The price of groceries tripled today and many types of foods are completely unavailable, but that didn´t stop us from going to a salteñeria and then a Tarijan restaurant to eat some good traditional food with the extended family today. I had some cow tongue, ranga, pig skin, giant corn, aged potatoes, and keperi. We are all enjoying ourselves before the thousands of Massista marchers arrive. Very shortly, the city will be undergoing a kind of silent siege. Thousands of Evo supporters are flocking to Santa Cruz, the capitol of the opposition area, to place some pressure on the prefects to make progress with the central government in the ongoing negotiations taking place in Cochabamba (the central government has acknowledged the movement for autonomy, but the prefect from Chuquisaca left the talks early; there has been a lot of frustration on both sides, but progress is finally being made). The Massista marchers will be looking for provocation or any excuse to pay back the damage and chaos wrought by Unionista mobs a week and a half ago. They view themselves as martyrs, and are determined to ensure that the country stays together under Massista rule and that autonomy is given to each of the indigenous tribes as opposed to being distributed provincially. They have been maintaining roadblocks all around Santa Cruz for the past week now, making gas and food a little harder to get. We´ve stocked up on candles and bottled water in case they decide to take out the water and electricity cooperatives (these are both attractive targets because they are under the control of local – as opposed to central – government and they are brimming with nepotism and corruption). For now things are calm. I was able to go to school and soccer on Friday, which made me extremely happy (much more the soccer than the school). My emergency escape plan now has almost all of the wrinkles ironed out of it, so I´m well situated, with no intention of leaving any time soon, and I´m really beginning to enjoy life here again.

And the first guy to whom I consent to give my name and cell phone number here in Bolivia is… a CNN correspondent. Last night I went to ExpoCruz (a fair-like exposition of industrial, agricultural, and commercial prowess here in Santa Cruz that generates a few million dollars for the local economy), and bumped into Karl Penhaul, the CNN correspondent featured in this video: http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/09/20/penhaul.bolivia.in...

Now, the video has a strong bias (it tries to make Santa Cruz out to be a gas-rich haven for white people, when, in reality, almost everyone is mestizo or mostly indigenous, the people with money constitute an entire rainbow of colors and ethnicities, all the gas is down in Tarija and over in Chiquisaca, the reason for the general wealth concentrated in this area is the fact that it´s one of the only places in the country that supports major agricultural enterprises while carrying phenomenal industrial development that constitutes over a third of the country´s total GDP), but it paints a decent picture of what´s going on here for all of the folks back home. Prejudice and class lines definitely play a part (it´s hard for me to hear people I know, who under other circumstances would be considered really good people and who look fairly indigenous themselves, using the word Indio as an insult), but this conflict is ultimately about regional cultural and socio-economic differences. As I get to know this country better, I´m not sure that Evo isn´t right in wanting indigenous autonomy and greater economic equality throughout the entire country. There has been a lot of abuse in the past few centuries that needs to be rectified, but I´m not sure that the Massista plan is practical for the entire country at this point. The provincial governments are reasonably capable, while the indigenous groups remain relatively unorganized and a clearer and more gradual plan of resource and land distribution is needed to give people some time to grow accustomed to the reforms. Any way you slice it, equalizing prosperity by taking it away from some people and giving it to others is messy. There are a series of factors that hinder economic growth in the altiplano, and the majority of Bolivians are sick of waiting for an end to corruption, prejudice, poverty, and inequality. What is happening is happening and there is no clear, easy, and final solution.

Karl and his crew had just come into town that morning from interviewing the advancing marchers out on the roads. He was a little surprised that I was still in town (what can I say, Rotary outlasts them all), and somewhat jokingly asked if my house had a strong door. I asked him about when he thought the marchers would make it into town, and he replied that they had stopped for the night, but would probably get in Monday or Tuesday. I made a few passes across the background as they were shooting in case they decided to use that footage for a new video – I may have given them my name and phone number for questions later on this week, but that doesn´t mean that I´m mature enough to forgo the opportunity to be in the background of a CNN featurette. I was relieved to hear that the marchers wouldn´t arrive for a while, and I have done my best to make the most of my weekend, going out and about before the next round of chaos and unrest can begin. ExpoCruz was really fun and interesting. All of the companies pretty much have one marketing strategy – hire a pretty model to draw attention to your booth. I saw Miss Bolivia again, Ms. Santa Cruz, and a host of other title-bearing women who all challenged my self-esteem. I bought myself a poro and straw, so I can now drink yerba mate in style. We plotted out our Christmas trip to Argentina (this December we are going to rendezvous with my older host brother in Salta and make a trip up through Juyjuy to Tarija). I bought myself a cone of delicious rum and raisin ice-cream, which I suddenly lost my appetite for when I came across one of the university exhibits featuring jars of preserved fetuses, babies, organs, and a few preserved complete corpses for good measure (let´s just say it wasn´t nearly as viewer-friendly and sanitary as Body Worlds). Tonight I went out with Maria and my host father to a little movie showing downtown where we watched ¨La Casería del Nazi¨ (the cottage of the Nazi), about the manhunt for Klaus Barbie – yes, he ultimately turned up in Bolivia – which I highly recommend to anyone. Tomorrow, I´m hoping to go to Tahuichi and then school. We´ll deal with Tuesday and the days afterward when they get here. Chau with love.