Bolivian Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Bolivian. Here they are! All 44 of them:

I found his last words without too much searching. Captured by the Bolivian army, Guevara said, 'Shoot, coward. You are only going to kill a man.
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
Bolivians die with rotted lungs so that the world may consume cheap tin.
Eduardo Galeano (Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent)
I was always reaching for love, but it turns out love doesn't involve reaching. I was always dreaming of the big love, the ultimate love, the love that would sweep me off my feet or 'break open the hard shell of my lesser self' (Daisaku Ikeda). The love that would bring on my surrender. The love that would inspire me to give everything. As I lay there, it occurred to me that while I had been dreaming of this big love, this ultimate love, I had, without realizing it, been giving and receiving love for most of my life. As with the trees that were right in front of me, I had been unable to value what sustained me, fed me, and gave me pleasure. And as with the trees, I was so busy waiting for and imagining and reaching and dreaming and preparing for this huge big love that I had totally missed the beauty and perfection of the soft-boiled eggs and Bolivian quinoa.
V (formerly Eve Ensler) (In the Body of the World)
Bolivian women sewed their lips shut for days. They threaded needles through their skin to stop their speech, to show what good speaking had done them.
Leslie Jamison (The Empathy Exams)
The coke bugs were out in force, doing military manoeuvres, all jazzed up on their Bolivian marching powder.
Mark D. Diehl (Vida Nocturna)
Che is transformed into a hardened symbol of resistance, a symbol of the fight for what is just, of passion, of the necessity of being fully human, multiplied infinitely in the ideals and weapons of those who struggle. This is what the front men and their omnipotent handlers fear.
Ernesto Che Guevara (The Bolivian Diary: Authorized Edition (Che Guevara Publishing Project))
Why did God do it? or is there really a Devil who led to the Fall? Souls in Heaven said "We want to try mortal existence, O God, Lucifer said it's great!"—Bang, down we fall, to this, to concentration camps, gas ovens, barbed wire, atom bombs, television murders, Bolivian starvation, thieves in silk, thieves in neckties, thieves in office, paper shufflers, bureaucrats, insult, rage, dismay, horror, terrified nightmares, secret death of hangovers, cancer, ulcers, strangulation, pus, old age, old age homes, canes, puffed flesh, dropped teeth, stink, tears, and goodbye. Somebody else write it, I dont know how.
Jack Kerouac (Desolation Angels)
He put out a hand for Dave to shake. "You're the only new friend of Tom's I've met. And you're just what I expected." "Yup," Dave said. "I wear three-hundred-dollar suits and drive an eight-thousand-dollar car. Mr.Taylor-stop measuring people that way." "It's American," Taylor said defensively. "And Nigerian. And Bolivian," Dave said. "It started in Sumer.
Joseph Hansen (Troublemaker (Dave Brandstetter, #3))
The dramatic news is confirmed: Che has died in combat. His belongings are described in vivid detail and other information is given that only those close to the scene could have known. The
Ernesto Che Guevara (The Bolivian Diary: Authorized Edition (Che Guevara Publishing Project))
Your brain at this moment is composed of brigades of tiny Bolivian soldiers. They are tired and muddy from their long march through the night. There are holes in their boots and they are hungry. They need to be fed. The need the Bolivian Marching Powder.
Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City)
The skills needed to describe and recognize perturbations in the Homo sapiens microecology are disappearing with the passing of the generations, leaving humanity, lulled into a complacency born of proud discoveries and medical triumphs, unprepared for the coming plague. 1 Machupo BOLIVIAN HEMORRHAGIC FEVER Any attempt to shape the world and modify human personality in order to create a self-chosen pattern of life involves many unknown consequences.
Laurie Garrett (The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance)
As it happens, the first souvenir I bought was a dried llama fetus. Revolting as it may sound, my poor stillborn llama is actually rather cute. Frozen in the fetal position and dried stiff like beef jerky, it has the gentle, smiling face of a camel and plenty of soft, if slightly formaldehyde-scented, fur. I bought the llama fetus partly because it horrified me, but also for educational purposes, so that my eight-year-old daughter Sophia could show it to her class. (She refused.) Bolivians buy llama fetuses to ward off evil in its many guises. Bolivian miners—who, with a life expectancy of forty-five years, basically live their entire adult lives dying—look to llama fetuses for protection against dynamite explosions and the lung-destroying silicon particulates they inhale all day. Downing high-proof alcohol also helps. “The purer the alcohol, the purer the minerals I find,” one miner told me wryly.
Amy Chua (World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability)
We’re indignant that men get paid more than women for doing the same work, and that white Americans earn more than black Americans. But even the 150% racial income gap of the 1930s pales in comparison to the injustices inflicted by our borders. A Mexican citizen living and working in the U.S. earns more than twice as much as a compatriot still living in Mexico. An American earns nearly three times as much for the same work as a Bolivian, even when they are of the same skill level, age, and sex. With a comparable Nigerian, the difference is a factor of 8.5 – and that’s adjusted for purchasing power in the two countries.
Rutger Bregman (Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There)
Despite international bans on the leaf, the Bolivian state supports various national industries that churn out all manner of coca-related products, from sweets, cookies, and drinks to coca-infused toothpaste. The industry is regulated by the Vice-Ministry of Coca, which imposes the limits on how much of the leaf can be grown. The
Tom Wainwright (Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel)
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of Love.... It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
Ernesto Che Guevara (The Bolivian Diary (Penguin Modern Classics))
...it was the very government and the way they treated us that started us on that road. For example, in my case, when they beat me in the DIC cells for being a “communist” and an “extremist” and all that, they awoke a great curiosity in me: “What is communism? What is socialism?” Every day they beat me over the head with that. And I began to ask myself: “What’s a socialist country? How are problems solved there? How do people live there? Are the miners massacred there?” And then I began to analyze: “What have I done? What do I want? What do I think? Why am I here? I only asked for justice for the people, I only asked for education to be better, I asked that there be no more massacres like the terrible San Juan massacre. Is that socialism? Is that communism?
Domitila Barrios de Chungara (Let Me Speak! Testimony of Domitila, a Woman of the Bolivian Mines)
Veronika had decided to die on that lovely Ljubljana afternoon, with Bolivian musicians playing in the square, with a young man passing by her window, and she was happy with what her eyes could see and her ears could hear. She was even happier that she would not have to go on seeing those same things for another thirty, forty, or fifty years, because they would lose all their originality and be transformed into the tragedy of a life in which everything repeats itself and where one day is exactly like another
Paulo Coelho (Veronika Decide Morir: Una Novela Sobre La Locura)
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.
Hank Bracker
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….
Hank Bracker
Greetings and welcome to The Keltic Woodshop. Established since November of 2003 in Kansas City, Missouri, The Keltic Woodshop specializes in custom cabinetry, furniture, and unique fine wood products in a personalized old fashioned handcrafted way. We are a small shop that strives towards individual attention and detail in every item produced. The Keltic Woodshop of Kansas City specializes in the following products: Custom Cabinets and Furniture: We use worldwide exotic woods. Our custom cabinets and furniture contains Russian Birch, Brazilian Cherry, African Mahogany, Asian Teak, Knotty Pine, Walnut, Red Oak, White Oak, and Bolivian Rosewood just to name a few. Custom orders are available. Handmade Walking Sticks: Our walking sticks include handcrafted, lightweight, strong, durable, handpainted, handcarved, Handapplied finishes and stains, Alaskan Diamond Willow, Hedgeapple, Red Oak, Memosa, Spalted Birch, and Spalted Ash. Custom Made Exotic Wood Display Cases: These are handmade from hardwoods of Knotty Pine, Asian Teak, African Mahogany, Sycamore, Aniegre, African Mahogany, and Black Cherry. We will do custom orders too. Pagan and Specialty Items: We have Red Oak and White Oak Ritual Wands with gems, Washington Driftwood Healing Wands with amethyst, crystaline, and citrine points, handpainted Red Oak and Hedgeapple Viking Runes for devination. We can make custom wood boxes for your tarot cards. Customer satisfaction is our highest priority. If you are looking for unusual or exotic lumbers, then we are the shop you've been searching for. The Keltic Woodshop stands behind and gurantees each item with an owner lifetime warranty on craftsmanship of the product with a replacement, repair, or moneyback in full, no questions asked, policy. We want you happy and completely satisfied with any product you may purchase. We are not a production shop so you will find joinery of woods containing handcut dovetails, as well as mortise and tenon construction. Finishes and stains are never sprayed on, but are applied personally by hand for that quality individual touch. the-tedswoodworking.com
Ted McGrath
Investigations revealed that two Venezuelan nationals, Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo Lozano, who had been employed by Luis Posada Carriles, planted the bombs that destroyed a Cuban airliner. The men admitted to the crime and confessed that they were acting under Luis Posada’s orders. During the ensuing investigation, explosives, weapons and a radio transmitter were discovered at Posada’s private detective agency, in Venezuela. Posada was arrested and jailed in Venezuela. Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo Lozano were sentenced to 20-year prison terms. It was later learned that Posada was overheard saying, “We are going to hit a Cuban airplane and Orlando has the details.” Posada was tried and while awaiting a verdict escaped from prison once again. Apparently a sizeable bribe was paid to his guards and other authorities making it possible to buy his way out dressed as a priest. Once out he fled from Venezuela to Panama and then to the United States. It was only after his return to the United States and he was assigned to Nicaragua, as a deputy to Félix Rodríguez that his CIA connection became apparent. Félix Rodríguez was the CIA Operative who helped capture “Che” Guevara in the Bolivian highlands. After an investigation of Posada’s background by the press it became apparent that Posada was responsible for 41 bombings during the Contra conflict. By his own admission, he also planned numerous attacks against Cuba. In 1997, it was discovered that Posada was involved in a series of terrorist bombings in Cuba, with the intent of disrupting the country’s fledgling tourist industry.
Hank Bracker
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.
David Nutt (Drugs - without the hot air: Minimising the harms of legal and illegal drugs)
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.
Eduardo Galeano (Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone)
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 younger brother, Juan Martin Guevara, 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.
Hank Bracker
The apartment she both loved and hated. Loved for its tall French casement windows, for its Wolf range and spacious closets. Loved for the air of promise it held in its baseboards and crown moldings and Bolivian rosewood floors.
Fiona Davis (The Dollhouse)
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.
Ursula Pike (An Indian Among los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir)
In 1990 a congress of indigenous peoples met outside of Quito, Ecuador, to discuss the Columbian Quincentenary, a celebration by immigrant populations of the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the western hemisphere on his financed expedition to find a trade route to India. Tribal people came from all of the Americas and met to discuss the destructive and monumental changes since this European explorer’s arrival. We met together to gain insight and strength and ponder how we would continue to move forward past the massive destruction and disrespect of the earth mind, body and spirit, and to continue our sovereignty as Native nations. In the women’s circle, a striking Bolivian Indian woman in a bowler hat stood up. She welcomed us, and noted that she was surprised at all of the Natives attending from the United States. “We thought John Wayne had killed all of you.” (This was not a joke.)
Joy Harjo (An American Sunrise)
Former slaves and natives. Eskimos and Hiroshima people, Amazonian Indians and Chiapas Indians and Chilean Indians and American Indians and Indian Indians. Australian aborigines, Guatemalans and Colombians and Brazilians and Argentineans, Nigerians, Burmese, Angolans, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, Bolivians, Afghans, Cambodians, Rwan-dans, Filipinos, Indonesians, Liberians, Borneoans, Papua New Guineans, South Africans, Iraqis, Iranians, Turks, Armenians, Palestinians, French Guyanese, Dutch Guyanese, Surinamese, Sierra Leonese, Malagasys, Senegalese, Maldivians, Sri Lankans, Malaysians, Kenyans, Panamanians, Mexicans, Haitians, Dominicans, Costa Ricans, Congoans, Mauritanians, Marshall Islanders, Tahitians, Gabonese, Beninese, Malians, Jamaicans, Botswanans, Burundians, Sudanese, Eritreans, Uruguayans, Nicaraguans, Ugandans, Ivory Coastians, Zambians, Guinea-Bissauans, Cameroonians, Laotians, Zaireans coming at you screaming colonialism, screaming slavery, screaming mining companies screaming banana companies oil companies screaming CIA spy among the missionaries screaming it was Kissinger who killed their father and why don’t you forgive third-world debt; Lumumba, they shouted, and Allende; on the other side, Pinochet, they said, Mobutu; contaminated milk from Nestle, they said; Agent Orange; dirty dealings by Xerox. World Bank, UN, IMF, everything run by white people. Every day in the papers another thing! Nestle and Xerox were fine upstanding companies, the backbone of the economy, and Kissinger was at least a patriot. The United States was a young country built on the finest principles, and how could it possibly owe so many bills? Enough was enough. Business was business. Your bread might as well be left unbuttered were the butter to be spread so thin. The fittest one wins and gets the butter.
Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss)
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.
David Zindell (Splendor)
The tropics were an olfactory revelation. She realized that, coming from a temperate place like the other Santa Cruz, her own Santa Cruz, she’d been like a person developing her vision in poor light. There was such a relative paucity of smells in California that the interconnectedness of all possible smells was not apparent. She remembered a college professor explaining why all the colors the human eye could see could be represented by a two-dimensional color wheel: it was because the retina had receptors for three colors. If the retina had evolved with four receptors, it would have taken a three-dimensional color sphere to represent all the ways in which one color could bleed into another. She hadn’t wanted to believe this, but the smells at Los Volcanes were convincing her. How many smells the earth alone had! One kind of soil was distinctly like cloves, another like catfish; one sandy loam was like citrus and chalk, others had elements of patchouli or fresh horseradish. And was there anything a fungus couldn’t smell like in the tropics? She searched in the woods, off the trail, until she found the mushroom with a roasted-coffee smell so powerful it reminded her of skunk, which reminded her of chocolate, which reminded her of tuna; smells in the woods rang each of these notes and made her aware, for the first time, of the distinguishing receptors for them in her nose. The receptor that had fired at Californian cannabis also fired at Bolivian wild onions. Within half a mile of the compound were five different flower smells in the neighborhood of daisy, which itself was close to sun-dried goat urine. Walking the trails, Pip could imagine how it felt to be a dog, to find no smell repellent, to experience the world as a seamless many-dimensional landscape of interesting and interrelated scents. Wasn’t this a kind of heaven? Like being on Ecstasy without taking Ecstasy? She had the feeling that if she stayed at Los Volcanes long enough she would end up smelling every smell there was, the way her eyes had already seen every color on the color wheel.
Jonathan Franzen (Purity)
San Pedro prison, apart from being a social microcosm, is also a microeconomy that operates under basic capitalist principles. In fact, it’s probably more efficient than the whole Bolivian national economy. And more democratic, too, but I’ll explain the prison election system to you another day.
Rusty Young (Marching Powder: A True Story of a British Drug Smuggler In a Bolivian Jail)
Someone replies: Brazil’s always been “the world’s trash can.” Nothing is controlled here and the Bolivians know it. If it were a European country, they’d be afraid to walk down the street and get caught in a “razzia.” Someone replies: There are illegal immigrants all over the world my friend. What about the millions of illegal Brazilians in the US, who even commit petty crimes? He who lives in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones!
Adriana Lisboa (Crow Blue: A Novel)
Their obese emperors from New York are suave smiling assassins who buy silk, nylon, cigars petty tyrants and dictators. They buy countries, people, seas, police, county councils, distant regions where the poor hoard their corn like misers their gold: Standard Oil awakens them, clothes them in uniforms, designates which brother is the enemy. The Paraguayan fights its war, and the Bolivian wastes away in the jungle with its machine gun. A President assassinated for a drop of petroleum, a million-acre mortgage, a swift execution on a morning mortal with light, petrified, a new prison camp for subversives, in Patagonia, a betrayal, scattered shots beneath a petroliferous moon, a subtle change of ministers in the capital, a whisper like an oil tide, and zap, you’ll see how Standard Oil’s letters shine above the clouds, above the seas, in your home, illuminating their dominions.
Anonymous
You see the van?” “Yeah, we’re almost there. Don’t worry.” The criminal with a Bolivian cartel after him telling Cole not to worry. Perfect. “Make
Robert Crais (The Sentry (Elvis Cole, #12, Joe Pike, #3))
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.
Hank Bracker
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.
Hank Bracker
Interior Design and Decoration Kaspar von Morgenlatte did an admirable job with your apartment, but the look is somewhat outdated and more than a little disturbing. (If I recall, the design concept was commissioned by your husband in the early 2000s to evoke the Miami Beach bachelor pad of a Bolivian drug cartel kingpin. This was done extremely successfully. I particularly admired the “chalk body outline” mother-of-pearl inlay on the ebony wood floor and the trompe l’oeil “bullet marks” on your master bedroom headboard, but I think that it would be inadvisable to host a children’s birthday party here, especially while those Lisa Yuskavage paintings are still hanging.)
Kevin Kwan (China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asians, #2))
Bolivians recently elected their first indigenous president, Evo Morales, and gave constitutional rights to the earth. Rivers, fish, air, trees—these things have rights there and are regarded as part of the collective public interest, of the inheritance that everyone is entitled to.
Paul Rosolie (Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon)
After a long multi-decade fight with the city, the 200 households of Charrúa were in 1991 granted something that would offer them the most important foundation for development they could get: certificates of property ownership. The Charrúa families didn’t earn higher incomes than those in other parts of the neighborhood, and they weren’t more educated or better connected. The difference was that they had the capacity to prove home ownership with the indisputable seal of a government. And that status opened the door to a whole host of other benefits. As taxpaying property owners, they now had standing in the community, which meant they could lobby the government for services. That led to the school and the clinic. And they could use the deeds as collateral to borrow money to invest in businesses, which is why Charrúa became a commercial center, lined with stores and small restaurants. A visitor from the tony neighborhoods of the city’s northern corridor would still see a stark lack of amenities, but to the Bolivian locals, this two-block strip is proof that at least some of their kind have made it. What does this have to do with the blockchain? Well, to answer that, let’s not focus on the comparatively lucky 200 households of Charrúa but on the hundreds of thousands of Bolivians and other slum-dwellers of Buenos Aires and shantytowns all around the developing world who don’t have a title to their home. Their communities will acknowledge them as the owners but there’s nothing official saying so, nothing that’s accepted by the government or a bank, that is. Public registry systems in low-income countries are prone to corruption and incompetence—so a poor resident of a slum in a village in Uttar Pradesh or Manila might try to get a loan with their home as collateral, but no bank would accept it.
Michael J. Casey (The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything)
I read somewhere...that, in 2010, the Bolivian government granted all living things equal rights to humans. I also read that Bolivia was home to the world's largest mirror. I do not believe these two facts to be unrelated. Mirrors force you to see you.
Diana Clarke
a slender, artificial Christmas tree with a solitary string of lights. He watched them blink to the tune of some Brazilian carol, and despite his efforts not to, Nate thought of his children. It was the day before Christmas Eve. Not all memories were painful. He boarded the plane with teeth clenched and spine stiffened, then slept for most of the hour it took to reach Corumba. The small airport there was humid and packed with Bolivians waiting for a flight to Santa Cruz. They were laden with boxes and bags of Christmas gifts. He found a cabdriver who spoke not a word of English, but it didn't matter. Nate showed him the words “Palace Hotel” on his travel itinerary, and they sped away in an old, dirty Mazda. Corumba had ninety thousand people, according to yet another memo prepared by Josh's staff. Situated on the Paraguay River, on the Bolivian border, it had long since declared itself to be the capital of the Pantanal. River traffic and trade had built the city, and kept it going.
John Grisham (The Testament)
Butch Cassidy and Harry A. Longabaugh, “the Sundance kid,” were holed up and then gunned down Sixty years prior to the death of “Che” Guevara and high in the same Bolivian highlands, 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. The likelihood of this account remains extremely doubtful. However, if it were true, Cassidy would certainly have died by now, and any opportunity to determine the truth would be difficult or perhaps even impossible. In addition, if true, it would raise the question of who the two men were that were killed by the Bolivian army…. The road between where the execution of “Che” Guevara took place and where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid were shot to death, is called El rastro de muerte or “The Trail of Death!
Hank Bracker
In La Paz, during January, the Bolivians hold a traditional festival called Alasitas. For three weeks, markets . . . are full of tiny objects, tiny everything: tiny horses, tiny computers, tiny diplomats, tiny houses, tiny jeeps, tiny llamas and tiny llama steaks, tiny passports. People buy models of whatever they need most. . . . They offer their miniature figurines to miniature man—Ekeko the midget, the Aymara god of abundance, a smoking doll cloaked in bright wool. They pin their miniature desires to his miniature poncho.
Leslie Jamison (The Empathy Exams)
Hoping to induce that sense of hopelessness, the Bolivian planners required all of their radical measures to be adopted at the same time, and all within the first hundred days of the new government. Rather than presenting each section of the plan as its own individual law (the new tax code, the new pricing law and so on), Paz’s team insisted on bundling the entire revolution into a single executive decree, D.S. 21060. It contained 220 separate laws and covered every aspect of economic life in the country, making it the equivalent, in scope and ambition, to “The Brick,” the hefty blueprint written by the Chicago Boys in preparation for Pinochet’s coup.
Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism)