Stranded for Six Days

POTOSÍ -- We arrived in this ancient colonial city just in time for the roadblocks to start up again, and though rumors abounded that they would end ´today or tomorrow,´ we´re still stuck here six days later. Protests, illness and other delays have stranded us in cities before. The difference here: the protesters in the central plaza have the really good dynamite. On our mine tour, we got to see them set off ammonium nitrate (I will try to upload the video later), and we can hear the same earth-shaking boom now. We´re used to the firecracker variety the students use in Sucre. In Potos í, they´ve been setting it off in the wee hours too, which makes for a lousy night´s sleep. But aside from damage to delicate nerves, no one´s been hurt. It serves mainly as an attention-getter. Most of the 15,000 miners who work on Cerro Rico, overlooking Potosí, are protesting high taxes. After 350 years of excavation, the hill that gave Spain its colonial wealth resembles Swiss cheese, but they´re still hauling tin and silver out of it. It comes back to Bolivia at inflated prices -- in $300 electronics equipment that would cost $150 in the U.S. Such is the Bolivian economy. The miners make twice the national average salary, but they have to pay ridiculous taxes --one miner told me 50 percent -- and the job usually ends in a nasty early death by silicosis. Business owners -- particularly those who cater to tourists -- have lost patience with the protests because no one can get in or out of the city, so no one is reserving hotel rooms, or buying alpaca gloves and antique textiles. Well, no one but us. We´re running a little behind schedule now, but Potosí beats other cities where we could be stranded. We´re staying in a fantastic restored colonial mansion with free Internet, TV, hot water and actual central heating. We´ve seen more of the city than we would have. We learned about every step of the silver process, from mining to smelting to minting coins, a fascinating look at the true price of money and precious metals. We have seen most of the city´s dozen or so colonial churches, including the cloistered St. Theresa convent where aristocratic families sent their second-born daughters in the 1600s and 1700s, never to see them again. And, if the protesters take the weekend off like they usually do, we´re hoping to see the bus terminal and get on with our journey.

A Journey into the Mines of Potosi

POTOSÍ -- Cerro Rico (meaning Rich Mountain in Spanish) towers over the highest city in the world like a goliath. It is here that at the height of the colonial era, the Spanish forced the people of the area to mine silver for shipment back across the Atlantic. At its peak in the early seventeenth century, Potosí´s population of 160,000, exceeded that of London, Paris and Madrid. Spain made its silver coins here for nearly 400 years (You can see the ones that did not make it back to Spain at the Mel Fischer wreck museum in Key West).

Needless to say, the mountain has been raped of nearly all its silver, but more 15,000 locals still enter the dangerous mines to hunt for tin and other metals. With arsenic and asbesto dust clouding the air, the average miner lives only to about age 44. Still, they come for the money, 1,500 bolivianos a month, twice the national average.

Meghan and I journeyed into the mines to see just what it was like to work there. We started as a group of six, but three people quickly dropped out as the passageways began to narrow and the ceiling began to drop. With only the light on our helmets and scarves wrapped around our faces to keep the dust out, we crawled, climbed and slid through three stories of a 350-year-old mine, which although rather depleted, still contained hopeful miners. (When we crawled past a miner, we gave them gifts of coca leaves, soda and dynamite.) The conditions in a mine like this are what you would expect: horrid. About 90 percent of miners here say they only do it for the money. Nearly 8 percent polled said they did it for fun -- mostly, the pollsters say, teenagers who like the thrill of a dangerous job.

At the end of our visit, our guide gave me a green mushy substance, and I began rubbing my hands with it to get the grime off my hands. I thought it was some kind of weird soap. Meghan looked at me like I was crazy and said the guide wanted me to shape it into a little ball -- it was not soap, it was dynamite! After I did this, he put a three-minute fuse into it and set it alight. Then he handed it to me before I had a chance to react. After a quick picture, he ran over a small bluff and dropped the package. A minute or so later... Kaboom!!!





Pictures: Entering the mine; our groupmate Malay from England before crawling through a scary section of mine; the two of us enjoying the rare chance to stand up in the mine.

Hasta Luego, Sucre (Maybe)

In a few hours, we move on from lovely Sucre, city of many names: the White City (for the colonial buildings always freshly painted), the Capital Plena (a slogan on signs around town, in the wake of conflict with the federal government, declaring its status as the official capital and seat of the judicial branch), Chuquisaca (the Spanish spelling of its original name, and still the name of the state), La Plata (for the silver processed here during the colonial era).

You get the picture.

It´s a stunning town, a pleasant place to stroll around for days or, as we did, weeks. In the mornings, we ate salteñas. In the afternoons, we took four hours of intensive one-on-one Spanish classes. In the evenings, we took in a folkloric dancing show or had a local Potosina beer on the plaza. Each weekend brought a new festival or citywide event: the chocolate festival, independence day, the university´s homecoming parade, the street-racing championship.

We hate to leave. But, at the same time, we´ll feel lucky to get out of here before the roadblocks start up again. In a university town with an independent streak, at a critical point in Bolivia´s political history, there´s always a demonstration. This time, the truckers are protesting taxes. Lucky for us, protesters take the weekends off.

So, if the traffic gods stay with us, we´ll post next from Potosí, the highest city in the world and source of Spain´s colonial wealth.

In Memoriam

There are only two television shows that I know of that are truly worth the commercials. The first is CBS Sunday Morning and the other is Meet the Press on NBC. The CBS program, which began with legendary newsman Charles Kuralt, is about as close to poetry as television will ever get, reminding us in quiet, probing segments of the stunning diversity of our nation and the amazing people in it. And then there is Meet the Press with Tim Russert, where the important issues of the day were discussed and toady government officials and their henchmen had to face real questions. I spent many a Sunday morning, beginning as a teen, in front of the television waiting for Tim to grill the pompous or to simply press someone for an answer we all wanted to know. It was riveting and informative. Often, my dad and I would boisterously cheer Tim on as he made his guests answer every question. He was doing it for us, i.e. those of us dwindling Americans who still care about getting at the truth. But, the fact that Tim was a superb newsman is not the only reason why I was such a big fan. He was, at heart, just a regular guy. I loved seeing him sitting beside the coiffed and pampered NBC anchors talking about an election. His hair was usually askew, like mine, and he always seemed to have a down-to-earth approach that differed from just about every other television journalist I have ever seen. He could also poke fun at himself, appearing on an episode of the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Streets. It was those qualities that made you feel like Tim was representing us on Meet the Press. He represented something slowly disappearing in many newsrooms- integrity and class. Every broadcast, after giving us a peek at the truth, Tim would remind us “If it's Sunday morning, it's Meet the Press.” I know it was just a corny catch phrase to remind us to tune in again, but somehow I felt reassured that despite all the troubles in our world, Tim would be back and we would get to the truth. This from James Carville on a special edition of Meet the Press: "The question I'm most often asked about Tim is, 'Is he really as good a guy as he looks like?' " said Carville. "And the truth is, he was a better guy."

Why the Apatosaurus will never do

SUCRE -- Who doesn´t like dinosaurs? You´d have to be on heavy medication or just plain blue-nosed not to get excited about the world´s largest collection of dinosaur tracks (5,000 in all) here in Sucre. The Cretaceous Park and Cal Orko Dinosaur Tracks is just a 10- minute cab ride from the main plaza. A variety of big-footed dinosaurs rambled through a muddy lake in Sucre millions of years ago, and thanks to a few serendipitous volcano eruptions these footprints are preserved for all time. Scientists at the site, discovered in 1998, believe 294 different dinosaur species made these tracks during the second half of the Cretaceous period, including sauropods -- the largest animals ever to have lived on land. The lake bottom is now a vertical wall thanks to the sparring of two tectonic plates, which have pushed it up over eons. The tracks are amazing, but the real fun is in the life-size dinosaur models in the park, especially the Brontosaurus! Sure, there was a replica of a T-Rex and Stegosaurus too, but the Brontosaurus is tops in my book. Yes, I know the scientists long ago renamed the Brontosaurus ¨Apatosaurus¨, but I refuse to bend to such an injustice. To an 8-year-old (which I was once) on his first visit to the Museum of Natural History that lumbering plant-eating goliath was the best thing ever! I know most heroes tend to be of the human variety, but those types never live up to the title. With an average length of 75 feet and a mass of at least 25 short tons, the Brontosaurus is most certainly worthy of hero worship. Anyway, to make a long story short I made Meghan take about 50 pictures of me and the towering Brontosaurus model. I kept asking myself what it would have been like to chomp down on some plants in the tops of trees with these mostly gentle giants, unfortunately I was born a few million years too late!

Meghan and I had a visitor for about four days this week. It was our old friend Andrew from our time as reporters together at the Palm Beach Post. Back in the old days, Andrew and I used to drown our worries after a long day of work with a ¨birch beer¨at the Frank ´n´Steins hot dog joint in Stuart, Florida. Fast forward a few years and Andrew is living it up and working in Buenos Aires. It was good to see the man. We hope to meet up again in a few weeks. Incidentally, Andrew will be the subject of our first Globe Gators Poll. Just scroll down this blog tomorrow afternoon to make your vote count!

The Perfect Snack

SUCRE -- Two foods have long competed for status as my favorite snack: the empanada, and soup in a bread bowl. The empanada combines pastry and meat in compact form, tasty and handy for lunch on the go or as the main entree in a balanced sit-down meal. While providing a substantial meal at low cost, the delicious and hearty soup in a bread bowl eliminates the need to wash a dish or add to landfill trash, as you can actually eat the container.

Bolivia, it seems, has managed to do the impossible, combining the best parts of soup in a bread bowl and the empanada. The tasty treat is called a salteña, a special kind of empanada full of a kind of stew, with either chicken or beef. It´s like soup in a bread bowl that you can actually carry down the street, eating on the run without utensils. Restaurants all over Bolivia serve them as a morning snack from about 10 a.m. to noon, and Sucre prides itself as having the best salteñas in the nation. In late morning here, people crowd around street vendors and salteñerias, eating them with little spoons to scoop out the stew, or, as the real locals do (or at least they say they do) without the benefit of a spoon. Only attempt this feat very carefully unless you want to end up with salteña all over yourself, as happened to me on my first try.

The name salteña comes from the city in Argentina, Salta. Legend has it that a woman from Salta (hence, she was a salteña) started making the special kind of empanada after she was exiled to Bolivia and fell on hard times in the early 1900s. So now they´re called salteñas, even though Sucre is the center of the salteña universe. Apparently in Salta, they serve a different kind of empanada altogether.

Another Day, Another Tire on Fire

SUCRE -- So I´m sitting in Spanish class yesterday, trying to get a handle on the subjunctive, when the explosions started again; loud this time, like they were right outside the window. And that´s exactly where they were: A small crowd of protesters, mostly women, had gathered outside the district attorney´s office next door. My teacher as usual didn´t even flinch (such is life in Sucre these days) and eventually got up to close the window. Then the chanting started: ¨¿Dónde esta Roberto? ¿Dónde esta Roberto?¨ The crowd grew larger, large enough that even our jaded teachers and journalists at the newspaper office on the other side of the school gathered to watch. It turns out Roberto is an official with the campaign of a candidate for governor, in opposition to the current government. He was thrown into a car early yesterday morning while walking down the street and hasn´t been seen since. People suspect the government did it, so that´s why they were protesting outside the government building. Despite the explosions and raging bonfire, the protest stayed peaceful, and the police left quickly after checking things out. It was just another day in Sucre, with an abnormal occurence that´s becoming all too common for the people who live here.