meish dot org: life, unfolding

In 1995, I was in a Bolivian riot. That is to say, I was walking down the Prado in the middle of La Paz in October when the riot began all around me – campesinos throwing stones at the police, who threw tear gas back. I was suddenly caught in the middle, eyes streaming, coughing from the gas and fumbling for the kerb and something to put over my eyes – a sleeve, some bottled water. I found refuge in the post office.

There was a lot of rioting the year I lived in La Paz, for one reason or another – by the students of the national university, the coca-growing peasants, the workers’ union and the lorry drivers, to name a few. They always began the same way – a sudden stone’s throw and them BOOM everything kicked in. An hour later and the whole thing was over, as if on schedule. The most disconcerting thing about the riots were that they always seemed scarily organised and polite, as if responding to rioting regulations. Odd.

The students had been on strike for a long time when I arrived, months, even years, and had set up a fairly good protest rioting arrangement with the city police. Every afternoon, at 4pm, the riot would begin, outside the main gate of the Universidad Mayor de San Andres – I know this becuase on my second day in the city, I headed for the university to make myself known to the dean of the faculty of humanities (I was supposed to be a research fellow there for year – that never happened) and found myself facing two hundred pissed-off looking students. I turned on my heel and went in search of a cup of coca tea. I know when I’m beaten.

I found a cafe on the third floor of a building on a slope overlooking the university, from which I had a strangely voyeuristic vantage point over the proceedings – like watching a bunch of Sims characters revolting. Sitting in the cafe during the riots became a habit for me – especially once I started working on the Bolivian Times, the city’s English language newspaper, where my responsibilities rarely extended beyond translating small filler items from regional papers and writing the odd movie review, but which sometimes extended to trying to put a new spin on what was seen as old news – the riots, poor literacy rates, ex-pat culture. But I never got a byline. Oh no. That was a medal to be won by drinking a lot, backslapping and backstabbing, and being North American. Ah well.

So anyway, at 4pm, the riot began – a few stones thrown, the road siezed, traffic stopped, and at least one car tyre set on fire. At 4.15pm, the police would fire the first rubber bullet, usually into the sky, but sometimes into the crowd. The students would throw stones and bricks at the police, across the road. The police would fire bullets and launch cold canisters of tear gas into the fray. The students would scatter, regroup, and throw more stones.

And so the riot would continue for another forty minutes, when as if on cue, the students would slowly and sulkily slope off to tend to their wounds and collect stones for the next day. Rioting monday to friday, except on bank holidays, with all the punctuality I could never expect from the Bolivian (or British, come to that) train system.

Except one day, five o’clock came, and the students didn’t slope home. They carried on throwing stones, to the startled quiet of the facing policemen. The police, it transpired the next day in the news coverage, had been dealing with this rioting lark for such a long time that they were given a daily quota of rubber bullets to use during the hour’s proceedings. And that day, when the students refused to stop, they had run out.

So they looked at each other, under a hail of stones and bricks, shrugged, and as one, stopped to the pavement to pick up the stones which had been hurled at them by the students, and flung them right back. For another hour, the students and police threw stones at each other, like mean children in the playground, and I watched, incredulous, sipping my coca tea.

There was a great story someone told me about protest in Bolivia, and although I’ve never seen any evidence to corroborate the story, I hope it is true. I’d like it to be.

Apparently, in the early nineties, a group of twenty thousand urban and peasant women set out from the beleagured Chapare region, which up until a few years ago had Coca as its main crop. They wanted to walk to La Paz to protest that their families were starving because of harsh US-influenced rulings on coca-growing, and their livelihood was being destroyed.

They got as far as Cochabamba, when they were met by the national guard and thousands of police, who ordered them to turn back. There was a stand off for a couple of days, and then the women turned around and went home, leaving behind a group of very smug officials slapping each other on the back and congratulating each other on succesfully diffusing the protest.

Or so they thought.

Ten weeks later, ten thousand women descended into the city of La Paz, all bowler hats and long plaits and colourful dusty skirts. After leaving Cochabamba, half of the women had gone home, and the other half headed for the mountains and the forests, where they followed ancient Inca trails to get to La Paz.

When they arrived, no-one was expecting them, and the law-enforcement agencies were too dumbstruck and/or embarrassed to respond quickly to the surprising situation. The women marched into the centre of town, where they occupied the square outside the government buildings for a week.

I like that story. Belligerence and surprise combine well.