Hi everyone! Does anyone read us anymore? We haven’t posted in a while! I’ll try and work on that soon.

In the meantime, the actual, physical Gringo Tambo aparment is looking for a new roommate starting in November. If anyone reading this needs housing in La Paz or knows of someone who is looking please let us know.

My phone number is: 71946951 or you can call Eduardo: 79121956

Our current roommates are both Bolivian, which is great, but it would also be nice to get the GT back to its roots of housing researchers from other countries. We’ve had a hard time keeping it full with ‘gringos’ so there is a good possiblity that when our lease is up in August the Gringo Tambo may only exist in cyberspace.

It is time for updates on all GTers. If you contribute (or even just read us whenever we post something) please let us know where you are, what you are currently working on, what kind of posts you’d like to see on GT, and if/when you’ll be in Bolivia.

And I apologize for the post lag on my end. We returned from Bolivia last month, and had 2 weddings and 1 surgery before ending our nomadic existence and moving to Oxford, MS to start our new positions.

We arrived back in Chicago from Bolivia yesterday. We had no problems leaving the country. Javi and I had overstayed our 30 day period by a few days, but we were not asked to pay a multa. We explained we were visiting family and the official nodded and stamped us out. I have heard stories that some people are getting 90-day entries right off the bat when they arrive as well. It seems that the 30 days at a time for no more than 90 days in a year is being loosely enforced, with 90 days remaining more of the standard. Of course, much of this depends on the official you get, their mood, etc etc. In addition, we met with a colleague in La Paz who told us this trip (his second on his visa) he had no hassles from officials in Miami, in Bolivia, etc, so the visa is a one-time (well one-time per five year) pain and after that you aren’t asked for additional documentation or anything upon check in/arrival.

American Airlines treated us fine on the way back. They do have a fairly permanent embargo on overweight or extra checked bags to/from Bolivia, though. Luckily ours squeaked in just at or underweight, but we would *not* have been able to pay extra to check an overweight bag (now 22 kilos/50 lbs, I believe). This is difficult if, like many of us, you have lots of heavy research-related material (books, newspaper clippings, etc).

More updates later – including an interesting visit to a coffee plantation – but for now we’ve got some unpacking, laundry, etc to do!

Oh, and happy belated July 16th!

As I mentioned in a comment below, part of the on-going bicentennial celebrations here include kids’ meal toys at Pollos Copacabana celebrating various “touristic” places around La Paz. Notable is that the “tourists” are little pollitos (the chain’s mascot) and therefore should probably be read as paceños, not foreign tourists. This is important for several reasons:

1. The people buying these meals are likely middle to upper class Bolivians with some disposable income, allowing them to be tourists at home, so to speak

2. They’re interested in some of the same activities as “gringos” (aka biking to Coroico) but perhaps they don’t do it with *all* the gear.

3. Quite frankly, it does seem that tourism has dropped off substantially here. Sure, there are backpacker types wandering around Sagarnaga, but it seems far fewer than in years past (just my impression) and even there I’ve heard not a single other U.S. accent. Therefore, who can keep all the tourism operators afloat? Hopefully locals who have the time and desire to take day or weekend trips to “know” their department.

And now, without further ado, the toys:

I am deeply skeptical when it comes to claims of success in the U.S. [international but U.S.-led] War on Drugs, and not because I think illegal drugs are a great thing (I don’t).  In this, I have lots of company.  Those publicly opposing the U.S. [U.S. Support for the] War on Drugs include Noam Chomsky, Walter Cronkite, Ron Paul (remember him?), and organizations such as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and the ACLU.  Even the U.S. Drug Czar doesn’t really want to call it a “war.” Also see the article by Joe Conason at Salon.com.  This is by no means a complete list.  Opposition to the War on Drugs is growing along with the evidence that it is failing.  It simply does not achieve its own objective, which is the most damning kind of failure.

In addition to this “War” not reducing the supply or increasing the price of street drugs (its actual purpose), the collateral damage has been heavy, in the U.S., Colombia, Peru, and of course Bolivia.

Given all this, when I saw the BBC’s July 6, 2009 article stating:

Drug enforcement officials have raided what they call the biggest cocaine laboratory ever found in Bolivia.

The facility, said to have the capacity to produce up to 100kg (220lb) each day, was discovered in a rural area of the department of Santa Cruz.

I cynically wondered how many times such an announcement had been made.  Luckily, we live in the era of the Internet, so I don’t have to guess.  I typed <<”biggest cocaine factory” Bolivia>>, and some variations thereof, into Google and found:

March 27, 2009.  Fox News:  “Bolivia’s interior minister says police have uncovered one of the country’s biggest known cocaine processing factories.”  (Plane found with 300kg of cocaine)

May 31, 2007.   ABC:  “Bolivian police have found the largest cocaine factory ever discovered in the South American country, with a daily production capacity of 100 kilograms.”  (Note this is the same daily production as that reported in the July 7, 2009 story.  Also reported at WCBSTV.)

Oct 8, 1988.  LA Times:  “Police and U.S. drug agents raided and destroyed a huge jungle cocaine laboratory that produced at least $50 million worth of drugs each week, Bolivian and U.S. officials said Friday.”  (Produces 3.5 tons of cocaine a week — or about 508 kg/day, far more than any of the busts announced above.)

These aren’t all the articles on the drug war — just the ones I found with minimum effort that claimed to have made  huge drug busts.  My point here is not to take all this as straight data, but rather to point to the political purposes served by announcing such busts.  The details are left as an exercise to my very capable readers.