The Bolivian kids

Behind, for those traveling north, there is a country named Argentina, with a little town named Salvador Mazza -- the most northern of all -- which also has children and oranges, shacks and poverty.

Mazza -- a doctor by vocation and profession -- rebelled against the health injustice, one of the many that still hurt. He wanted to burn down the shacks in which the vinchucas (triatoma infestans) live, the adobe shacks where the children become adults with the Chagas disease on their backs, like an original sin.

But Professor Mazza died. And the shacks infested with vinchucas remained. And so did the kids on the side of the road, those kids who barely survive Chagas, dengue, or the implacable dropper of hunger.

Why divide Professor Mazza from Yacuiba, we wonder. Why separate La Quiaca from Villazon? They are the same country of hunger and hope. They are the sorrow and the fury. They are the same invincible beauty.

Our parents had seen this. Monteagudo, for example (a Bolivian town was named after him). Or Warnes (a Bolivian province and a city were named after him).

And Ernesto Guevara also saw it. Che wanted to make his guerrilla centre here, right here, in order to extend the revolution from Bolivia to Chile, to Argentina, to Brazil and Paraguay.

The officers of the empire worry about the triple frontier. They know nothing. Here, in the Bolivian Chaco, there is a quintuple frontier. Here lies the total frontier of America, with its dusty and quiet peoples and with children who come back and are invisible, armed with oranges.

Reaching Villamontes, more and more kids: botijas, chiquilines, chatitos who show up with their little bags, their baskets and their expecting eyes.

In order to cross the Pilcomayo, the bus must get on the train tracks. What happens is that the last bridge that is still standing, after the rises in the river level, is the railway bridge. A solid bridge, built by a solid state, for a train that does not exist anymore.

As we pass through, we greet the tenants from the Oficina de Pontazgo, a colonial remora, anchored in time. Those who live and fight the most in this fierce land -- we think -- are the kids. The kids with their oranges. The kids standing barefoot fishing for shads in the river. The kids with their smiles.

Marching towards Santa Cruz de la Sierra, among water gaps, mountains and streams, one can observe the landscape that witnessed, four decades ago, the birth and death of the Nacahuazu guerrilla. It can be read in the signs to orientate the tourists: “You are walking on Che’s route”.

Maps, brochures, historical references, crumbling pits gnawed by time, eternal peasants -- now recycled as tourist guides -- glass jars with labels which say “Che’s land and blood”.

But what matters, as we said before, is the children. In Camiri, in Samaipata, in Lagunilla and La Higuera, in a lost bend of that Vado del Yeso, children. In Puerto Mauricio, right there, where Tania fell, children.

Here, on Che’s route, in Bolivia, the unredeemable heart of America, those who stay fit, those who live and fight, are the children.

The school in La Higuera where Che was shot is today a museum. There are also posters and souvenirs for tourists and travelers there.

Leaving the museum, there is a colorful mural that attracts our attention. It says “I can indeed!” It is the national literacy campaign motto, a campaign Evo Morales’ government carries out with the support and assistance of Cuba.

“Vallegrande,” a teacher tells us, “will become, next October, a municipality which will be free of illiteracy. We already have 1,570 people who can read and write and 406 who are taking the courses. When we reach our goal, here, in La Higuera, we will set up the first centre for post literacy…”

Che did not suspect the impact his very own name would have forty years after the combat. Neither did he think that his image would ever be seen repeated to the point of exhaustion in posters, t-shirts, and key rings.

But when Vallegrande, Bolivia and this devastated American frontier become a land which is completely free from illiteracy, nobody will be able to take the victory away from Che and every single one of his fallen comrades. And the Bolivian kids, with their parents, grandparents and memory, will read him and write the best of tributes.

(Aug. 25 Tehran Times Opinion Column, by Oscar Taffetani)

The Spanish language original version of this article can be viewed at the web site www.pelotadetrapo.org.ar.

PA/HG

END

MNA