Mining Bolivia's Past

This article was adapted from Chesa Boudin's Gringo: A Coming-of-Age in Latin America (Scribner).

TIM ROBINSON

With just under 10 million people, Bolivia has slightly less than three times the population of Montana, but its internal politics have drawn worldwide attention recently. Since its election in 2005, the government of Evo Morales has been roiled by secessionist revolt from the right, disaffection among its erstwhile supporters on the left and hostile broadsides from a US government that has regarded its close relationship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's self-proclaimed socialist revolution with discomfort.

Morales, a charismatic nationalist and Bolivia's first indigenous president, was elected largely as a result of his deep connection with the country's rural poor. He was a coca farmer, the president of the farmers' union and has been vocal in his criticism of the US government's efforts to eradicate Bolivia's coca crops. The key role of the farmers' movement in the country's dramatic political transformation is well known, but that movement's revolutionary program and organization had its origins outside the rural sector, as I discovered when visiting the country in 2002 and again in 2006.

My first trip through Bolivia was made on a bus, which wound its way through a high-altitude desert to the beautiful colonial city of Potosí, in the middle of the country. While eating breakfast in a cafe in town, I met a miner named Fecundo. He invited me to come and see the nearby silver mine where he and his team worked.

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