High in La Paz

The city of La Paz is a large hole in the ground. The city is hemmed in by the snow-capped peaks of the Cordillera Real above. At the top of the bowl is the Antiplano shanntytown of El Alto which rings the city. This is the area where the majority of the population lives. The sides that slope down from here are full of commerce - market stalls, cafes, tourist ghettos and restaurants. At the bottom of the slope is a very narrow band of four commerical streets before the terrain ascends back upwards towards El Alto. La Paz has the typical class structure/real estate paradigm inverted. Whereas normaly the more affluent live higher up the hill, here the wealthy live at the bottom and the poor live at the top. Huffing and puffing your way around you slowly realize that you are almost always walking some form of an incline. The vertical nature of the city combined with its altitude which is somewhere between 10K and 12K feet above sea level, ensures that you are almost always out of breath.

The city is choked with traffic. The majority of traffic are the local shared taxis which are mini-vans where the side door never closes from where a tout yells out to nobody in particular what stops they are making. It appears that anybody with access to a mini-van can go into business as such. Competition between the taxis is fierce. If you are not being beeped at chances are you are being yelled it. Independant commerce is almost exclusively conducted by the Andean women who come down from El Alto. Their prescense is everywhere, the tilted bowler hat(the direction of which denotes a marital status), the brightly colored woven shall, full length embroidered skirt and acute scoliosis. Andean women carry everything on their backs. it seems fairly uncommon to see them walking in a perpendicular fashion. It all makes for an interesting contrast against the well oiled ubanity of their surroundings. For sure there are many other contrasts to be found. The military prescense in La Paz is a heavy one. Officers draped in olive drap stand beside the ATM machines and goverment buildings brandishing sub machine guns. However, the traffic police on the main thorough fares dress in Zebra costumes and hold a rope taut between them. Continuing with the uniformed observations, there are almost as many shoe shine boys as there are people wearing shoes. The shoe shiners dress in a blue outfit similar not unlike a gas station attendant and wear baclavas or ski masks to hide their faces. The position of shoe shiner is considered so lowly that nobody wants have their face visible for fear of recognition and embarrasment.

There is much modern infrastructure here especially in the commercial district in the center. Modern is of course a relative term. Although they were much more modern than the Colonial structures it appeared as if the last bit of construction took place in the early 1970s. The socialist goverment has provided well for basic health care however most people still prefer natural treatments. Most of these natural remedies are found at the "Mercado de Hechiceria" or Witches Market. There is an herb, root or powder for almost every ailment from sports injuries to trouble in the bedroom. Some of the more exotic items are dried llama fetuses, monkey skulls, dried frogs and soap stone offerings to Pachamama. Idolatry was everywhere.

Although La Paz is the Administrative capitol of Bolivia, the constitutional capitol is the city of Sucre. These two cities are not in immediate proximity to eachother. One has to wonder how anything gets done here, perhaps it doesn´t. Fascinating place.