Huanuni

This week I traveled to Oruro, or “Oruroruro,” as the bus ticket vendors call it.

Oruro is one of Bolivia’s nine departments and shares its name with its capital city. It is also home of Bolivia’s famous Carnival party. From the capital, we traveled to 6 tiny pueblos to meet with their mayors and explain the NGO’s upcoming project on personal documentation (Identification) and citizen participation training. Coming from a world of social security numbers, it’s been difficult to understand how important this project is. Identification cards etc…seem so boring and insignificant, but without them, the state doesn’t recognize you as a citizen and you have no rights – technically, you can’t own, vote, marry, receive benefits, nada….


All of the mayors were eager to join in on the effort and recognized documentation as a major setback for their community. But of course one town stood out: Huanuni. Only on the bus back to Oruro, after Huanuni left its grubby impression on me, did I realize it was Bolivia’s Political Heartland.

The mayor was awkward, but like any good politician, blessed with an advisor to think for him. And the people were all but helpful when we needed to reprint some documents. The river was utterly disgusting, and came complete with an array of hogs rooting through its mud and trash. Best of all was the one and only public bathroom in Huanuni, which was a little cement building with its back hanging over the river. After paying fifty centavos and getting not only the typical wad of pink toilet paper, but also a receipt, you can enter the cleaner than expected stalls to do your business in the porcelain toilets with holes cut out in the bottom, so that your waste can fall DIRECTLY into the river below, to be observed by passersby on the other side of the river. And though it may be ignorant to say so, I’m beginning to believe that pollution and this type of filth is not an issue of poverty but of education, because several of the other towns had excellent environmental campaigns and water sources that permitted you to keep your lunch.

But we know judging books by their covers is of no use, and such is the case with Huanuni’s scenery. Most people know the town for its historical mining community and not its public bathroom. Huanuni is home to the world’s richest cassiterite (tin) deposit, and not only important for its economic value, but for its political history as a state-owned natural resource. It seems the topic of Bolivian politics is almost always natural resources and the players are usually not businesses or lobbyists, but grassroots social movements and confused governments. Huanuni’s miners were Bolivia’s original social movement.

The best explanation I’ve found for Bolivian politics is a fantastic quote by a certain Mr. Crabtree that loosely translated reads, “Bolivia has been and continues to be a country with a relatively weak state, but a very strong civil society whose roots are grounded in communal traditions from the Andean indigenous peoples, and the long history of resistance to the invasion of western values such as private property, individualism and profit.”

Weak state + strong civil society = lots of social movements.

The unique hybrid of western style trade union and indigenous corporate culture has long been as, if not more, effective than the political parties here. And it all began with the state employed miners rising up to fight against lay-off in the 1950s, followed by resistance to the US backed eradication of coca in the 80s, the privatization of water at the turn of the century and 50-some years of back and forth with land distribution.

It was only last October, that 17 people died in Huanuni’s Tin War – a confrontation between the coop miners and unionized miners of the state owned Comibol. Rumor has it the situation is heating up again…

On the way out of town, we were stopped at a police checkpoint, where the uniformed men mounted the bus and proceeded to quickly pat down different packages and bags. Being American, I naturally assumed they were searching for narcotics, but was later informed that the authorities check for minerals being smuggled out of the region. My Elvis handbag was left untouched.