The Blockade

Last week in the altiplano en route to a destination I won’t name because I don’t want a lot of other people to go there and screw it up.

From the airport in El Alto I headed to the small street in La Paz, between the fresh trout and the stale bread, where the buses leave for the town to which I was traveling. That’s how buses to the smaller towns work here, no central terminal for those, just small storefront offices in secret corners that everyone who lives here just seems to know.

I have made this trip before a number of times, it’s a pilgrimage of sorts, but when I arrived at the small bus office it was closed. I and the other slightly confused passengers were told by no one in particular that there was a road blockade ninety minutes down the road on the altiplano and so the buses were canceled for the day.

Bummer.

But then I noticed a couple of other minivans loading passengers. For reference, these are not your U.S.-style late-model minivans; these are well-used Toyota museum pieces. One of the drivers assured me that the small bus would actually arrive, not to worry.

“We’ll take a detour around here and around there and eventually we’ll get through.”

“In how long?”

“Eventually.” A smile.

So I handed over my well-traveled blue backpack for loading onto the roof and twisted my 6 foot tall frame into a front seat made for a Japanese person five and a half feet tall, which still beat sitting in one of the back seats made for a Bolivian five feet tall, and off we went.

The first hour and a half was your pretty normal Bolivian bus ride. I chatted up the driver and a young woman in between us, Hortensia, who was headed home to her small town. I pondered the fact that Hortensia is a name relatively rare in the U.S. (I checked in the Social Security data base of popular names. It doesn’t make the top 1,000.) and shared small green coca leaves from by translucent green plastic bag. The very large older woman in braids and a bowler had behind me seemed to get a chuckle out of the gringo passing her the coca.

That was right about when we hit the blockade. It was a gathering of about fifty people in the center of the small road, which was blocked with rocks – as if the fifty people were not enough of a deterrent to going onward. Most were men though there were a number of women as well. And of course my curious eye turned most to the half dozen dapper Bolivian gentlemen in red cloth ponchos who held large whips in their hands – los ponchos rojos.

I could tell from the start that our driver, a young fellow in glasses, was the kind of guy who had exactly the street starts needed in such a situation. Street smarts are a remarkably ample resource in Bolivia, and a useful one. Gringos generally don’t have all that much, especially not in the altiplano in the middle of a road blockade. Always best to confide in the street smarts of others in such situations, I say.

Another young man outside in a leather jacket who seemed to know our driver came up and they began a ten-minute chat, which mostly seemed to be about getting the driver’s commitment to support him in the upcoming elections for officials in the drivers’ union. I assumed there was some inferred quid pro quo involved as well with our being given permission to pass through the blockade. If that was the case, I was an eager supporter of his candidacy.

This begat a negotiation between the would-be union leader and a few of the men on the blockade. There seemed to be some discussion about whether someone else needed to be called by cel. phone to render a decision on our request, but either because of bad cel. reception or a sudden burst of spontaneous leadership a decision was taken on the spot (sort of).

“Just wait thirty minutes,” the driver was told, “and then you can go.” I supposed that in order for the blockade to maintain a certain level of street cred we needed to be inconvenienced a certain basic amount and thirty minutes seemed a reasonable compromise.

Oh right, I forgot to mention what the blockade was about. It seems that there was a dispute between two local towns about which one would get to have its favored local be the official MAS candidate for diputado. Apparently the town that did not win this particular request from the Evo high command decided that a blockade might do the trick to change some minds.

In the Bolivian altiplano the road blockade is sort of like a party primary is in the U.S., though I suppose less costly. This is that strange Bolivian political tradition I still have yet to understand. In order to make our feelings heard by the powers that be we will inconvenience a large number of people who have nothing to do with things at all, and ourselves for that matter. This will make them listen.

I don’t mean to seem culturally biased here, but there really has to be a better way.

So, as we waited our assigned thirty minutes I thought, why not jump out and offer some of my fine Yungas coca to those fellows in the red ponchos. What could be more hospitable? But then I noticed that none of the other passengers seemed interested in getting out for some fresh air, nor the driver.

As I said, it is really best to rely on the street smarts of others in this situation.

It was not long after that when another fellow in a red poncho came by and seemed a little upset with the thirty-minutes-then-go arrangement we’d worked out, punctuated with a wave at me through the window and some mention of, “y tu gringo.” This I took as a bad sign.

In the midst of what seemed like an increasingly heated argument over what should be done about our situation, another young man came over and through the left window lectured our driver it what seemed a slightly condescending tone.

“Why don’t you just to the same thing everyone else is doing? Just back up fifty meters and take the road to the left that goes through the town above us and just pass the blockade by entirely.”

This seemed to both the driver and to me to be very sound advice. And so while the men in the red ponchos continued their argument with one another we turned around and took the longer road past the sheep and the town, and past the road blockade.

Everyone was happy to have a celebratory round of coca leaves from the gringo and I was happy to arrive at my destination, just a half hour off schedule.

By the time I took the road in the opposite direction back toward La Paz on Friday, all blockades had been taken down and I presume some happy compromise had been worked out in the Altiplano Primary.

Asi es.