Bill Stark, Copyright August 2012
In 1907, my great-grandfather, Hugh C. Watson, traveled to Bolivia, where he visited La Paz and documented his expedition from Oruro to Cochabamba with photos and topographical maps.
What follows is the beginning of a fictionalized account of that expedition.
The Cochabamba Trip
April 16, 1907:
Sleep does not come to me easily lately, nor do I find any peace in my waking hours. There are times when I feel no need for rest. Trapped in this earth-bound form, I yearn instead to extend myself into every corner of the world, to be absorbed by all and to disappear fragmented into the multitude and the universe.
I did not sleep well the night before leaving Oruro on the Cochabamba trip. The commotion in the street below my window was to blame. I saw with my own eyes the destitute souls, impoverished of spirit and substance, roaming outside my hotel. Their spectral forms silhouetted against the backdrop of a dreamlike landscape. Like phantoms, they surged from the depths of the earth to lick and probe the corners of reality.
The brute force of the state is powerless against these figures; for even as it inclines to beat them and dispose of their transient forms, a grim, resonant truth rings from the nation’s bell towers and echoes from shallow, unmarked graves.
I left Oruro, Bolivia at 7:15 a.m. with four new mules and the arriero Montero Rodriguez. We set off to the West N10E for four leagues over a flat pampa. If you have never been on the pampa, you need only endeavor to imagine a barren wasteland that stretches out in every direction as far as the eye can see. Desolate and godforsaken, it is a region inhabited by ghosts. Its vast expanse is a labyrinth that defies the imagination. Lost and forgotten souls wander its empty plateaus and barren foothills. One can hear their cries in the wind. They whisper in the darkness. Nothing is what it seems here. The freezing winds pierce the thickest armor and penetrate the living and dead alike; and the summer heat melts the will and erases memories.
Making our way across the pampa, the first settlement we met was Paría. It is a small town on a small river on a vast horizon. The river is most probably dry in winter.
In the early morning darkness, the sun appeared from behind the mountains. We headed N18W for one league to Sorochata. There is an old smelter dump and evidence of current copper mines. We stopped there to meet Santiago Jumie, our Aymara guide.
After half an hour or so, he appeared. As he approached, it was clear that he was in an ornery state. Dust covered his hat, and his pants suffered the same. His stiff poncho seemed to be the only thing holding him up. I asked him if he was alright, if he wanted anything to eat or drink before we were underway.
He grumbled under his breath and stopped short of me to lean against a wooden fence post. He then tipped his hat forward. He appeared to have nothing more to say, although his silence told another story.
I walked over to the pack mule that carried the food. I reached into a panier and removed a small newspaper-wrapped package of hard-boiled eggs. I selected one of them, cracked it, and began to peel away the fragments of shell and solidified albumen. The smell rose up to my nostrils. Santiago looked away. I took two swift bites, and the egg was gone. I brushed my hands off on my pants and kicked dirt over the eggshells on the ground.
A chill still hung in the air. Dew clung to the brush. Several birds gathered on a nearby tree to greet the sun as it pulled up over the hills before us. Santiago stared off beyond the horizon at a distant point that I could not recognize. For a while, we sat there together in silence, me thinking about the trek ahead of us, and Santiago sitting there in his own element, gazing into oblivion.
I wondered what Santiago was thinking about. Did he think of the kinds of things that I do when I chase the wind? I looked at him. He was disheveled from head to foot. I shook the idea off. Not a chance. I resolved that for some as for any, the way you look at a thing depends on where you’re standing. A piece of bread appears either as a feast or a last meal. In like manner, I reckoned, one man’s paradise is another’s hell. It became acutely clear to me in that moment that as we made our way into the foothills, we were on our way to find treasure and fortune—maybe even glory and fame. It never occurred to me that one man’s treasure might not be so for another.
I stood up brusquely and asked Santiago and Montero to prep the mules and get ready to leave. Time was slipping, and our date with destiny could not wait.
To Sorochata it is a fine, level pampa. From there, at about a mile, the foothills start. I took the lead as we crossed a few quebradas and then for about a league followed up the dry riverbed of Osucullani. We then cut across the range by a rather rough but good road till we struck the Leque River. This we followed all the way in. Where we started to climb, the altitude was 3,850 meters. Lequepalca is 3,950 meters. From there they say there are 18 leagues to Tapacarí, so I am going to Meza and Machaca all the way through to Independencia.
The railroad can easily get here on an average 1% grade of not too heavy work. There are several good outcrops on the road. In Lequepalca there is no town, but one can stop at the house of Valentine Alvarado. There is water here all year, but the river sinks into the pampa farther down in the winter. In the rains, it floods around Caracollo.
Reflections from the Colonial Divide 