local news from other places
EL ALTO, BOLIVIA – Today I watched Bolivian President Evo Morales’ speech commemorating the 10th anniversary of Black October, Oct. 17, the most violent episode in the country’s recent history. In October 2003 government troops, under the administration of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, killed an estimated 80 people and injured nearly 500 in an…
Last week I participated in a wake for the martiarch of a local mining family in Potosí. The five children spent their entire savings shipping the body back from Argentina, where the woman had died of cancer. The ceremony lasted until sunrise and, as is the custom in Bolivia, we sat with the body all…
Nothing tells the story better than the hard facts: Potosí, the capital of the poorest department of the poorest country in South America, cradles what was once the richest mountain on earth. During the Spanish colonial era of the 16th and 17th centuries, indigenous and african slaves extracted veins of pure silver two-meters-wide and several…
During the 24-hour strike in Potosí Wednesday, Jhonny Llally Huata, president of the Potosí Comité Cívico, answered a call from an assistant to the Governor of the Department of Potosí at the desk of his second floor office. “This is not for me, this is for Potosí,” he said and hung up before giving the caller…