Two Cochabamba Ironies

Readers: Here, as a weekend special, is a small report on two Cochabamba “ironies” I’ve been witness to again in recent days. Ponder them both for a minute:

#1 “Welcome to Cochabamba, Now Hold Your Nose”

As anyone who has flown in or out of here in the last six years knows, Cochabamba has a really fancy airport. No, really. The airport here is a massive structure, a modern monument to what can be accomplished with copious quantities of glass, steel, and cheap labor. Its vast front is a reaching-toward-heaven arc of solid windows.

In other words, in a place where thousands of families have no water piped in to their houses, we have an airport that looks like it was constructed here accidentally, the construction kit sent here instead of California. It is also either a “visionary investment in the future” or a total boondoggle. Twice as big as it needs to be, the fancy top floor is basically vacant.

But this is not the irony of which I speak. No, that is reserved for an odor.

We are talking about on odor of epic proportions, a smell so putrid that it is well known to all Cochabambinos – and to all Cochabamba arrivals by air. Because this indescribable stink of rot and suffocation wafts 24/7 through the air precisely at the entrance of Jorge Wilsterman International Airport. The most common explanation I have heard is that a cowhide tanning operation sits nearby and…you get it.

Now, I have little doubt that one of the reasons politicians must have given a decade ago for abandoning the city’s graceful old 1940s era Quonset Hut airport was that the city needed to give visitors a first impression that packed more impact.

Well, mission accomplished.

But, really, wouldn’t Cochabamba really be better off with an old airport and the smell of jasmine in the air? By the way, I know how to fix this and fix it fast. All I need is full access for a month to one of the big billboards near the airport’s exit. I would redesign it to read (in Spanish):

Welcome to Cochabamba. It doesn’t smell this
bad everywhere. Don’t worry.

Manfred Reyes Villa
Governor of Cochabamba

I think that would do the trick.

#2 Guarding the DEA

Elsewhere in Cochabamba, on Calle Americas (there is an irony) sits the once-stately offices of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (The DEA). In this case “once-stately” means that a few years ago when the DEA decided it needed more office space it took over one of the city’s loveliest old mansions and wallpapered the outside fences with giant plates of black steel. I presume this was for “security” reasons and not an effort at creating warm and fuzzy feelings toward the US among Cochabambinos.

A Burger King opened up right afterwards (irony or market analysis?) but moved soon after to the center of town.

On the issue of security, after 9/11/2001 the DEA decided it needed to beef up its own guard considerably. It arranged for a 24-hours-a-day Bolivian police presence at the front gate. These are fierce looking men with green uniforms, automatic weapons, and (occasionally) excellent sunglasses. One of them once ran me off the narrow grass strip in front as I was waiting for my Trufi bus. I don’t know anyone who ever said I resembled a fierce-looking guy, but maybe through those dark glasses…

But here again, the irony is other.

In this case it is reserved for the fact that several of the unfortunate Bolivian police who are stuck guarding that empty fortress on the midnight shift have a secret that keeps them awake till dawn. They chew coca.

Yes, cruise by the DEA’s big house during the late shift and the policeman keeping the DEA’s office equipment safe has a big wad of green leaves in his cheek. The hard drives and computer screens backing the US War on Drugs, safe all night thanks to coca.