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Journalism project in Bolivia

David Atkinson volunteered as a journalist in Bolivia with i-to-i...

"His friends call him 'El Gordo'. His enemies just call him 'sir'. In the late 1970s he was caught red-handed with several thousand kilos of coke at Lima airport and subsequently sentenced to 25 years inside. He is Barba Chocas (blond beard), known to residents of La Paz as the most famous inmate of the city’s infamous San Pedro prison.

Meeting a renowned drugs baron was one of my first assignments as a reporter with The Llama Express, the volunteer-run newspaper based in the world’s highest capital. But, as the months have passed, coffee with the Mr. Big of the Bolivian drugs trade in his ‘luxury’ cell at San Pedro has started to look positively tame.

Indeed, over the last few months, every assignment has thrown up a new challenge. Whether it was co-presenting a radio show with Bolivia's leading troupe of drag queens, highland flinging with the La Paz Scottish Country Dancing society, or hanging out on the mean streets with one of La Paz's most exclusive transsexual prostitutes for The Llama’s special sex issue.

Antonella and I are, you’ll be pleased to learn, now best buddies.

With a skeleton staff and a budget of zero, every month we have been producing a 20-odd-page magazine for ex-pats living in Bolivia and backpackers passing through Latin America. As well as the standard useful tips for life in La Paz, we made a concerted effort to delve into the social issues that make Bolivia the poorest but most interesting country in Latin America, and explore the seedy underside of Bolivia’s vida loca.

All that, plus lots of off-the-beaten-track travelling. Back in January I was lucky enough to be invited along on a trip to the The Parque Nacional Sajama. But, believe me, three days deep in the countryside does funny things to a man: the altitude, the lack of oxygen and all those cold showers in the nearest river. Then, of course, there are the llamas - all fluttering eyelashes and cheeky over-the-shoulder glances. There’s nothing but mountains and llama dung to focus on and it gets real cold at night. Sooner or later a man’s mind starts wandering.

By major contrast, a trip out to the Bolivian Oriente brought sunshine, dusty one-strip pueblos and chance to delve behind the cult of Che Guevera - an icon that bombards you from every quarter in Latin America.

In March I covered the pre-launch of Bolivia’s new Che Guevara tourism route. Masterminded by Care Bolivia, the Santa Cruz-based branch of NGO Care International, the project aims to establish a working trail in Che’s footsteps from Santa Cruz, via Vallegrande to La Higuera, where he was executed by US-trained Bolivian troops.

More importantly, in a country where 60 percent of the population live below the poverty line, the project has been specifically conceived to inject hard, tourism-generated cash into one of Bolivia’s poorest rural communities.

Now, with April upon us and winter in La Paz sending night temperatures plummeting across the Bolivian Altiplano, I’m packing up and preparing to head home. That is, with a month’s travelling through Peru and Ecuador en route.

I’m sure I’ll come back one day to revisit the family who have given me a home from home in La Paz and revisit some of the haunts that have become so familiar to me since January.

But, for now, it’s time to say, "Hasta la vista, Bolivia.""




Name: i-to-i
Address: Woodside House, 261 Low Lane, Horsforth, LS18 5NY
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