up more easily, and while many of us sleep through the night, others sometimes wake up for as much as an hour or two before going back to sleep. Debate over the normality of these varying patterns was triggered by the anthropologist Carol Worthman and the historian Roger Ekirch.33 These scholars argued that it was normal prior to the Industrial Revolution for people to wake up for an hour or so in the middle of the night before going back to sleep. In between “first sleep” and “second sleep,” people talk, work, have sex, or pray. By implication, electric lights and other industrial inventions might have altered our sleep patterns. However, sensor-based studies of nonindustrial populations reveal a more complex picture. Whereas most foragers in Tanzania, Botswana, and Bolivia sleep through the night, subsistence farmers in Madagascar often divide their sleep into first and second segments.34

these densely settled civilizations interacted in a perverse way with European colonialism to create a “reversal of fortune,” making the places that were previously relatively wealthy in the Americas relatively poor. Today it is the United States and Canada, which were then far behind the complex civilizations in Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, that are much richer than the rest of the Americas.

Corporations continue to do their dirty work in poor countries. At the turn of the 21st century, the World Bank put pressure on Bolivia to privatize water services. Bechtel, the engineering giant, took control of this vital resource in Cochabamba. Bechtel’s executives immediately raised the price of water so high that most people could not afford it. Its contract, made in collusion with the Bolivian government, gave Bechtel the right to charge people for water they took from their own wells. Bechtel even sent collectors into people’s homes to demand payment for rainwater that people gathered in pots and pans on their roofs.

En una región del mundo con frecuencia conocida por su cultura machista, en los últimos años, mujeres de gran poder y talento han gobernado a Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Panamá, Nicaragua, Guyana y Trinidad y Tobago, y también se han desempeñado como gobernantes interinas en Ecuador y Bolivia.

A meeting with the Friends Mission in La Paz, Bolivia, lived long in the memory of the touring pair. Mr. O told it repeatedly as he relived the pioneering days of international outreach: The church in the Indian section of the city was crowded and most of the adults, so colorful in their native dress, were believers. The women, in bright shawls and skirts, removed their babies from their backs to the floor during the meeting. How they listened as their pastor interpreted…my message on The Wordless Book! Their faces lit up with understanding—the children’s too! Then at the close the pastor gave an altar call for the children to accept Christ. It was wonderful to see them come one by one until about 35 were gathered at the altar. The pastor dealt with each personally and faithfully and I am sure many were born again that day. This meeting alone, in all of its marvelous aspects, was worth the trip to South America.

These problems are compounded by the fact that accepted practice does not require economists to think through the conditions under which their models are useful. Asked point-blank, they can state chapter and verse all the assumptions needed to generate a particular result; that is, after all, the point of modeling. But ask them whether the model is more relevant to Bolivia or to Thailand, or whether it resembles more the market for cable TV or the market for oranges, and they will have a hard time producing an articulate answer. The standards of the profession require that the modeler make only some general claims about how what he or she is doing is relevant to the real world. It is left to the reader or the user of the model to infer the specific circumstances in which the model can help us better understand reality.§ This fudge factor increases the chances of malpractice. Models lifted out of their original context can be used in settings for which they are inappropriate.

It wasn’t the high thin mountain air that took our breath away. Those stone steps led us up to a place unlike any other on earth. We were overcome by the vision spread out before us; a purely mystical embodiment of space, time, setting, and silence. Up here the noise of our fellow travelers was strangely absent, muffled beneath a mantle of quiet that permeated the mountaintop city. No one was immune. In that first view, in that first moment, every visitor absorbed the essence of Machu Picchu in reverent stillness.

This is what travel should be like. Yampara locals heading home from the market dressed in their Sunday best braced against the wooden tie slats or squatted on the truck bed their bundles tucked around them. It was a little microcosm of the market, of real Andean life with laughter, chatter, babies crying, mothers coaxing, people gesturing at passing landmarks in a language we could never understand and us nodding back, gracious locals offering us bit of pastries and other treats and us smiling in recognition of their kindness. A diaspora of Andean life shared under a bracing blue sky and a passing panorama.

Hoy en día, un indígena en el sur de México o en el altiplano de Bolivia con iPhone tiene acceso a más conocimiento del que tenía el presidente de Estados Unidos, o

Between social mobilization and liberal democracy From Alexis de Tocqueville onward there has been a large body of democratic theory arguing that modern liberal democracy cannot exist without a vigorous civil society.29 The mobilization of social groups allows weak individuals to pool their interests and enter the political system; even when social groups do not seek political objectives, voluntary associations have spillover effects in fostering the ability of individuals to work with one another in novel situations—what is termed social capital. The correlation noted above linking economic growth to stable liberal democracy presumably comes about via the channel of social mobilization: growth entails the emergence of new social actors who then demand representation in a more open political system and press for a democratic transition. When the political system is well institutionalized and can accommodate these new actors, then there is a successful transition to full democracy. This is what happened with the rise of farmers’ movements and socialist parties in Britain and Sweden in the early decades of the twentieth century, and in South Korea after the fall of the military dictatorship in 1987. A highly developed civil society can also pose dangers for democracy and can even lead to political decay. Groups based on ethnic or racial chauvinism spread intolerance; interest groups can invest effort in zero-sum rent seeking; excessive politicization of economic and social conflicts can paralyze societies and undermine the legitimacy of democratic institutions. 30 Social mobilization can lead to political decay. The Huntingtonian process whereby political institutions failed to accommodate demands of new social actors for participation arguably happened in Bolivia and Ecuador in the 1990s and 2000s with the repeated unseating of elected presidents by highly mobilized social groups.31

Among ideas, legitimacy, and all of the other dimensions of development Ideas concerning legitimacy develop according to their own logic, but they are also shaped by economic, political, and social development. The history of the twentieth century would have looked quite different without the writings of an obscure scribbler in the British Library, Karl Marx, who systematized a critique of early capitalism. Similarly, communism collapsed in 1989 largely because few people any longer believed in the foundational ideas of Marxism-Leninism. Conversely, developments in economics and politics affect the kinds of ideas that people regard as legitimate. The Rights of Man seemed more plausible to French people because of the changes that had taken place in France’s class structure and the rising expectations of the new middle classes in the later eighteenth century. The spectacular financial crises and economic setbacks of 1929–1931 undermined the legitimacy of certain capitalist institutions and led the way to the legitimization of greater state control over the economy. The subsequent growth of large welfare states, and the economic stagnation and inflation that they appeared to encourage, laid the groundwork for the conservative Reagan-Thatcher revolutions of the 1980s. Similarly, the failure of socialism to deliver on its promises of modernization and equality led to its being discredited in the minds of many who lived under communism. Economic growth can also create legitimacy for the governments that succeed in fostering it. Many fast-developing countries in East Asia, such as Singapore and Malaysia, have maintained popular support despite their lack of liberal democracy for this reason. Conversely, the reversal of economic growth through economic crisis or mismanagement can be destabilizing, as it was for the dictatorship in Indonesia after the financial crisis of 1997–1998.33 Legitimacy also rests on the distribution of the benefits of growth. Growth that goes to a small oligarchy at the top of the society without being broadly shared often mobilizes social groups against the political system. This is what happened in Mexico under the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, who ruled the country from 1876 to 1880 and again from 1884 to 1911. National income grew rapidly in this period, but property rights existed only for a wealthy elite, which set the stage for the Mexican Revolution of 1911 and a long period of civil war and instability as underprivileged groups fought for their share of national income. In more recent times, the legitimacy of democratic systems in Venezuela and Bolivia has been challenged by populist leaders whose political base is poor and otherwise marginalized groups.34

Una empresa como Google, que no nació vendiendo ningún producto que pudiera ser tocado con las manos, vale cuatro veces más que el producto interno bruto de Bolivia, con todos sus recursos naturales.

Tell them I've gone pig farming in Bolivia.

This story forces us to ask ourselves this question: what struggles is my global family facing? Members of my family in many of the great urban centers of the world suffer from economic deprivation. What challenges does my family face in places like Sri Lanka or India or Egypt or Bolivia?

and Clyde. Bolivia and Paraguay, the two poorest countries in South America, were fighting in the name of Standard Oil and Shell and bleeding over oil in the Chaco.

Per una tribù indigena del Paraguay, o forse della Bolivia, il passato è ciò che ci sta davanti, perché possiamo vederlo e conoscerlo, e il futuro, invece, è ciò che ci sta dietro: ciò che non vediamo né possiamo conoscere.

Imagine a day when all plants and trees go on a strike, a bandh just for a day. All of us will die for want of oxygen.” Reading this, I was instantly reminded of Bolivia’s recent legislation (in December 2010) to grant all nature equal rights as humans. Justice William O. Douglas, writing against a 1972 decision by the United States Supreme Court, wrote, “Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation ... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life ... The voice of the inanimate object, therefore, should not be stilled.

Planting their orchards for millennia, the first Amazonians slowly transformed large swaths of the river basin into something more pleasing to human beings. In the country inhabited by the Ka’apor, on the mainland southeast of Marajó, centuries of tinkering have profoundly changed the forest community. In Ka’apor-managed forests, according to Balée’s plant inventories, almost half of the ecologically important species are those used by humans for food. In similar forests that have not recently been managed, the figure is only 20 percent. Balée cautiously estimated, in a widely cited article published in 1989, that at least 11.8 percent, about an eighth, of the nonflooded Amazon forest was “anthropogenic”—directly or indirectly created by humans. Some researchers today regard this figure as conservative. “I basically think it’s all human created,” Clement told me. So does Erickson, the University of Pennsylvania archaeologist who told me in Bolivia that the lowland tropical forests of South America are among the finest works of art on the planet. “Some of my colleagues would say that’s pretty radical,” he said. According to Peter Stahl, an anthropologist at the State University of New York in Binghamton, “lots” of researchers believe that “what the eco-imagery would like to picture as a pristine, untouched Urwelt [primeval world] in fact has been managed by people for millennia.” The phrase “built environment,” Erickson argued, “applies to most, if not all, Neotropical landscapes.

Then there's the pillar statue in the semi-subterranean temple at Tiahuanaco [Bolivia]. Like the Totem Pole of Göbekli Tepe, it is anthropomorphic. Like the Totem Pole at Göbekli Tepe, it has serpents writhing up its side. Like the Totem Pole at Göbekli Tepe, the long fingers of its hands almost meet in front of its body. The face is human not animal, however, and it's heavily bearded. Nonetheless, the figure of an animal is carved on the side of its head and this animal resembles no known species more closely than it does Toxodon, a sort of New World rhino that went extinct during the cataclysms at the end of the Ice Age around 12,000 years ago. This isn't pareidolia--the figure is definitely there. So there's only one question--and it's difficult to answer: is this a depiction of Toxodon, or is it some creature of the artist's imagination?

Sixty years prior to the death of “Che” Guevara and high in the same Bolivian highlands, Butch Cassidy and Harry A. Longabaugh, “the Sundance kid,” were holed up and then gunned down by the Bolivian army. It is thought that being mortally wounded, one of them shot the other before shooting himself. Attempts to find any remains that match the DNA of living relatives, has so far failed. However, Butch Cassidy's sister, Lula Parker Betenson, maintained that her brother returned to the United States and lived in seclusion for years. In 1975, Red Fenwick, the feature writer and columnist at The Denver Post, stated that he was acquainted with Cassidy's physician, who continued to treat him for some years after he supposedly was killed in Bolivia.

On a number of occasions, Tamara joined “Che” on his sorties into the Bolivian highlands, without incident. However, on March 24, 1967, a guerrilla fighter who had been captured by the Bolivian army betrayed her by giving away Tamara’s location. Although she escaped, the Bolivian soldiers found an address book in her Jeep and came after her in hot pursuit. With no other place to hide, she made her way back to “Che” Guevara’s forces. It was considered an open secret that Tamara had been intimate with “Che” but now the troops could not help but notice what was going on. The way they looked into each other’s eyes, and whispered sweet nothings, left no doubt in anyone’s mind, but that she was his lover…. The Bolivian highlands are notorious for the infestation of the Chigoe flea parasite, which infected Tamara. Having a leg injury and running a high fever, she and 16 other ailing fighters were ordered out of the region by Guevara. On August 31, 1967, up to her waist in the Rio Grande of Bolivia, and holding her M 1 rifle above her head, she and eight men were shot and killed in a hail of gunfire by Bolivian soldiers. Leaving their bodies in the water, it was several days before they were recovered downstream. Piranhas had attacked the bodies and their decomposing carcasses were polluting the water. Since the water was being used for drinking purposes by the people in a nearby village, the soldiers were ordered to clear the bodies out of the river. As they were preparing to bury Tamara’s remains in an unmarked grave, a local woman protested what was happening, and demanded that a woman should receive a Christian burial. When he received the news of what had happened, Guevara was stunned and refused to accept it, thinking it was just a propaganda stunt to demoralize him. In Havana Fidel Castro declared her a “Heroine of the Revolution.” There is always the possibility that Tamara was a double agent, whose mission it was to play up to “Che” when they met in Leipzig and then report back to the DDR (Democratic German Republic), who would in turn inform the USSR of “Che’s” activities. The spy game is a little like peeling an onion. Peel off one layer and what you find is yet another layer.

The place smelled of piss and mildew and stale beer. There was something else, too: the acrid sweat of the strung out—a smell that reminded me of the little cantinas in Bolivia where people in the coca trade use booze to come down from the powder cloud that gets them through the long shifts. If broken souls had an odor, they’d smell like the Cellar. A

The place smelled of piss and mildew and stale beer. There was something else, too: the acrid sweat of the strung out—a smell that reminded me of the little cantinas in Bolivia where people in the coca trade use booze to come down from the powder cloud that gets them through the long shifts. If broken souls had an odor, they’d smell like the Cellar. A single bar on the right ran the entire length of the building: twelve bar stools, five occupied by men. And to the left of the bar was a group of tables, one of which propped up three people—two women and a guy—who looked like they were passed out. The bartender, a good-looking young woman with a ponytail, was yelling at a man whose elbows were propped on the bar. He stomped outside after the reaming, and I headed toward his abandoned seat. The

Me fui transformando poco a poco en una militante del idioma. El mapuzugun es una lengua aislada, sin familia lingüística ni parientes conocidos. Hay muchas lenguas únicas, [...] pero las más conocidas son el euskera y el coreano. Las lenguas expansionistas, las que se repartieron por el mundo, son las lenguas coloniales y el castellano es una de ellas. En su tiempo también lo fue el quechua, que hoy tiene entre diez y doce millones de hablantes en Perú, Bolivia y Ecuador.

The altiplano stretches every part of you to breaking point. Past it. The vast snow-capped bulk of Illimani, the highest mountain in the Cordillera Real, loomed over the Choqueyapu Canyon below like the walls of some mighty ice fortress. It felt like standing on the moon.

It should’ve been terrifying, but it was liberating. The greatest high I’d ever experienced. Greater than BASE jumping. Greater than mountain biking Bolivia’s infamous Death Road. And a million times greater than any night I’d spent with any woman in the past.

El primer manuscrito, el de la tinaja, no lo mostré por vanidad, para no compartir mi hallazgo con nadie. El segundo no lo di a conocer por cobardía. Usted vivió esos años. El mundo parecía a punto de estallar. Todos ustedes, todos los de su generación eran zelotes. —Se rio pero como de lejos, sin alegría. —Ya no se trataba de comprender el mundo, sino de transformarlo, ¿no? Los muchachos salían a la calle a pedir la realidad de lo imposible, los curitas se remangaban la sotana y se hacían matar en las selvas de Colombia o de Bolivia. El compañero Jesús, harto de cargar con un patíbulo romano, andaba por esos arrozales de Vietnam munido de una buena metralleta, clamando como Nietzsche por el Hombre Nuevo. La revolución aprobada por Dios. Hubiera sido un buen momento, ¿no es verdad? Estoy tan cansado —dijo de pronto—, ha pasado tanto tiempo y me he vuelto tan viejo. Trate de entenderme, por más que no me crea. Yo, a pesar de mi rebeldía, de mi arrogancia intelectual, era un sabio cobarde y sencillamente tuve miedo de que fuera posible probar la autenticidad de esa epístola.

I found out a lot about my father as he regaled my wife. He'd learned how to be a potter in a small village in Bolivia. There, working on a kick-wheel in a shack the size of an outhouse, he started thinking about the few novels he'd read.

1980s and declared “I’m very happy to be in Bolivia,” it seemed to confirm all of our worst fears. Nothing stung Brazilian sensibilities more than not being properly recognized by the bigger and much richer continental giant in the hemisphere.

getting on an airplane. Especially going back to Bolivia. She’d spent years trying to forget that horrible event. Trying to put it behind her and focus on a life ahead. Peace. Happiness. Only instead to find that she’d grown more spiteful over her own past, and now her grandfather’s. This whole thing was just so bizarre. So surreal. And now she’d managed to tangle Joe Rickards up in it. Yes, he could make his own decisions, but it was she who’d shown up on his doorstep, almost forcing her way in. Forced a man who was already deeply wounded from God knows what. What kind of person was she to get him tangled up in her mess? Just because he had been interested didn’t mean he wanted to be part of it—whatever it was. Part of something she wasn’t even sure she wanted to be part of. But in the end, he was right. Knowing what had happened

Como tantas cosas en este gobierno, a medias y mal. El confinamiento nunca fue obligatorio. Por ello la movilidad de los mexicanos, en particular la de los capitalinos, disminuyó menos que en ciudades similares. México se ubica por debajo de países latinoamericanos como Perú, Panamá, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Colombia y Argentina en cuanto al respeto a la cuarentena.

Founded in Buenos Aires in 1974 and relocated to Mexico City after Argentina’s 1976 coup, Tercer Mundo (Third World) covered political events throughout what is today known as the Global South—Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In its first issue (September 1974), the journal discussed Argentina’s nationalist leader, Juan Domingo Perón, events in Peru, the decolonization struggle in Mozambique, dictatorship in Bolivia, and the Middle Eastern conflict. In issue 4 (May 1975), Tercer Mundo analyzed “Islamic Socialism” in Somalia, denounced the U.S. economic “blockade” of Cuba, discussed cultural decolonization in Tanzania, and reported on struggles for economic independence in Angola and Panama. Publishing from Mexico City a few years later, the journal’s issues 20 and 27 (April 1978 and February 1979) trained its anti-imperialist lens on issues commonly affecting Libya, Morocco (Western Sahara), Zaire (Congo), Mexico, Panama, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, and Cambodia.

When it gets down to it—talking trade balances here—once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here—once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel—once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity

To this day, indigenous societies incorporated into the global economy, from Bolivia to Taiwan, almost invariably frame their own traditions, as Marshall Sahlins puts it, by opposition to the white man’s ‘living in the way of money’.38