- Paul Mason
- 21 Mar 06, 06:00 PM
LA PAZ, BOLIVIA. I don’t know if there is a word for “gilded youth” in Spanish but if there is, a fair selection of them are here tonight at the Catholic University of La Paz. They’ve called a conference about the role of youth in the forthcoming Constituent Assembly, which will rip up 50 years of traditional governance and hand power to Bolivia’s regions, workers and peasants. “What will it mean for you?” I ask Mariane Balderrama, one of the student TV team covering the event. “We don’t know – that’s why we want to hear this guy: we know nothing about what’s going on”...
Continue reading "Two Universities square up to the future"
- Paul Mason
- 21 Mar 06, 03:33 PM
The pit head of the Dorabella mine is just a line of single-storey sheds, bricked-up into the mountain side. There’s a first aid post, a police cell and then the barred gate, decorated with plastic flowers, which leads to the mine itself. It is always open – they work a three-shift system, seven days a week. There are no managers: this is a pit the mining companies abandoned when the tin price collapsed in 1985. “President Hugo Banzer gave us this mountain to buy votes in 1985,” says our guide “and we’ve worked it ever since”...
Continue reading "A pewter world of fear and comradeship"
