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Sustainable farming in Bolivia

10:15 am By la Macha · Bolivia| Environment · 4 Comments

19 Aug 2009

This article from the BBC about farmers in Bolivia who are using farming methods of their ancestors to create sustainable farming techniques was very interesting. It made me think about how people in the U.S. have absolutely no similar history to draw on for our own farming methods–mostly because we’ve never done anything sustainable or environmentally friendly–ever. And we’ve done all that we can to destroy sustainable methods of surviving in indigenous communities in the U.S. for centuries.

The system is based on building “camellones” – raised earth platforms of anything up to 2m high, surrounded by canals.

Constructed above the height of flood waters, the camellones can protect seeds and crops from being washed away.

The water in the canals provide irrigation and nutrients during the dry season.

Pre-Columbian cultures in Beni from about 1000BC to AD1400 used a similar system.

So while other countries are talking about canals and irrigation and camellones–the U.S. is talking about militarization and destruction. When the hell are we in the U.S. ever going to wake up?

Bolivia Bans Circus Animals

6:47 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Bolivia| animals · 4 Comments

23 Jul 2009

Circus600 I admit to being a happy meat eater and even have taken my older daughter to a circus before I knew better. When I say knew better, I mean about the torture and suffering that animals are made to endure for human entertainment.

Some animal rights organizations, especially inside the U.S., has some issues they need to work out when it comes to dealing with communities of color, pero at least one country in Latin America is trying to reconceptualize what entertainment is in the context of “circus” by banning wild and domestic animals in traveling circuses.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has signed the world’s first law prohibiting the use of both wild and domestic animals in traveling circuses…The new law bans the use of wild and domestic animals in circuses in the Bolivia, as their conditions and confinement are considered acts of cruelty.

The circuses will be allowed one year to adapt their shows to a humans-only program and during this time, the government will issue regulations on confiscation and monetary sanctions for any breaches of the law.

Via / Vegans of Color
Image Via/ NYT

Strange Rape Case Rocks Bolivian Mennonite Community

7 Jul 2009

The Mennonites are a religious group akin to the Amish that was driven out of Europe by persecution over centuries, eventually landing in North and South America, mostly in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. There are thousands of Mennonites all over the Americas, with large communities in Mexico and Bolivia. And it is from Bolivia that comes a strange story that has shocked the country and rocked its Mennonite community to its core. A mass rape of the community’s women, with up to 100 victims. Spain’s El Periódico reports:

The first accounts, which are pending investigation, indicate that at nightfall some men sprinkled a sleep inducing [susbtance] around the homes of the residents and when they were sure that everyone was sleeping, they came in through the windows and raped women and girls. There are suspicions that this had been going on for 9 years, which would make the initial victim count fall short. But what is more terrifying and shameful for the Mennonites is that the rapists are people from their own community. Blood of their blood.

The Mennonites have kept the names and surnames of their ancestors. Their names are Ham Neostater and Cornelio Wal and Abraham Blats and Daniel Martens. Their native language is German and they speak Spanish with an accent. “Here people are afraid, because they say that it was our own friends who committed the sin,” Wal, a farm worker (like almost everyone in Manitoba) told a Bolivian newspaper. 8 community residents were arrested this week, which means that in a community of around 2000 people, most of them are related to the suspects: cousins, nephews, son-in-laws. Ultraconservative Christians, the Mennonites see the suspects as more sinners than criminals. Because to them, sin is much more serious.

The Mennonite community is calling the rapes “an act of the devil” and is ordering the medical examination of teenage girls to confirm which ones are victims. El Periódico reports that the results of these exams could have sinister implications, as the Mennonite community requires that its women remain virgins until marriage in order to retain the respect of their peers.

Via / El Periódico and VideoBolivia

Continuing the weird

10:18 pm By la Macha · Bolivia| Latin America| Politics · Comments Off

1 Jul 2009

01_evo Remember how I’ve been talking about my confusion over what role the U.S. is playing in the Honduran coup?

Well, this latest from Bolivia just makes me more confused.

President Evo Morales on Wednesday accused Barack Obama of lying by pledging to change America’s historically heavy-handed relationship with Latin America and then halting $25 million in annual trade benefits for Bolivia.

The U.S. on Tuesday said it is ending the import duty waivers because world’s No. 3 cocaine-producing country is not doing enough to reduce “unconstrained” cultivation of coca.

Morales said the move contradicts Obama’s promise at the Summit of the Americas in April to be a peer rather than an overseer of countries in the region. “President Obama lied to Latin America when he told us in Trinidad and Tobago that there are not senior and junior partners,” he told reporters.

I think that Morales’s words (peer and overseer), really exemplifies what I’ve been struggling with in relation to Honduras. The U.S. has acted as the “overseer” of Latin America very aggressively since the 70’s–but really, even longer than that: since the time of colonization really.

So did the U.S. *really* just give up its overseer position in Honduras? Even as it continues with the whip in Bolivia?

Undocumented Worker Loses Arm in Workplace Accident, Boss Throws Arm in Trash

5:40 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Bolivia| Labor| Spain| World| society · Comments Off

11 Jun 2009

241016 Here at VL we’ve heard all sorts of stories about worker abuse from all over the world. Quite often, the victims in these cases are undocumented workers. This story from Spain just might be the worst I’ve seen yet. When a Bolivian immigrant worker in Valencia, Spain, lost his arm in an accident at the bread factory where he worked, his employer threw the arm in the garbage. Bolivia’s El Deber reports:

The accident occurred the 28th of May when the employee, Franns Rilles, a 33 year-old Bolivian, was working the night shift in an industrial bakery in Real de Gandia, in the Mediterranean region of Valencia.

According to the regional secretary of CCOO [Spain's most powerful workers Union], Josep Antoni Carrascosa, after the accident, the bakery’s owner drove the injured man towards a hospital in Gandia “but at about 2 km from the medical center he left him to his own devices”.

Shortly after, the owner “returned to the factory, cleaned up the blood and threw the arm into a trash bin,” according to the Union, which will sue the owner [on behalf of the victim].

Yet another story that tests our faith in humankind.

The victim had been working 12-hour shifts at the company for 2 years, where he earned the equivalent of $32 per day.

Via / El Deber

Vargas Llosa Detained in Venezuela

28 May 2009

Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa didn’t have such a good time today at Caracas International Airport, Maiquetia, upon arriving to Venezuela from Colombia. Accompanied by his wife for a conference, Vargas Llosa says he was detained for an hour and a half by police who allegedly held him because a “as a foreigner he didn’t have the right to make political statements” in Venezuela. Spain’s Estrella Digital reports:

“They said that very politely and I responded that being in the land of (…) they shouldn’t try to hinder free thinking,” said Vargas Llosa, in the middle of a press mob that surrounded him upon leaving the airport. Álvaro Vargas Llosa, son of the writer, was also arrested for several hour by airport authorities on Monday, when he arrived in Venezuela to participate in the same conference, along with intellectuals from various countries.

Vargas Llosa’s statements to press can be seen in the video above (in Spanish). Estrella Digital also reports that conference organizers said that police would accompany he and his wife to their hotel “so he wouldn’t make statements to press” and that he had already been warned about making political statements.

What’s unclear to me is what political statement he could have made getting off of a plane? It seems like if you were going to do something messed up like detain someone for speaking their mind, you’d do it after they had already done so, not before. Apparently Bolivian ex-president Jorge Quiroga also got the same warning, but wasn’t detained. But actually is already making statements, particularly saying that Evo Morales is merely a pawn of Hugo Chavez.

Via / Estrella Digital

Bolivia Evades Evo Assassination

1:45 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Bolivia| Latin America| Politics| World| crime · 1 Comment

16 Apr 2009

01_evo Evo Morales announced today that Bolivian security forces have apprehended 3 alleged international mercenaries who were out to kill him, as the country goes through a very difficult political moment.

Morales stated that the assassins were from Ireland, Hungary and Bolivia, and were planning to kill him and the vicepresident with “bombs and sophisticated weapons”.

Upon arrival in Venezuela for the Alternativa Bolivariana para América Latina y el Caribe (ALBA) Summit, Morales told reporters:

“I’ve been informed that there was a shootout that lasted half an hour in a hotel in the city of Santa Cruz where 3 foreigners have fallen, with two arrests [...]

Last year in Bolivia the right tried to use the vote of the people to get me out with a revocation referendum. They failed. Afterwards they tried a coup d’etat. They failed. Now they were planning to shoot us to pieces. They are failing.”

This news comes one day after a dynamite bomb exploded outside the home of the Roman Catholic cardinal of Santa Cruz, Julio Terrazas.

Via / CNN Expansión

Evo Wins

2:33 pm By la Macha · Bolivia · Comments Off

14 Apr 2009

BOLIVIA-REFERENDUM-MORALES A while back we told you about how Bolivian super president, Evo Morales, went on a hunger strike to put pressure on the Bolivian congress. Well, it seems el presidente knew what he was doing:

Morales had canceled a diplomatic visit to Cuba to maintain a vigil inside the presidential palace, where for almost a week he consumed only water and coca leaves, the raw ingredient in cocaine and a folk remedy used in Bolivia to suppress hunger. He slept on a bare mattress on the palace floor, surrounded by fasting union leaders who form part of his coalition party.

“The Bolivian people will never forget this revolutionary process,” Morales, 49, said today in the presidential palace, moments after concluding the strike. In remarks on state television, Morales said he hoped the fast would strengthen Bolivians’ support for “profound economic, social and cultural changes.”

The new bill guarantees increased representation in Congress for Bolivia’s indigenous communities, who broadly support Morales, an Aymara Indian and a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Opposition lawmakers argued that the measure would give Morales’s Movement Toward Socialism party, known as MAS, an advantage in both chambers. The bill, blocked in the opposition-controlled Senate, passed after Morales agreed to reduce the number of proposed indigenous voting districts to 7 from 14.

And we think our president is some crazy socialist. Until Obama sleeps on the floor with union leaders (hell, until *union leaders* sleep on the floor!!) to put pressure on Congress, I don’t want to hear anything about how our country is falling into an abyss of U.S.S.R communism. Please.

Tengo Hambre: Evo Morales Goes on Hunger Strike

12:18 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Activism| Bolivia| Latin America| Politics · 1 Comment

9 Apr 2009

BOLIVIA-REFERENDUM-MORALES It’s breakfast time on the West Coast, but way down south in Bolivia, nobody’s eating. President Evo Morales has called a hunger strike to “defend the vote of the people”. What’s he talking about? Morales and supporters want to put pressure on the Bolivian congress to approve a bill which would set a date for general elections — elections in which Morales is poised to win re-election. AP reports:

Bolivia’s opposition-led Senate has failed to approve a law to handle the elections, which are mandated by a Morales-backed constitutional reform approved by voters in January.

The socialist president, who took office in 2006, has suggested opposition leaders are trying to block the planned December elections with delaying tactics.

While they won’t be eating, AP reports that the President and his supporters will be drinking water and chewing coca leaves.

For continuing updates, follow Ahora Bolivia on Twitter. They will be following the situation closely.

Via / AP

Bolivia Gives U.S. Diplomat the Bota

7:28 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Bolivia| Politics · Comments Off

10 Mar 2009

gholami20081222093329406 Hopes for improved relationships between Latin America and the United States seem to be fading fast as Bolivia kicked out a senior U.S. diplomat on grounds that the diplomat is part of a conspiracy against the Evo Morales government.

Francisco Martinez, the second secretary of the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, was “persona non grata,” Morales said in a public address at his official palace.

Martinez, he said, “was in permanent contact with opposition groups during the entire period of the conspiracy,” which he said caused anti-government unrest that rocked much of the country in September 2008.

Via / The Latin Americanist

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