It´s Not the Dynamite; It´s the Tear Gas

SUCRE -- Thanks to Will´s mention of "explosives" in the blog, we no longer have to worry about our friends and family reading the international news briefs buried deep in the A section and consequently worrying about us. We appreciate all your concerned emails, but rest assured we have not heard dynamite in two days. The streets have practically emptied since it´s a federal holiday. And, although it was hard to overcome the remnants of our natural journalistic curiosity, we steered clear of the protests. Besides, what you really have to worry about with these demonstrations is not the dynamite but the tear gas. Police here don´t hesitate to use it. And having experienced tear gas once (sadly, not in a glamorous political demonstration --someone down the hall in my college dorm decided to see what would happen if they opened a can of it) I have no desire to do so again.

For those of you out there still struggling with journalistic curiosity, the indignation pervading Sucre dates back to last year´s ¨Black November¨, when three protesters were killed during much more intense demonstrations during the rewriting of Bolivia´s constitution. Protests and the sound of dynamite have become a fact of life here ever since. The local paper, Correo del Sur (www.correodelsur.net), put out an interesting special section on it Sunday.

If things heat up again, we´ll still steer clear, though now that we have realized that as non-journalists we are free to participate in protests, the temptation beckons.