Suppose you lived here

It would be cold

Sometimes the water does not run
Sometimes it runs red

A mining town,
most of the wealth drained out
decades or centuries ago.

The children play on rusting military equipment

but they do play. And I suspect this is how it always is. For example
when you live on the Altiplano,
and grow potatoes in the bleakness,
you make your clothes out of bright yarn.

And this is color.
And you have Che. Or someone else. To shine a light.

And then you have art, and you splash it where you can,
and you don't keep it on the insides of your walls.
You put it outside on the walls, for all to see.

And maybe your aluminum roof is weighed down with stones,
but you have a roof.

The one new thing in Lllallgua that everyone has is this staircase, outside,
linking the lower part of the town with Siglo XX.
As far as new things a staircase is a pretty good one to build.
Some kind of ascension, possible.

Forever, what does it mean? I do not know.

Let us go now to the campo
to the pueblos
where they plow their fields with oxen

Some faded place
where once the priests of the Incan empire performed their rites;
the sun always shining here.

In this part of the world
people live with animals
animals are a part of life, say

Our cities are devoid of animals.
Yet I think animals have a great future in the city; post-petrol cities, that is.
For example, meet our neighborhood cow, one of a flock.

They wander around our vacant lots,
placidly eliminating the need for a growling lawnmower.
You can also see them beside the lake.
It is a modern lake with a jogging path and occasionally cows.

Here is the store where I used to live.
City life is different.
The fortresses are not made of earthen walls,
but of cinder; still, they feel more medieval, with the broken bottles
or barbed wire topping all the walls...

What is there to be afraid of?
Each other, it seems.
A friend of mine got a gun put to his head in my barrio.
Cleferos with cuchillos, glue-sniffers with serrated kitchen knives,
well, these are the ancient spectres of the forest, urbanized.

A water tower.
Urbanization means we have to Think about how we allocate our resources...
if you don't think about it, the multinationals will.
I was in Cochabamba on the sixth anniversary of the water wars.
There were commemorations in the plaza principal.

This city. This twisted relationship with North America.
I will write about this later, perhaps.

Corporate colonialism on every wall;
I walk the streets and feel this subtle attack, invasion,
wonder how long it can last.

Then there is the church.

Omnipresent. Graffitti on a fountain in the pueblo of Cliza:
When they came they had the Bibles and we had the lands.
Now they have the lands and we have the Bibles.

The stories are right there for everyone to see.
Stories of rapture;
the wish to be taken up, one form of liberation.

Struggle, la lucha, another form of liberation.
Amor, that other liberation. Stories of urbanization; finally, of reassurance.

I don't know what more to show
because I won't dream or draw any conclusions for months or years yet