El Cupolog

Filosofía Global

Tigre, Buenos Aires Province - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Wetlands

Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Even here, the red stain remains

Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, Bolivia

© Diego Cupolo 2012

The Silver Cycle: The Ruin of Potosí

An excerpt from Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano

Andre Gunder Frank, in analyzing “metropolis-satellite” relations through Latin American history as a chain of successive subjections, has highlighted the fact that the regions now most underdeveloped and poverty-stricken are those which in the past had had the closest links with the metropolis and had enjoyed periods of boom. Having once been the biggest producers of goods exported to Europe, or later to the United States, and the richest sources of capital, they were abandoned by the metropolis when for this or that reason business sagged. Potosi is the outstanding example of this descent into the vacuum.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Cerro Rico of Potosi (Mexico’s Guanajuato and Zacatecas silver mines had their boom much later) was the hub of Latin American colonial life: around it, in one way or another, revolved the Chilean economy, which sent it wheat, dried meat, hides, and wines; the cattle-raising and crafts of Cordoba and Tucuman in Argentina, which supplied it with draft animals and textiles; the mercury mines of Huancavelica; and the Arica region whence the silver was shipped to Lima, chief administrative center of the period. In the independence period the area, now a part of Bolivia, still had a larger population than what is now Argentina. A century and a half later Bolivia’s population is almost six times smaller than Argentina’s.

Potosian society, sick with ostentation and extravagance, left Bolivia with only a vague memory of its splendors, of the ruins of its churches and palaces, and of 8 million Indian corpses. Any one of the diamonds encrusted in a rich caballero’s shield was worth more than what an Indian could earn in his whole life under the mitayo (forced labor), but the caballero took off with the diamonds. If it were not a futile exercise, Bolivia – now one of the world’s most poverty-stricken countries – could boast of having nourished the wealth of the wealthiest. In our time Potosi is a poor city in a poor Bolivia: “The city which has given most to the world and has the least,” as an old Potosian lady, enveloped in a mile of alpaca shawl, told me when we talked on the Andalusian patio of her two-century-old house. Condemned to nostalgia, tortured by poverty and cold, Potosi remains an open wound of the colonial system in America: a still audible “J’accuse.”

The people live off the refuse. In 1640 the priest Alvaro Alonso-Barba published in Madrid’s royal printshop his excellent work on the art of metals. Tin, he wrote, “is poison.” He mentioned the Cerro, where “there is much tin, although few recognize it, and people throw it aside looking for the silver everyone seeks.” Today the tin the Spaniards discarded like garbage like garbage is exploited in Potosi. Walls of ancient houses are sold as high-grade tin. Through the centuries the wealth has been drained from the 5,000 tunnels the Spaniards bored into the Cerro Rico. As dynamite charges have hollowed it out, its color changed and the height of its summit has been lowered. The mountains of rock heaped around the many tunnel openings are of all colors: pink, lilac, purple, ochre, gray, gold, brown. A crazy quilt of garbage. Llamperos break the rocks and Indian palliris in search of tin pick like birds, with hands skilled in weighing and separating, at the mineral debris. Miners still enter old mines that are not flooded, carbide lamps in hand, bodies crouching, to bring out whatever there is. Of silver there is none. Not a glint of it: the Spaniards even swept out the seams with brooms. The pallacos use pick and shovel to dig any metal out of the leavings. “The Cerro is still rich,” I was blandly told by an unemployed man who was scratching through the dirt with his hands. “There must be a God, you know: the metal grows just like a plant.” Opposite the Cerro Rico rises a witness to the devastation: a mountain called Huakajchi, meaning in Quechua “the cerro that has wept.” From its sides gush many springs of pure water, the “water eyes” that quench the miners’ thirst.

In its mid-seventeenth-century days of glory the city attracted many painters and artisans, Spanish and Indian, European and Creole masters and Indian image-carvers who left their mark on Latin American colonial art. Melchor Perez de Holguin, Latin America’s El Greco, left an enormous religious work which betrays both its creator’s talent, and the pagan breath of these lands: his splendid Virgin, arms open, gives one breast to the infant Jesus and the other to Saint Joseph; she is hauntingly memorable. Goldsmiths, silversmiths, and engravers, cabinetmakers and masters of repousse, craftsmen in metals, fine woods, plaster, and noble ivory adorned Potosi’s many churches and monasteries with works of imaginative colonial school, altars sparkling with silver filigree, and priceless pulpits and reredoses. The baroque church facades carved in stone have resisted the ravages of time, but not so the paintings, many of the irreparably damaged by damp, or the smaller figures and objects. Tourists and parishioners have emptied the churches of whatever they could carry, from chalices and bells to carvings in beech and ash of Saint Francis and Christ.

These untended churches, now mostly closed, are collapsing under the weight of years. It is a pity, for pillaged as they have been they are still formidable treasures of a colonial art that fuses all styles and glows with heretical imagination: the escalonado emblem of the ancient civilization of Tiahuanacu instead of the cross of Christ, the cross joined with the sacred sun and moon, virgins and saints with “natural” hair, grapes and ears of corn twining to the tops of columns along with the kantuta, the imperial flower of the Incas; sirens, Bacchus, and the festival of life alternating with romantic asceticism, the dark faces of some divinities, caryatids with Indian features. Some churches have been renovated to perform other services now that they lack congregations. San Ambrosio is the Cine Omiste; in February 1970 the forthcoming attraction was advertised across the baroque bas-reliefs of the facade: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The Jesuit church became a movie house, then a Grace Company warehouse, and finally a storehouse for public charity food.

A few other churches still function as best they can: it is at least a century and half since Potosians had the money to burn candles. It is said of the San Francisco church, for example, that its cross grows several centimeters every year, as does the beard of Señor de la Vera Cruz, an imposing silver-and-silk Christ who appeared in Potosi, brought by nobody, four centuries ago. The priests do not deny that they shave him every so often, and they attribute to him – even in writing – every kind of miracle: incantations, down the centuries, against droughts, plagues, and wars in defense of the beleaguered city.

The Señor de la Vera Cruz was powerless to stop the decline of Potosi. The depletion of the silver was interpreted as divine judgement on the miners’ wickedness and sin. Spectacular masses became a thing of the past: like the banquets, bullfights, balls, and fireworks, luxury religion had, after all, been a subproduct of Indian slave labor. In the era of splendor the miners made princely donations to churches and monasteries and sponsored sumptuous funerals, all solid silver keys to the gates of heaven. In 1559 the merchant Alvaro Bejarano directed in his will that “all the priests in Potosi” accompany his corpse. Quack medicine and witchcraft were mixed with authorized religion in the delirious fervors and panics of colonial society. Extreme unction with bell and canopy could, like Communion, succor the dying; but a juicy will that provided for building a church of for a silver altar could prove much more effective. Fevers were combated with the gospels. In certain convents prayers cooled the body, in others they warmed it: “The Credo was cool as tamarind of sweet spirit of nitre, the Salve warm as orange blossoms or conrsilk.”

In the Calle Chuquisaca one can admire the time corroded facade of the palace of the counts of Carma y Cayara, but it is now a dentist’s office; the coat-of-arms of Maestro de Campo Don Antonio Lopez de Quiroga, in the Calle Lanza, now adorns a little school; that of the Marques de Otavi, with its rampant lions, tops the doorway of the Banco Nacional. “Where can they be living now? They must have gone far ….” The Potosian old lady, attached to her city, tells me that the rich left first and then the poor: in four centuries the population has decreased threefold. I gaze at the Cerro from a roof in the Calle Uyuni, a narrow, twisting colonial lane with wooden-balconied houses so close together that residents can kiss or hit each other without having to go down to the street. Here, as in all of the city, survive the old street lamps under whose feeble light, as Jaime Molins relates, “lovers’ quarrels were resolved, and muffled caballeros, elegant ladies, and gamblers flitted by like ghosts.” The city now has electric light but one barely notices it. In the dim plazas raffle parties are conducted at night under the ancient lamps: I saw a piece of cake being raffled in the middle of the crowd.

Sucre decayed along with Potosi. This valley city of pleasant climate, successively known as Charcas, La Plata, and Chuquisaca, enjoyed a good share of the wealth flowing from Potosi’s Cerro Rico. Here Francisco Pizarro’s brother Gonzalo installed his court, as sumptuous as any king’s; churches and spacious residences, parks and recreation centers sprouted continuously, together with the lawyers, mystics, and pretentious poets who put their stamp on the city from century to century. “Silence, that is Sucre – just silence. but before … “ Before, this was the cultural capital of two viceroyalties, seat of Latin America’s chief archdiocese and of the colony’s highest court of justice – the most magnificent and cultured city in South America. Doña Cecilia Contreras de Torres and Doña Maria de las Merceds Torralba de Gramajo, señoras of Ubina and Colquechaca, gave Lucullan banquets in a contest to squander the income from their Potosi mines. When their lavish fiestas ended they threw the silver service and even golden vessels from their balconies to be picked up by lucky passersby.
Sucre still has an Eiffel Tower and its own Arcs de Triomphe, and they say that the jewels of its Virgin would pay off the whole of Bolivia’s huge external debt. But the famous church bells, which in 1809 rang out joyfully for Latin America’s emancipation, play a funereal tune today. The harsh chimes of San Francisco, which so often announced uprisings and rebellions, toll a death knell over torpid Sucre. It matters little that Sucre is Bolivia’s legal capital, still the seat of the highest court. Through its streets pass countless pettifogging lawyers, shriveled and yellow of skin, surviving testimonies to its decadence: learned doctors of the type who wear pince-nez complete with black ribbon. From the great empty palaces Sucre’s illustrious patriarchs send out their servants to sell baked tidbits down at the railroad station. In happier times there were people here who could buy anything up to the title of prince.

Only ghosts of the old wealth haunt Potosi and Sucre.

Street Art in La Paz III

La Paz, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Exactamente

La Paz, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012

In the Family

“This is my wife’s uncle, bro,” he said. “He was going to be the next president of Bolivia, but he died not so long ago.”

“Yeah? And who’s that over there?”

“That’s my grandfather. He was a general in the Bolivian army. He came here from Germany and gave his life fighting for this country in the war with Paraguay.”

“Really?”

“For real, bro. We got the historical connections up in here. You know what I’m saying?”

I tried to show enthusiasm, an interest for what Beethoven was saying as we stared at the portraits hanging around his colonial mansion. Ania and I were couchsurfing somewhere in the bland suburbs of La Paz. Beethoven had invited us to stay in his palace along with about 15 other travelers.

“We like to host a lot a people at the same time, you know, party it up every night in this piece,” he said. “For sure, help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. If you got laundry to do, just give it to one of the maids, and if you need anything else, let us know cuz we got it all. God gave us everything we need in this life and we are here to share it with y’all. But excuse me, I gotta get back to work.”

I watched Beethoven run up the stairs in his backward Yankees cap and baggy sweat pants. He was a strange fellow. Talked very fast. Almost sweating at times. Probably on uppers or coke, but he was a nice host. A devout Christian, too.

For the first time in our trip, Ania and I infiltrated the other side of Latin America: the obscenely rich ruling class. Beethoven was born in Bolivia, raised in Southern California, and then returned to Bolivia to marry the daughter of an important politician and watch over his family assets.

Which were many.

He owned every Burger King and Subway franchise in the country, he sold uranium mining equipment, he owned the local water desalination industries, and he also bought, sold and developed real estate throughout the altiplano – all without leaving his bedroom.

He lived in a four-story home, but stayed in that one room. All his meals were delivered to the front door in bag loads of styrofoam boxes. Only his four-year-old daughter would come downstairs on a regular basis – usually to eat lunch with the three maids. They took care of everything while Beethoven stayed upstairs, comfortably with his wife, yelling on the phone all day, keeping an eye on his couchsurfing guests through Closed-Circuit-Security cameras that were installed in every room of the house.

“Maybe we’re in a reality show and we don’t know it,” Ania said while staring at one of the cameras in our basement bedroom.

We stayed at Beethoven’s place for the majority of our time in La Paz. It was free, comfortable, and aside from the constant voyeurism, we felt at home. Other travelers came and went. We cooked grand meals together – lasagnas, pizzas, pastas, anything Italian – and shared stories over wine.

Occasionally, Beethoven and his wife would leave their bedroom and come downstairs to join us. They’d pour us shots of cognac and feed us ice cream cake.

“Might as well enjoy it while it lasts,” I told Ania.

But a strange feeling remained throughout our stay and it grew every time Beethoven and his wife got drunk. They’d ramble on for hours about get-rich-quick-in-the-third-world schemes.

“Yo, Bolivians ain’t poor, there’s plenty of money here, only the indigenous are poor,” he said without noting the majority of Bolivians are indigenous. “You just gotta get the hook up with the government. Once you know someone inside you can start making all kinds of money selling them ‘economic development projects’ and shit.”

“For real, bro. I’m the only motherfucker in this piece selling uranium didactic spectrometers. You know how much money those bring in? And of course, I do it for the peeps, too, because when they find those rare metals and shit, yo, I’m basically helping this country develop, you hear?”

“Y’all could do the same, you know? It ain’t even that much work. For real, I just outsource my research and blueprint designs to India or some poor country like that, pay almost nothing for it, and then sell their work for twenty times what I paid for it. Yo, it’s easy making money if you know how to play the game. Cheap foreign labor’s where it’s at!”

He went on and on. One night, the dining room was full of people and we sat there, listening to him talk, yell, explode about his many projects when he made his most memorable declaration.

“You know man, I been shining ever since I came down here. I shine like a star. I won’t even tell you how much I shine cuz you gonna feel this small if I do,” he said, holding his thumb and index finger together.

There was a prolonged silence after that. Brilliantly, one of the couchsurfers held up his cognac and shouted, “A toast! A toast to Beethoven’s shining!”

We laughed, toasted, drank, and tried to forget what was just said.

But it was hard.

The shining speech was followed by a wonderful conversation with Beethoven’s wife where she claimed the “jews deserved what they got during the Holocaust because Judas betrayed Jesus.”

And it doesn’t end there.

A few nights later, it was Beethoven’s birthday. Everyone went out to celebrate at the club, but Ania and I stayed home because we were “tired from walking all day.” Everyone left the house and we spent the night talking to Beethoven’s anarchist psychiatrist, who had flown in from Buenos Aires to give him “special attention.” After a nice talk on deconstructing society, we went to sleep.

Somewhere around 3 a.m. I woke up to the sound of glass breaking. It was dark in the living room and I couldn’t see much, but I could hear Beethoven’s wife yelling, “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE! Get out of my house! You drug-addict! You asshole! Get the fuck out of my house and don’t come back!”

There was a struggle, what sounded like table falling over, a few slaps, some crying, some more yelling, and finally, the sound of a lone woman’s heavy breathing followed by the voice of Beethoven’s psychiatrist saying, “This is very ugly.”

The next day, Beethoven had cuts across his right cheek and both his ears. His wife had a black eye and a cracked lip.

At that point, after a week and a half of indulgence and the insanity it secretes, Ania and I decided it was time to find a hotel. We packed our bags, thanked the royal family and left.

Looking back on it, we had a good time in that mansion, but I should’ve known something was wrong when I read Beethoven’s couchsurfing profile and saw he described his ethnicity as “Californian.”

La Paz, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Vultures on the Streetlight

Lima, Peru - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Cajamarca Estratificado

Cajamarca, Peru - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Never seen so many suits look so crooked

Quito, Ecuador - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Money Man

Quito, Ecuador - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Kuna Culture, Bathrooms, and Capitalism

Trash. Garbage. Feces. Plastic.

Everything goes out to the sea and nobody swims near these indigenous islands.

I was interested in the Kuna Yala for a long time. I visited their land wanting to know more about their culture and how they adapted to globalization.

Unlike most indigenous groups, Panama’s Kuna Yala are prosperous and have full ownership of their original, beautiful, highly-marketable territory - and they profit from it in many ways.

They rent virgin, undeveloped Caribbean islands to tourists.

They collect entry taxes from every visitor on their land.

They even export coconuts to Spain at 25 cents a piece.

(Apparently, Panama buys coconuts at 10 cents a piece from Costa Rica.)

“We’re not poor and we’re not stupid,” a Kuna street merchant told me in Panama City.
“We know we have to play the game if we’re going to survive.”

His name was Omar and he gave Ania and I an introduction, a primer, on Kuna culture before we left for Carti.

“We’re a peaceful people, but we used to have warriors,” he said. “They were called ‘Uris.’ Men could only become Uris by eating the heart of a jaguar and painting their body with its blood.

“One must absorb the blood of a killer to have courage of a killer.”

“But we’re not at war with the Europeans anymore. We don’t need killers,” he continued. “We have a new approach now. We teach our children how to use computers. We send our students to Germany, to Switzerland, to Chile, to countries all over the world.”

“We stay close to the other side. We need to know how the snake dances, what the snake eats, and why the snake kills.”

“There are many different snakes and we are studying all of them.”

“If I die and my kids are left to grow with modern culture, they will at least know enough about the world to develop antibiotics against its problems.”

Omar said the Kuna Yala was a matriarchy and respected its environment. It was a long, very informative conversation. I didn’t know it at the time, but he would be the last Kuna to talk to us so openly.

Everything would change when Ania and I reached Kuna Yala territory. (see previous posts.)

Bathrooms were the first thing I noticed when we approached Kuna island communities. They’re basically outhouses over water and they surrounded every populated island.

In some areas, there was so much raw sewage and trash floating around that it was impossible to swim in the tropical Caribbean water.

The water’s just there.

Dirty and fishless.

Dead.

The second thing I saw was the nightly community meetings. Every day after sunset, local men in baseball hats gathered to talk about every issue, detail, and event concerning their island.

There wasn’t a woman in sight.

The third and most important thing I noticed was they’re approach to tourism. They were generally closed to outsiders, but they loved their money.

For example: a big, white Royal Caribbean cruise ship anchored off shore during our last day in Carti.

Within ten minutes, the island became a vibrant street market and animal circus.

Every man, woman and child set up tables full of handmade souvenirs outside their houses. A small boat shuttled American tourists onto the island and they walked around with cameras in their hands.

Each Kuna gets one dollar per photograph so people really put effort in their appearance.

Old women sat in the street with pet monkeys on their laps, little girls put bright green parrots on their heads, and the boys ran around in funny costumes, wearing their father’s over-sized fishing boots.

It was a pop-up festival.

The tourist bought molas, they paid for every photo they took, and they also paid for guided tours.

Then, when the tourists left, the Kuna packed up their souvenirs and resumed their normal, slow-paced island lives.

It was amazing.

They had ignored Ania and I for three full days, but put on a full show for the cruise boat people.

Then I heard Omar’s voice again:

“We’re not poor and we’re not stupid. We know we have to play the game if we’re going to survive.”

I finally got it. They were a savvy bunch.

If they were nice to foreigners, the gringos would set up camp and stay. Their islands would be filled with mega-resorts, casinos, and yacht clubs.

It was better to be rude and simply collect the tourist’s money.

Just like that, the racism Ania and I experienced was forever justified.

We had learned the Kuna’s secrets.

Carti, Comarca Kuna Yala, Panama - © Diego Cupolo 2011

Arepas Calientes

Cities are for money and it was time to make some.

Everyone in Hostal Miami earned their rent from the streets. They were stop light artists, musicians, artesanos and they made well above Panama’s minimum wage - a pitiful $1.61 an hour. (It ain’t cheap to live there either.)

For this reason, and many others, Ania and I gave up our job hunt and our hopes of staying in Panama City and started selling arepas in the streets. It was something to do while we waited for a cheap cargo boat to Colombia.

It also paid better than a “real job.”

The Venezuelan corn patties were stuffed with pollo asado and sold for a dollar each. We tripled our money every time we hit the streets.

People loved them. Mostly locals though. Tourists seemed skeptical and ignored us.

Our small business venture was a success …

… until it started causing problems back at Hostal Miami. There was one half-broken stove for 25 people and another couple was running an empanada business out of the same kitchen.

They viewed us as competition.

The guy was a macho, Argentine pretty boy and his girlfriend looked like a prostitute - a skinny, bleach blonde Italian with breast implants. She was 35 and changed mini-skirts at least seven times a day.

Her cleavage: always prominent.

An unexpected find in a place like Hostal Miami.

I ignored them. I simply made more arepas and the tensions grew inside Hostal Miami.

It was a good lesson in capitalism. Two profiting parties using public resources, fighting over them, and pushing everyone else out of the kitchen in the process.

In the end, the money wasn’t worth the trouble. Ania and I sold our last arepas and went into the feather business.

One must cook with love, not greed.

Casco Viejo, Panama City - © Diego Cupolo 2011

Poder Super Capitalismo

Casco Viejo, Panama City - © Diego Cupolo 2011

Highrise Slumtropolis

Behind the luxury condos in Panama City’s richest neighborhood, under the highway along the ocean, stands a rusty slum on polluted waters where families swim between styrofoam cups and used tampons.

Panama’s economy is booming and so is its social inequality.

Panama City, Panama - © Diego Cupolo 2011