La Higuera

This past week we traveled back into the highlands to the little village of La Higuera to visit the town where Ernesto "Che" Guevara was murdered on October 9, 1967. Going into the trip I was extremely excited, as Sam said I am the "Che-o-phile" and this was my passion we were following. But the whole experience left me empty and depressed. La Higuera is reachable by camiónes that carry agro-products such as pesticides and herbicides or micros or by taxi. We opted for the taxi since it cut the ride in half, there were no micros that day, and more importantly because I refused to ride in the back of an unstable truck with chemicals and fertilizers that could spell out on the long, bumpy, dusty ride to La Higuera.

La Higuera is in middle of no where, a village of only 27 families who make a profit from tourists (the majority non-American) who come through to see the school house where "Che" was murdered. The school house has been converted into a museum with pictures and explanations of his life and more specifically why "Che" decided to come to Bolivia to try and carry out the next revolution. A question Sam and I have repeatedly been asking ourselves. The board in the school house listed three reasons. The first being because it boarders Guevara's birth land, Argentina. The second, because Bolivia is bordered by five other South American countries making it an ideal place to spread the revolutionary idea. And third, because "Che" had connections to the communist party in Bolivia at the time. However, if anyone has ever been to Bolivia it is not a revolutionary country, it wasn't 40 years ago when "Che" was murdered and it sure as hell isn't today. The country is too divided between the upper class who is WHITE and the lower class who is Indigenious and too concerned with day to day survival to take up arms. There is no middle class to speak of, and the intellectuality that thrives in other South American countries is lacking in Bolivia. Intellectualism, is something which I see as being important in any revolutionary movement. Looking at most of the popular revolutionary figures, they came from well off families and were intellectuals.

Anyway back to La Higuera. After walking around the tiny school house and looking at the chair that "Che" was supposedly shot in we wondered outside to snap a few shots of the village. There was a little bust of "Che" in a fenced off courtyard in middle of the village where this Senora came out to show us pictures. It turned out the pictures where of "Che" after he was shot, which not only angered me but grossed me out. She was offering to sell us the pictures, to which I responded by storming away while Sam stayed and engaged her in a conversation about the village while smoking a big cuban cigar in memory of "Che". It turns out 40 years ago when "Che" had passed through La Higuera it was a village of 100 families and now it's shrunk to 27. The reason, because there is NOTHING there. Sam called it a one burro town. I don't even know how they manage to grow crops, the area is so dry and dusty (granted it is still the dry season, but its hard to imagine the place green during the rainy season).

I just felt so depressed, because La Higuera hadn't changed in these 40 years. If anything it had shrunk and now they where making profits off of a hero's murder, someone who is a legend in all of Latin America. What depressed me even more was that I couldn't blame them. I mean they have to make a living, but it seems so ironic that they are making profits off of "Che's" death, of all people. We passed up the offer to hike down to the stream where he was captured, because I just wanted to get back to ValleGrande the bigger town we where staying at. Its where "Che" was taken to after being shot and had his hands chopped off so he wouldn't be identifiable and where he was buried until 1997.

Next day we caught a bus to the town of Samaipata. A curious little place all set up for tourists, only we seemed be the only ones around. Anyway, the main attraction is these pre-inca ruins about 10 km outside of town. Apparently one of the main theories concerning their existence is that it was a landing site for UFO's. Can't say I was convinced but it was yet another beautiful site of an ancient civilization. For me the real highlight was coming across a possum on the "Ecological trail" curled up and fast asleep in one of the sites trash bins. Worth a visit but i think UNESCO may have been duped into funding the tourism project by the wealthy residents of the town.

We hurried back to smouldering Santa Cruz to find that during our absence our cd/vcd player and portable speakers where stolen from my backpack at the Hospedaje we had stored them. To top it off the cheaper Hospedaje we had moved to didn't have electricity, which meant no fan or shower so we left and found a nice place with AC, and running water. A little pricey, but what can you do, Santa Cruz is carrisimo. All in all, we are ready to leave Bolivia. Good timing really since our visa runs out the 28th. Its a beautiful country but depressing. Its so rich in resources, but classicism and racism rage uncontrolled. There is no infrastructure to speak of and all the wealth is concentrated in Santa Cruz where the cruseños want autonomy from the rest of Bolivia so they don't have to share it.