It's Good to Home Again in Bolivia

It is good to be out the door again at 6am climbing into the Cochabamba hills with my two Cochabamba dogs. It is good to see the children in their white smocks scrambling to board a bus and head to school. It is good to hear the rumble of the old Trufi buses – hand-me-downs from South Korea – as they troll up and down the hillside.

It is good to be able to deliver my daughter again to her pre-school where the squealing on the playground is in Spanish. It is good to handover a silver coin to the banana lady to get my breakfast. It is good to feel the spring sun on my face.

It is good to be home again in Cochabamba.

Bolivia is so much more than its politics. It is not politics that seduces so many foreign visitors into loving this place and seduces a few more of us into making it our home. It is something else that makes us fall for the place.

This month marks nine years since my family and I boarded a plane in the Bay Area and headed back to Cochabamba. Add onto that the year that my wife and I spent here in 1991-92 as volunteers in an orphanage – volunteerism, not politics brought us here – and this month marks a decade.

Since May when The Democracy Center wrapped up the manuscript of our new book on Bolivia and globalization (coming next U.S. spring from University of California Press) I have been out of Bolivia for more time than I have been here. There were work trips to New Mexico, Montenegro, the UK, the Netherlands and the US. There was moving my eldest daughter to college in Florida and sitting with my elderly mother in California.

All these were wonderful places and important tasks. But it is good to be home again in Bolivia. This time I am staying put for a while.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the return of democracy to Bolivia, following a run of bloody dictators from Banzer to García Meza. Today, even the Vice-President of the former and a military attaché to the latter – current opposition leaders both – are busy proclaiming the virtues of democratic rule. Some will point to the era of Goni as something less than full democracy and others will say the same of Evo. But Bolivia under both was and is a far cry from the days of mass disappearances, suspension of constitutional rights, and routine torture. Bolivia today may be a place of noisy and heated debate, but it is a democratic debate and a healthy one. But again, Bolivia is more than its politics.

San Francisco under clear blue skies is hard to beat.

Amsterdam with its bicycles and canals is truly beautiful.

New York City is a thrill ride and you have to love those dinosaur skeletons.

But when I click my heels and head for home, home is Cochabamba, 'La Llajta.'

And I am pretty sure that the dogs are glad to have me back.