Nuestra Senora de La Paz!

It's been a while since I last posted but I finally found some time this weekend to sit down and recap my adventure to one of the craziest cites I've ever been to. I went to meet with two people/organizations that work with artisan goods as it is one of the ideas I have for replacing the soap factory at Warmi. I also went for a Model UN conference, something I used to do in high school but have not done at the collegiate level—nor in a foreign language!

Two Mondays ago I went to the bus terminal in Cochabamba and took the overnight bus with the president of AIESEC Bolivia, Quitnen Van Duin. It was fun talking to him about AIESEC, Bolivia, life, and Holland (where he is originally from). I was also glad it was dark out so I couldn't actually see the roads we were driving on—which are notoriously dangerous but for $7 I wasn't going to complain. The only thing that did bother me was the fact that my "reclining bed-chair" reverted to its upright position every ten minutes so by the time we arrived around 7am I hadn't gotten much sleep.

The lack of sleep plus the altitude—the elevation of La Paz is 12,000ft whereas Cochabamba is only 8,400ft—made for an interesting walk across the city to a well-known café. There I met up with Daniela Viscarra, a social business consultant who works with the design and product development of artisan and textile products. She is also a senior designer at the foundation she helped found, Fundacion Jalsuri (Qechua for "spring") after a very successful Aid to Artisans (ATA) project that sold and exported more than $500,000 of traditional goods. She was also a consultant on an ATA project inAfghanistan. We talked with her for several hours over breakfast about her work, AIESEC, development, and the artisan industry in Bolivia—conversations that would continue for the next two days.

After breakfast, Quinten had his AIESEC business to attend to and Daniela and I went off to explore the city a little. We first went to the touristic area to look at some of the artisan stores. She explained to me the difference between machine made products and hand made products, how one could tell the difference, and how sad she was to see the dominance of modern day cheap knock-offs of traditional designs and products. It was interesting to see how animated the ladies selling the goods would become the moment they discovered that Daniela actually knew what she was talking about when it came to their traditional goods—both of us looked pretty foreign on the outside although she is fully Bolivian. She also explained to me how the traditional Cholita dress was originally from Philippines via Spain, something I could never have guess before but struck me as interesting: what today is considered very "traditional" of rural ladies is in fact a product of globalization, albeit a few hundred years ago.

We also passed by the Calle de las Brujas (Street of the Witches) where they sell all kinds of "magical" charms and potions for all kinds of reasons. What threw me off the most were the dried alpaca fetuses. Daniela and I had a hard time rationalizing between what is traditional culture—and therefore should be respected—and what—although it may be traditional—is a lack of respect for mother nature and animal rights.

The bowl, seen from a little higher up

After the interesting yet unsettling witch street, we ate lunch in a very rustic restaurant which was located in a colonial Spanish building. These buildings are spotted throughout the city and their signature characteristic is the inner courtyard that they have and the balconies that surround it. The whole city is a rather interesting mix of colonization and modernity—at times a very stark contrast as right next to one of these traditional and protected architectural gems you can find a skyscraper. Not much city planning went into the construction of modern La Paz—at least on the surface to tourist eyes.

What is most striking about the city, however, is how it really is built inside of a hole, as the Bolivians say. La Paz is located in a little round valley up in the mountains and as such, every street either goes up or goes down. If I could go back in time I would love to meet the guy that arrived there in the mountains and said, "well, this seems like a good place to build a city!" Additionally—and this the founders could not have anticipated but its still their fault—because La Paz is essentially build in a valley, like Cochabamba, the air pollution is extremely strong. Many of the cars and busses and decades old and the only thing that doesn't stop the air from being intolerably polluted are the cross-winds that clean out the valley.

All the interns dressed up in traditional Bolivian costumes the week before

After lunch, Daniela took me to visit the Museum for Ethnography and Folklore to learn a little more aboutBolivia's traditional roots. I finally understood the roots of Qechua and Aymara, two of the most commonly spoken traditional languages, and the pre-columbian past of Bolivia in an exhibit designed by one of her co-workers. We also passed through the masks exhibit, which are mainly used during the Carniavales celebrations in Oruro. The interns actually had to dress up in many of the traditional costumes that were on display in the museum the week before in our "trainee shower." After the masks I got to see the feather-art exhibit, which was quite impressive—I just wish I had taken my camera with me! After passing through the traditional textile exhibit (some of which were several hundred years old) I saw the location where one of Daniela's stores used to be in the museum before the government shut it down.

The reasons why it was shut down is in part due to Daniela's philosophy on the textile market. She has realized that it is impossible for Bolivians to compete with Chinese and even Peruvian prices for cheaply made goods. As such she always insists that the best market to compete in is high-quality goods that tourists and expats will buy not only because they want to support the preservation of traditional Bolivian culture and provide a fair wage to the producers so they can have an adequate standard of living, but also because the goods are nice in and of themselves. The nominally (as most Bolivians refer to it) socialist government, however, considered her domestically sold products "elitist" and forced her to shut down. Daniela, in her frustration, wondered if the government therefore preferred that the producers were paid next to nothing in order to sell the goods at a lower price. I guess we'll never know.

Daniela told me how her domestic stores also suffered from the owners believing they could run the store without her intervention. For example, one of her museum shops in a famous resort in Copacabana (on the shore of lake Titikaka) was taken over by the owners who rented the store out to her and for the last two years has been empty because they don't know how to run it properly.

The next day Daniel showed me her collection of textiles as well as reports from past projects. We also talked about her Ford Fellowship at Columbia University last summer and her visit to Yale. One of the directors at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where I hope to study international relations, was actually interested in turning her work into a Capstone project for Global Affairs seniors and I hope I can somehow help to make that happen! After lunch we went to visit some of her stores in hotels in the southern part of the city and then she dropped me off near a mini-bus stop (which don't actually exist but it was a corner where many of them frequently pass by) and sent me on my way to El Alto.

El Alto is a former suburb of La Paz located at the rim of the bowl that contains the city. It got to big over the years that it eventually became its own city—although markedly poorer and a lot less safe thanLa Paz. I was there to meet with another group that helps artisans called ASARBOLSEM. I spent a good hour talking to the son of the founder about their business model and the help they could potentially provide Warmi should we decide that we would like to go into textiles or handicrafts. They essentially help with product development and market access, and after a 2 year cycle hope that the producers are self-sufficient at the end of it. I also got to meet the founder, a former government minister and highly respected woman in the artisan world in Bolivia, Antonia Rodriguez.

The next day was the Model UN conference. It started off pretty bad since all I brought was a cheap button-down and khakis. I was kindly asked to find more formal clothes for the next day. I managed to survive the first day, although not without some hiccups. When being asked questions on my position, the law-students in my forum had no mercy and asked me things that I had a small chance answering even if I was a native Spanish speaker. I struggled a lot the second day as well when after hearing the position of another delegate (and understanding very little of it) the moderator (who really did not like me very much) asked me to please make a commentary. I stood up, shaking, and spewed a few lines of complete garbage that made really no sense and would have been a better use of everyone's time if I had not said anything at all. As awkward and silly as I felt, I knew that was exactly why I had come and what AIESEC strives to do: help you get out of your comfort zone. And boy, was I uncomfortable! Debating Bolivian politics, in Spanish, with Bolivians—who study law! It was a match made in out-of-my-comfort-zone-heaven.

The National Forum

By the third and final day I had made two significant contributions, as unrecognized as they may have went. The first was when we debated solutions to the issue of community justice. The forum split into two working groups, and during one of the open sessions I did not immediately get up and join my group. In stead, I sat and listened a little to what the other group, who had gathered right in front of my seat, where saying and they began trying to convince me to join their resolution. I began suggesting that our resolutions weren't all that different just as the other group that I had previously been working with nervously came running over to ask me what I was doing there. I told them we'd be best off putting our resolutions together and all of a sudden a dialogue began between the groups about how best to do it. Although really I didn't do much, I still feel my laziness about getting up may have just been the spark necessary to end an unnecessary debate between two groups that were more or less in agreement.

The second contribution was regarding a scholarship for elementary through high school students that we were debating as part of our discussion on the first three Millennium Development Goals. When looking for improvements, the delegates were arguing about the best time during the year to give out the scholarship when I suggested breaking it up and giving out parts of it every few months. Everyone turned to me and acted as if it was the smartest thing they'd ever heard (well, it certainly was the smartest thing I'd said all weekend). I felt very proud of my albeit small contributions given the difficulties I had with the language barrier.

"CAPTURED THIEVES WILL BE BURNED"

Awesome way to end the week in La Paz!

Finally on Sunday I went to visit lake Titikaka, the highest lake in the world, with the cousin of the friend I went to the conference with. The cousin actually is a rising sophomore (just like me!) at Columbia. It was an incredible drive out there as I got to see a lot of the countryside around La Paz. One of the most striking things I saw were the human sized puppets hanged by their neck from random edifices. They were indicators that in those areas community justice was practiced, a topic we debated in the Model UN conference!

When we finally got the lake it was incredible to see how blue it was. We had an amazing lunch of fish that came from the lake and then even went on a private boat ride on the lake. It is definitely a place I'd love to retire in.













- Attila