11
One day Gonzalo suggested to me that I come with him to see two of his patients at their homes. “The first is a man with silicosis. He is terribly short of breath, so I try to visit him in his home,” Gonzalo said. “He has bad, really advanced silicosis from working in the mines.”
“Don’t miners wear masks, respirators?” I asked.
“Well, yes, maybe. They are supposed to be supplied with effective respirators, but they are usually given simple cloth masks that won’t keep out the very small dust particles that do the damage. And real respirators are uncomfortable and hot, so the miners don’t want them. And back when this man was in the mines, nothing was done to protect them.
“My patient lives up in El Alto, so we’ll drive up there.”
“What are they mining? What was he mining?” I asked.
“Well, gold, silver. The cerro rico at Potosi is still yielding valuable minerals. That’s where my patient worked. He can no longer work, so now he lives with his daughter in El Alto.”
We found the man sitting on a stool outside his modest home. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees in a position that optimized his respiration while minimizing the effort he needed to make. As we approached, a young woman—his daughter, I presumed—came to greet us. A young girl, perhaps three years old, I thought, clung to her. “He’s doing pretty well,” she said to Gonzalo. “Nothing has changed. He uses the inhaler you gave him, but it doesn’t seem to help him much.”
“No,” Gonzalo said to her. “There is really nothing much we can do for him. You are a kind and generous person to take care of him.”
“He’s my father.”
Gonzalo took out his stethoscope and listened to his patient’s chest. He also felt his pulse, took his blood pressure, and listened to his heart. He looked carefully at his fingernails to judge how pink—how well oxygenated—they were.
“You are doing pretty well, my friend,” Gonzalo said to his patient. “Just don’t try to do too much. Don’t chase too many pretty chicas.”
His patient smiled. “No, I let the the girls chase me.”
“Step inside,” his daughter said. “I’ll get money to pay you.”
In the small room there was an open-topped cardboard box with two guinea pigs in it. “Cobayos,” I said. “Pets?”
“No,” she smiled. “Dinner tonight. We call them cuis, for the sound they make.” Turning to Gonzalo she asked, “How much do I owe you? Did I pay you last time?”
“Five bolivianos. Yes, you did pay me before.” The young woman took coins from a small purse and gave them to Gonzalo.
“Your husband is not here today,” Gonzalo commented.
“No, he went down to La Paz. He heard they are working on paving some roads. He hopes he might find some work there.”
As we drove back to the city, I said to Gonzalo, “Five bolivianos! I would guess the gasoline you used to make this visit cost more than that.”
“Well, he and his daughter’s family have almost nothing. Times are hard. Times in Bolivia are always hard, I guess. But now we are going to see a patient who lives in Calacoto and is rich. I can charge her more. And,” he added, “the family wants you, the famous professor, to see her.”
“Okay, I guess, but I doubt that I could add much.”
“She has metastatic cancer. Ovarian. She won’t live much longer. She’s a courageous woman. It’s her family members that are the problem. Two daughters and a son. The daughters are okay, but the son insists that I cure her. Ridiculous.”
We arrived at a large house on a substantial lot. Obviously the home of wealthy people. A maid ushered us into the living room, where a bed had been set up for the dowager. The son and two daughters were present, the daughters sitting in arm chairs, the son restless, pacing, clearly uncomfortable with the situation. He introduced us to two Bolivian doctors who were present. Gonzalo greeted them—colleagues, whom he knew—and introduced me. One of them had a flask of the patient’s urine and was holding it up to light at a window so that he could examine it. To what medical purpose, I could not imagine. Probably to impress the family, I supposed.
I sat on the edge of the patient’s bed and introduced myself. “I am an American doctor,” I said. “Your family and Doctor Mamani asked me to see you.”
“Yes. Thank you for coming.”
“You have cancer.”
“I know that—from one of my ovaries. And I know that I am dying. You cannot change that. And I do not expect you to do so.”
“Are you comfortable?” I asked. “Have you pain?”
“Yes, no. They have given me morphine. I am comfortable. No pain. But I sleep a lot. I am ready to die. It will happen soon, I think.”
I pulled down her sheet and felt her abdomen. It was rock hard, obviously full of tumor.
“Doctor,” she said softly, “I am glad my family is here. I thank you for coming to see me. Now it is time for you and the other doctors to leave. I am ready to die, and I want to die in peace.”
I pulled up the sheet to cover her. “You are a brave woman. I wish you comfort and peace.”
I rose and walked across the room. Gonzalo, the woman’s son, and the two Bolivian doctors joined me. “What is your opinion?” asked the son.
“She has cancer. You know that; she knows that. There is nothing more that can be done for her. You, all of you, also know that, and she knows that. She is glad that her family is here, and she wants to be left alone to die in peace. I suggest that all of us—we médicos—leave her alone with her family. That’s what she wants. And there is nothing our presence here can do to help her.”
“But we want to be sure that she gets the best medical care possible,” said her son.
“The best medical care she can get at this point is peace and quiet. We should all of us leave.”
“Is there nothing more you can do?” once again asked the son.
“What we, and especially you, can do is allow her to die with dignity and peace. Our presence here does nothing to add to that. In fact, it makes the situation worse for her. She is ready to die and wants to do so with dignity. My colleagues,” I said turning toward Gonzalo and the two Bolivian doctors, “it is time for us to depart and leave this courageous woman and her family in the hands of God.”
Back in Gonzalo’s van he said to me, “Thank you. I could not have said what you said. Those two doctors are simply after her money. They will send huge bills.”
“And you, what will you charge?”
“Five bolivianos, I think.”
12
It was Sunday morning. A beautiful, sunny morning. We were looking forward to an expedition with Gonzalo when he arrived at our door.
“Where are you going to take us today?” Susan asked as she greeted him with a smile and a hug.
“No place, today, and I can’t stay long. There’s a golpe going on.”
“Golpe?”
“Yes, a golpe del estado. A coup d’état. Or at least an attempt at one. No one can tell whether it will succeed. You’ll have to stay home. And depending on how it goes, there may be a curfew, a toca de queda. I’ll tell you what I know. But first, get some money. We need to go to the tienda. You need to buy what you can to survive for three or four days without going outside. No marketing tomorrow. All the markets will be closed anyway. Maria won’t come, I am sure.”
With Gonzalo we hustled to the neighboring tienda. There was a line at the counter and people were stripping the shelves of everything that looked edible. Susan and Alice joined in the scramble, while Eric, Gonzalo, and I waited outside.
Back in the house, Gonzalo reported to us, “I really only know what I heard on the radio this morning. And what I know that always happens with golpes. We have them fairly often, which is bad. Bad for Bolivia. Bolivia’s president is an army general. An air force general wants to throw him out and take over. What will happen? No one knows, but it may be several days before one of them wins and things settle back down. I guess this is our politic
al system. It’s terrible. Terrible for Bolivia.
“You’ll mostly have to make do with what you now have in the house. There is a chifa (Chinese restaurant) around the corner. If anything stays open, it will. You may be able to eat there, but go early. You must be home and in the house before it gets dark. It is unlikely that there will be any fighting here in Obrajes, but you can never tell. Bolivian soldiers loyal to one contender or the other will be shooting at each other. What a shame!”
As Gonzalo was leaving, an airplane flew over us. We were below but not far from the army headquarters. The air force was now attacking, flexing its muscles, I supposed. The aircraft appeared to be bombing the army buildings, but as it passed overhead it continued to release its load. “Look,” Eric commented, “it’s not dropping bombs. It’s dropping garbage!”
“No surprise,” Gonzalo commented. “No one should be hurt. That would be upsetting. Bolivia’s tank, by the way, is now out and parked on the Prado in front of the university. The students should know that the military wants them to stay in their dormitories, regardless of who wins. Asi es Bolivia.”
Life settled down and boredom settled in. We had all come to love Bolivia and found it exciting. Whatever exciting things were going on elsewhere, however, they did not reach our house on Calle Cuatro. We played bridge and rummy, but card games soon lost their appeal.
Three days later Gonzalo returned. “It’s over. The army won. The air force general’s son, a pilot, crashed his plane doing stunts over Lake Titicaca. He was killed. Now we have a national day of mourning, declared by the army general, who has kept his seat as president.”
Only in Bolivia, I thought. Only in this crazy country I had come to love.
13
“There’s something going on at the university,” Susan said at dinner one Monday evening. “Maria and I were on the bus with our baskets of groceries when we passed the university. You know, the building up there on the lower end of the Prado.”
“Yes, I know that building. It’s the main university building. But not the medical school,” I said.
“Well, today there are all sorts of banners with slogans hanging out the windows. Maria said she has heard that the students have taken over.”
“My guess would be not all of the students,” I commented. “Just an activist group. Perhaps left wing—or perhaps right wing.”
“What do you suppose they want?”
“Who knows? Not lower tuition; the university is free. So is board. They charge for food in the cafeteria, I think. Maybe they want that free too. Or maybe there’s a professor they don’t like.”
“The university is free?” Alice asked. “Don’t they have to pay tuition?”
“Nope. You know, anyone who finishes high school can enter the university. At the medical school there are about a thousand students in the first-year class. There’s no entrance exam. Finish high school and you’re ready to learn to be a doctor. It’s the European system. No undergraduate degree before medical school, but a longer medical school course.”
“A thousand of them in the first year!”
“More or less. No entrance exam, but at the end of the first year there is a tough exam that they have to pass to move on. So there are only about two hundred second-year students.”
“What happens if they flunk the first-year exam?”
“Well, they’re out, but not really. They can sign up and repeat the first year again—as many times as they want. And remember, free room and board!
“This short immunology course I’ve been teaching. Right at the start a student asked if I would be taking attendance. Another asked if there would be an exam. I told them that I thought what I would be telling them about should interest them and might be important as they learned more clinical medicine. But the learning was up to them. No attendance taking, no exam. I think that sort of surprised them all. Anyway, most of them have stuck with it.”
Susan brought the conversation back to the happenings at the university building that she had passed on the bus. “There is a big banner with a picture of a bearded man. Who would that be?”
“Che Guevara, I would guess.”
“Who is Che Guevara?” Alice asked.
“Well,” I said, “he was a Bolivian revolutionary who became a big-time folk hero. He went to Cuba at one point and linked up with Fidel Castro there. In Bolivia, he traveled widely in rural areas and urged campesinos to join his revolution. Although he was revered by leftist students, he got nowhere with Bolivian farmers. What he urged them to do was to follow him in his battle against land holders. He would redistribute land so that small farmers owned their own farms, the land they worked.”
“The campesinos must have liked that,” Alice commented.
“No, they didn’t. What Che seemed not to know was that all the big land holdings had been broken up a couple of decades earlier. The small farmers whom he wanted to enlist in his revolution already owned their fincas.”
“Pretty stupid,” commented Eric. “What happened?”
“So,” I continued, “the Bolivian government—the army, especially—wanted to get rid of him, but he was moving from place to place, hiding. They put a price on his head. They offered a reward to anyone that could tell them where he was.
“Che was fairly well hidden in a farm house in a rural area—not the Yungas, but a place like it. One day a car drove up. A man got out, entered the house, and shot Guevara. Who did it? Did someone collect the reward? No one knows. Or if they do, they’re not telling. That was in 1969, but he is still remembered by Bolivia’s leftists.”
“Well,” said Susan, “Che may be dead, but there still are students who want to start a revolution. And they have not only seized the university building, but they have also torn up the paving stones on the road at the side of the university. The vehicle entrance is blocked.”
Alice and Eric had stopped eating and were listening wide-eyed to their mother. “Yes, kids,” I said to them. “Democracy and free speech are precious. They’re not always easy to come by in Bolivia. But this business by the students is stupid and likely to get them nothing—except maybe hurt.”
“The bus was stopped at the traffic light there,” Susan continued. “There were soldiers on the sidewalk, across the street from the university, just in front of where the bus was stopped. One of them raised his rifle and fired at the university. I don’t know whether he wanted to shoot a student, and I really couldn’t see what he hit. But I think just a part of the building wall.”
Susan continued her account. “Maria said that the soldiers will turn off the electricity and water to the building. Then just wait.”
“You know,” I said, “that’s smart. No ugly confrontation. No battle. Nobody hurt. Nothing to lose, as far as the army goes.”
“How long will this go on?” Alice asked.
“Well, that’s hard to say.”
“Until they can no longer tolerate unflushed toilets, maybe,” Eric guessed.
“Yep. It’s going to get mighty unpleasant for the students holed up in there.”
“So in the end, the students will simply have to give up?” Alice asked.
“I guess so. And I also guess that this is not the first time something like this has happened.”
“What will happen to them, the students?” Alice continued.
“Oh, nothing, I suppose. This is Bolivia.”
“But in the U.S., something like this would get them expelled. And arrested, probably.”
“Yes,” I said, “but this is Bolivia.”
14
The bus climbed up from Obrajes toward the center of La Paz. We passed an army post with a placard announcing, “Antofagasta es y sera Boliviana” (Antofagasta is and will be Bolivian). Antofagasta had been Bolivia’s seaport. Seeking greater access to the rich deposits of guano in bird rookeries on the Pacific Coast, Bolivia had invaded Chile and seized some of the coastal territory. Chile and Peru had responded to this attack, defeated the Bolivians,
and annexed Antofagasta and the neighboring costal region. Bolivia was left without access to the sea, left with no easy way to export its many mineral treasures.
The bus continued up the main thoroughfare, which changed its name from 6 de Agosto (August 6) to 16 de Julio (July 16), thus commemorating two Bolivian holidays. We left the bus at the cathedral. Alice and Eric were awed at the large sanctuary. The altar impressed them, as did several side chapels. Susan and I had seen other cathedrals and were less awed.
Calle Sagarnaga (Sagarnaga Street) climbed up beside the cathedral. It housed many small shops. Along the street, vendors—women for the most part—displayed their wares, with goods spread on their aguayos. “Why do all the women selling oranges sit together?” wondered Alice. “Wouldn’t each want her special place?” Many vendors offered coca leaves. At one corner a woman was selling dried llama fetuses. She had a moist coca leaf on her forehead. She told us that it was important to bury a llama fetus beneath the main room of every new casita (small or special house). Otherwise misfortune would stalk the house.
“Do you suppose we have a buried llama?” Eric asked.
We browsed, wandering into and out of several shops. Susan was intrigued with the artisanal handcrafts for sale, especially the textiles. She purchased a beautifully embroidered pechero (small item of clothing that hangs like a bib) and a fine aguayo. Eric found an honda (sling) and Alice a pair of aretes (earrings). Then back by bus to dinner at our Obrajes home.
One Sunday morning Gonzalo picked us up in his VW van. Susan had packed a picnic lunch, and we were headed for the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon). We drove downhill from Obrajes to Calacoto. There, at a lower altitude, trees and flowers grew. Wealthy Paceños lived there, as did American embassy personnel. Further down, the road flattened out, and a side road took off to the right. We turned and drove past a brick yard, then up again, and into an area that could have been mistaken for the canyons of Utah. Water had carved and shaped sandstone into a sculpture garden. We enjoyed the lunch Susan had packed. She had picked up “broasted chicken”—“Whatever that means,” she commented—from a street corner vendor. Whatever it was, we all thought it special and delicious. We were soon licking our fingers.
Escape Through the Andes Page 6