Economics With A Face

You get a great view of the city driving into La Paz. Although the city is the highest capital in the world, it is actually located in a valley and is surrounded by steep mountain peaks. Once we were dropped off at the bus station we bought tickets for Oruro where the train will be departing. It is about a 3 hour ride and the tickets were about $3.

We found a decent hotel right off Plaza San Pedro. On the way to the hotel we shared a taxi with a woman whose bus had to return to La Paz after being held up at a road block. They had paid a guy to get them around the blockade but a tire on the bus went flat. They tried to make it through on foot to where another bus was going to pick them up but for some reason eventually had to take a bus back to La Paz. She said when they passed the bus they were originally on, they saw that someone had shattered the windows with rocks in retaliation for trying to get past.

The hotel was located right off a nice plaza but it wasn’t until we had checked into our rooms that we realized that the famous San Pedro prison was also located on the plaza about 100 yards from our hotel. According to the guidebook it used to be the most “bizarre tourist attraction on earth” as inmates gave tours of the place for small fees in order to make money to eat. That came to an end after prison riots a year or two back. The owner of the hotel confirmed the stories and warned us not to try to bribe our way in… something we weren’t planning on doing anyways.

After dinner we were entertained by a Bolivian reality TV show called “Prohibido Mentir” (i.e. You Can’t Lie). This was no “Fear Factor”, it featured a candidate for the presidency for the upcoming December elections along with his VP. I thought they were going to strap them in and make them take a lie detector test, but in truth it was just a series of “tough” questions as they stared at themselves in a mirror and suspenseful music played in the background. A sample question: What kind of man do you see in the mirror? A capitalist?

When they began to ask both candidates about their current salaries, the tension in the room started to increase. The vice-presidential candidate was ready for it though and proudly proclaimed that while he did make good money as a doctor, he did not own anything. The host pressed him and asked if he owned a home. Nope, he rented it from a brother-in-law. A car? No again. He borrowed one from another family member. Karl Marx would be proud.

Shockingly, this political party is to the right of front-runner Evo Morales’ Movemiento al Socialismo. All of the three major candidates are running on platforms that flirt with nationalizing the natural gas industry. This television show and its antics might all be funny if one of these guys wasn’t about to take the reins of a major country. I guess we’ll see what happens come December. (Update 1/3/06: Evo Morales won with over 50% of the vote giving him an outright majority in his new government.)