WELCOME TO BOLIVIA

It is a chilly winter evening in the first days of June when I finally arrive at the airport of Cochabamba. The place is busy, bustling with delegates to the meeting of the Organisation of American States (OAS / OEA) that has just come to its end here in Cochabamba.

I am, however, too exhausted to pay attention to all this. I have been on the road for two days and had to do some extra exercise at my point of entry to Bolivia, El Alto airport just outside (or rather: just above) La Paz, at an altitude of 4,000 m. Although I was going to continue to Cochabamba in the very same airplane, I was asked to leave the plane with all my luggage, run across the airfield, find the officer that would put the migration stamp in my passport, fill in a customs declaration, and sprint to the other end of the airport building in order to be able to enter the airfield and the very same airplane again. I did all this in about 20 minutes and arrived just in time for the take-off to Cochabamba. Welcome to Bolivia! In front of the majestic Illimani, a Samsung ad greets me.

Arriving in La Paz

In Cochabamba, my boyfriend and his niece are waiting for me. What a welcome, after a year!

As we leave the airport, the 15-year old niece goes on about the “folkloric nonsense” organised as the farewell ceremony for the OEA delegates. “A shame for Bolivia”, she thinks. With her white complexion, they call her “gringa” in the family. Welcome to Bolivia, a country that is not one, but many.

After the obligatory welcome tea, hugs and kisses with the family, my boyfriend and me take a taxi back to our house. He has found a house in a “safe place”, and that means: In a place with security guards. Our house is in a closed urbanisation that can only be entered passing a safety checkpoint. The taxi driver has to leave his ID card before he drives us up to our house, a lovely house with a garden for our dog, but also with a high fence with sharp ends.

Needless to say, I hate closed urbanisations. But my boyfriend says that only here we can be safe – safe from people who don’t have as much as we do, who live in the Southern part of the city or in the nearby villages and come here at night to steal our things.

Welcome to Bolivia, the place where everybody is afraid of everyone. The richest are so afraid that they live up the hill, with double the amount of safety guards and electric fences. We live in an upper-middle class ghetto in the city. Then there are those who can afford a house and have money but do not identify with the established middle class. They organise their own protection, usually by warning thieves that they will be lynched if they enter the area. And then there are the ones who don’t have a lot and live in the Southern part of the city, some of them also up the hill, but without any protection. These people might get killed in a fight over a few Bolivianos, but there is nobody to protect them. So you see: Everybody is afraid, because there is always somebody who has less.

As the whole country, Cochabamba is a highly segregated city. I do not doubt that I need to be concerned about my safety here. But every day, in so many details, it strikes me: When will these people see that they are part of the same Bolivia?