El Gaviero

From Bolivian Express:

Ametrine, a purple-and-yellow blend of amethyst and citrine semiprecious gems, is known as bolivianite inside of Bolivia. For years, it was thought to be available from various mines

in the eastern Bolivia and parts of Brazil. Rumor even had it that gemologists had perfected a method of synthesizing ametrine in a laboratory. But these speculations obscured the truth, namely that the Bolivian military had been illegally extracting the gem from a single mine in the deep wilderness near the Brazilian border. The stones were smuggled into Brazil and cut, polished, and sold, their provenance obfuscated to circumvent Brazilian import duties and hide the Bolivian military’s plundering of Bolivia’s natural resources. Then, in late 1989, Bolivian law changed and the government granted a concession to the Santa Cruz–based Minerales y Metales del Oriente (M&M) company to legally mine the gems. Founded by Ramiro Rivero, a businessman from La Paz, M&M now has exclusive rights to the Anahí mine near the border of Brazil in the vast Pantanal, one the world’s largest wetlands.

A quirky product of molten metaland water, combined with thousands of years of heat and radiation exposure, these gems have been sitting underground for millennia. According to legend, about 400 years ago the local Ayoreos tribe gave the mine as a dowry to a passing conquistador who married the tribal chief’s daughter. Her name was Anahí. But the conquistador was more interested in finding El Dorado, and, depending on whom you ask, he either left the mine untouched or was driven away by the Ayoreos. We do not know what happened to the mine’s namesake, the Indian princess Anahí, although some versions of the story say she was killed to prevent her from leaving with the conquistador.

M&M’s processing facilities sit in a large industrial park outside of central Santa Cruz. Inside, dozens of workers busy themselves in front of workstations, first measuring and grading rough clusters of the gem, then grinding them down into gemstones and separating them into colour piles. Skilled gem cutters then cut and polish the stones under magnifying glasses into trapezoid, emerald, and baguette shapes before they’re shipped off to retail locations. Rivero, a short but sharply dressed man in his early 60s, has his office just off of M&M’s work floor. In it, various gems are displayed conspicuously: rough amethyst gemstone clusters weighing tens of kilograms are arranged on the floor, while his desk is covered with a scattering of cut gems—purple amethyst, yellow citrine, and the coveted ametrine.

When M&M was granted the mining concession in 1989, Rivero explains, the market was flooded with cheap ametrine, much of it poorly cut. Rivero decided to change how the stone was provided. “We like to produce the least amount possible,” he says, “and give as much added value as possible, with the idea of producing quality.” To that end, M&M created its combined offices and production facilities in Santa Cruz. It’s the exclusive distributor of naturally produced commercial ametrine in the world—and the source of much amethyst. (Ametrine can occasionally be found in other locations in Brazil, but Anahí is acknowledged as the only commercially viable operation worldwide.) With no longer any need to fudge the provenance of the stones, and since M&M has a virtual monopoly on ametrine production, local markets near the Brazilian-Bolivian border dwindled and eventually were shuttered.

In order to boost ametrine’s value and reputation—which suffered during its illegal-mining days due to rumors that its synthetic version was basically indistinguishable from its naturally occurring form—M&M regularly hosts gemologists and geochemists, who have confirmed that the synthetics lack a certain quality that’s inherent in the naturally produced variety. “When you talk about quality gems,” Rivero says, “there are two issues: depth of color and brilliance. The Russians [who synthesized ametrine] obtained great depth in purple and yellow. What they don’t have is the brilliance, which nature gives the stones. It’s a plastic appearance. I wouldn’t even call it jewelry.”

To reach the Anahí mine, one must trace the gems’ voyage in reverse, up the Paraguay River from Puerto Quijarro, a small, dusty town in the extreme east of Bolivia, through the vastness of the Bolivian and Brazilian Pantanal to the far-flung Mandiolé Lagoon. Vast tracks of water lilies clog the slow-moving river while urubus—black vultures with light-colored head plumes—soar overhead. Crocodiles snap their jaws at boats speeding by. Mennonite soybean farms, cut out of the dense vegetation, come onto view and then disappear around the river’s innumerable horseshoe bends. From Mandiolé Lagoon, it’s a two-and-a-half-hour ride through an insect-filled forest up a narrow, muddy road. Once guests finally arrive at the mining camp, M&M’s junior engineer, Gonzalo Gonzales, shows guests the spartan accommodations. Miners relax in the dining hall; many of them are from Potosí, where the mining vocation goes back generations. M&M frequently hires workers from there because they already have a mastery—and lack of fear—of the mining profession.

The mine’s entrance is located up a steep slope from the camp, at the end of a path that is littered with cast-off low-grade gems from below-ground. Purple stones crunch under feet in the dense brush; quartz and citrine stones are mixed in, forming a colorful semi-precious path to the mine. Large clusters of amethyst are strewn about as the earth offers up a bounty of purple treasure. The mine’s entrance is a horizontal shaft set in a crumbling rock wall. Stuffy air greets visitors, and bats flitter about deep in the hole. “They live here,” Gonzales explains. He tells his guests to don hardhats and gloves before going any further. “Watch your step. It gets very slippery in here.”

The Anahí mine extends 80 meters underground. It isn’t particularly deep, since the gem lode is near the surface. This is fortunate, Gonzalo explains, because the region receives so much rain that the lower levels of the mine are frequently flooded and inaccessible. Gonzalo shines his flashlight down into a vertical shaft. “This goes all the way to the bottom,” he says. “But as you can see, it’s flooded with water.” Nearby, a wooden scaffold is decorated with ribbons and surrounded by cigarettes, coca leaves, and bottles of alcohol. It’s an offering to El Tio, or “the Uncle,” who is the spirit of the mine. Miners in Bolivia traditionally leave offerings to El Tio, to appease him so that he doesn’t claim many lives.

About 100 meters into the mine, a wooden ladder extends into a dark hole in the floor. Gonzalo becomes animated and explains that a gem vault sits only 20 meters below. After giving instructions to his guests to follow, Gonzalo climbs down. The guests follow him down the muddy ladder, a seemingly endless climb in the pitch dark. With every meter farther down, the temperature increases; water drips down and mud scrapes off boots, making the ladder dangerously slick. Gradually, though, the light from Gonzalo’s torch gains brightness, until he’s visible in a low and narrow tunnel. He shines his lamp into a refrigerator-sized vault cut into the side of the shaft, and a deep purple hue reflects back out. Hundreds of fist-sized gem-quality stone clusters project from the vault wall. Deep and light purple and yellow gems glisten in the darkness.

Miners pry the large stones out of the various vaults in which the stones are found. The tunnels in the side of the hill follow the lode of gems; miners must dig exploratory shafts to find where the gems extend, then widen the holes and reinforce them with timber so that they can prise one cluster at a time from the clutches of the earth. They then carry the clusters outside and place them in metal carts, which are wheeled to the facilities back at the camp. There, a young man washes and grades the rough gems in an outdoor workshop. The first of many gem graders, he dumps a cart of gems onto a wire mesh platform, sprays them down with a high-pressure hose, and quickly sepa- rates the good from the bad. Then, with a well-practiced technique, he gathers the good gems in a chute and dumps them into a bag. The bag joins dozens more just like it, to be eventually shipped down the river to Puerto Quijarro and then the M&M production facilities in Santa Cruz. There they’ll be cut and polished; then, in weeks or months, they’ll be in showrooms, in Santa Cruz or Brazil, possibly China, India, or the United States, a two-tone purple-and-yellow treasure snatched from the depths of the Bolivian wetlands, a product of nature, myth, and back-breaking labor.

From Bolivian Express.

On May 19, 2008, three young Norwegian women, Stina Brendemo Hagan, then 17 years old; Madeleine Rodriguez, then 20; and Christina Øygarden, then 18—along with Madeleine’s then 2-year-old daughter, Alicia—arrived at the Cochabamba airport to fly back to Norway after a three-week holiday in Bolivia. None of them made

their flight. Airport police found 22.5 kilograms of cocaine in the young women’s luggage. Instead of boarding an airplane for a long flight home, the young women found themselves facing up to 25 years in a Bolivian jail.

Madeleine and Stina live in the San Sebastian women’s prison in Cochabamba, a crumbling adobe structure facing a ramshackle park where young glue-sniffing kids sleep during the day. Inmates’ families line up in front of the prison gate every afternoon at 2, jostling in line, surrounded by plastic bags stuffed full of food and gifts to deliver to their loved ones. Shortly after 2:30pm, the steel door creaks open and the families shuffle into the prison. It’s easy to find Stina and Madeleine in the prison’s courtyard, where visitors mingle with prisoners amid a constant clamor of activity. It is here that vendors sell lunches, sodas, and beauty products, and inmates line up to use payphones; a woman speaks visitors’ names into a microphone, announcing to prisoners that they have guests; laundry lines and electrical cables hang helter-skelter, crisscrossing under orange and blue tarps that shield the courtyard from fierce sun; raw meat dries next to laundry, in preparation for charquekan, a traditional Bolivian dish.

Stina sticks out with her typically Scandinavian features—bright blond hair and pale white skin. She has curlicue bangs, coiffed just so, and the rest of her hair flows down her back and over her shoulders. Every day that we meet, she wears carefully applied makeup that accents her eyebrows and tints her cheeks. Madeleine, who has a Uruguayan father and a Norwegian mother, fits in a little better, although with her colorful clothes she’s much more fashionably dressed than the other women in the prison. She has a defined, thin face, and her curly dark brown hair is pulled back in a feisty ponytail set high on the back of her head.

When I first visited them in 2008, shortly after their arrests, Stina haunted the edge of the mass of women in the prison courtyard. She seemed nervous, suspicious of my intentions, and she didn’t easily smile or speak to me. I found myself struggling to talk to her, and silence filled much of our conversations. Now, however, Stina locks eyes with me whenever I visit; she’s calmer and more assertive. It’s as if prison has made her grow up, made her more at ease with herself.

And in a way it has: five months ago Stina gave birth to a baby boy. She’s also learned Spanish—and a bit of Quechua—in the past three years, and chats with the other inmates, who constantly approach her and ask to hold and play with her baby.

Madeleine, however, was always at ease. She has a confident demeanor, self-assured, almost cocky, which didn’t help her too much during her trial in 2009, when the prosecutors tried to portray her as the ringleader of an international drug ring. When I first met her, Madeleine was angry. She disobeyed the prison rules and found herself in solitary confinement several times after being caught with mobile phones—contraband in the eyes of the authorities. Now, however, she’s calmed down a bit, and even participates in prison life. She has a prison job—ironing laundry that’s dropped off by locals—and manages six other workers. She’s also quicker to smile when we sit at a plastic table in the courtyard and share a litre of soda while we talk.

Madeleine’s shock at being incarcerated has dulled, and while her separation from Alicia still saddens her, it’s gained a certain familiarity. Alicia stayed with her mother in prison for the first two weeks of imprisonment, after which her grandmother flew to Bolivia and brought her back to Norway. They now live in Lillestrom, a suburb 10 minutes outside of Oslo, where both Stina and Madeleine grew up. But Madeleine still dreams about her daughter all the time. “We used to drive around in my car”—a silver Golf Volkswagen—“and listen to R&B and hip-hop. We used to go fast! She’s still used to my driving, and when she rides with my mother now she always tells her to drive faster!”

Alicia, who’s now 5 years old, is also Stina’s niece. Madeleine and Stina have been good friends for nearly 10 years, and Madeleine had Alicia with Stina’s brother.

Both Madeleine and Stina have private rooms in the prison, which they were able to buy from the previous owners for about US$500 each. Madeleine’s room, which has a Norwegian flag hanging in front of the door, is decorated with dozens of pictures of Alicia. Other inmates, who aren’t from such relatively wealthy backgrounds, bunk six each to a room. When their husbands or boyfriends drop by, they must pay to rent out a room for conjugal visits.

Madeleine’s now engaged, to a 26-year-old Bolivian named Brian, who was introduced to her by a mutual friend on the outside. “He asked my friend if he knew any cute girls,” Madeleine says. Now Brian, who grew up in Virginia, visits her most days, bringing her lunch from the outside. “We’ve both had a lot of shit going on,” Madeleine says. (Brian served a two-year sentence in Cochabamba.) “One day we’ll be together [on the outside] with kids and jobs—we’ll have a life.”

Both Stina and Madeleine say they had no idea they had the cocaine in their luggage on that day in 2008 at the airport, claiming they were set up. “I was calm when [the airport police] went through our luggage, because I didn’t know [the cocaine] was there.” Even when the cocaine was found, says Madeleine, she thought she’d be quickly released, “because it wasn’t mine.” Madeleine says the police were polite and professional, although the prosecutor threatened to take Alicia away and place her in an orphanage. Madeleine didn’t yet know that it’s customary for children to live with their mothers in Bolivian prisons. “My biggest concern was Alicia,” she says.

Stina, Madeleine, and Christina spent two days in the airport police station, which was “disgusting,” they say; they weren’t allowed any phone calls for three days, although Madeleine was able to sneak off a text message to a friend after she realised they were in serious trouble and wouldn’t be making their flight home. Finally, Stina was able to call home. “My mom was in shock,” she says. While the young women languished in jail, Stina’s mom grew depressed, couldn’t sleep, and lost weight. Her grandmother cried when Stina phoned her. “It was very hard to talk to her,” Stina says.

Then, in February 2010, Christina, while out on bail, managed to obtain a copy of her passport (all three had to surrender their passports when they were arrested) and caught a plane to Norway. A small diplomatic crisis ensued, with the Bolivian government—and some vocal law-and-order types in Norway—demanding her return. The Norwegian government does not, however, have an extradition treaty with Bolivia. But Stina and Madeleine were relieved that Christina wasn’t around any more. While they were in jail together, Christina started to blame Madeleine for their incarceration, and isolated herself from the others. “Whenever her family came to visit they wouldn’t even talk to us,” Madeleine tells me.

In April 2010, Madeleine and Stina were found guilty of attempted drug trafficking. They were both sentenced to 13 years and four months. Then, in November last year, they appealed their sentences; the court reduced both to 10 years and eight months. “For the first year and a half, everything was really against me,” says Madeleine. “But with the appeal, that was the first time in two years that I had good news.” And Madeleine will probably qualify for another reduction in her sentence, due to her work in the laundry. Ironically, the prosecutors originally wanted Madeleine to serve 10 years longer than Stina; now Madeleine will most likely be released first.

I ask them how they cope with being locked up for so long, and what advice they’d give to other young women in their situation. “Go and shoot yourself,” Stina says before laughing. “No, I’m joking. Get visitors—don’t be alone! If you’re alone you’re going to go crazy.” But she also cautions not to trust anyone on the inside. “When you are sad or when you are down, you can’t trust anyone to keep a secret.” Madeleine says that she’s learned to be patient, and that “in every situation there’s something good. I’ve got another point of view in life. I’ve learned how people live in poor countries.” And she takes a philosophical view to get her through the seemingly endless days ahead in the same place: “In the end, every- thing is OK. And if it’s not OK, it’s not the end.”

For now, though, both Stina and Madeleine while away their days in the San Sebastian prison. Madeleine works from 7am to noon every day, and evenings when there’s extra work. They watch DVDs in Stina’s room at night, and vora-ciously read books that visitors—including people from the Norwegian consulate in La Paz and the small Norwegian community in Cochabamba—bring them. In the end, though, both Madeleine and Stina struggle to cope with being in jail. Or, as Madeleine puts it, “It’s not about being in jail, it’s about being alone. The more time you have, the more alone you feel.” Sometimes, Stina says, she dreams about being home. “I dream about freedom, in Norway, and about my grandma and Alicia, my niece.” But that happiness is elusive upon waking. “It’s still tough, every day. I’m never really happy. There’s always the fact of being in jail.”

Both Madeleine and Stina would welcome any travelers who might want to visit them.

A little of what we’ve been up to:

• Pilcomayo River Drying Out; Effects Felt in Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina
• Evo Asks for Media Election Restrictions to Be Changed
• Garzón Declines Appointment to Bolivian Sea Claim Team
• Beni Gov. and Former Prefect Under House Arrest for Corruption

Jean Friedman-Rudovsky has an excellent exposé in The Broward–Palm Beach New Times of Walmart’s Love, Earth jewelry line, which purports to be “affordable, quality products that have less impact on communities and the environment.” Friedman-Rudovsky finds, though, that Walmart’s Bolivian supplier, Aurafin, regularly pays less than minimum wage to its workers and fires employees who try to unionize. It’s an eye-opening article that looks at the relationships between the large retailer and the many companies that supply it, the duplicitous claims that mislead unwitting consumers with vague promises of “sustainability” and “fair trade,” and how companies indemnify themselves through the use of subcontractors.

And yes, El Gav is back.

Tags: el alto, greenwashing, walmart

From a press release this afternoon:

The Pro-Santa Cruz Committee condemns and rejects the political persecution against Santa Cruz civic leaders.

Again the central government carries out state terrorism through the subservience of the justice system to the government.

Because of this, the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee condemns and rejects political persecutions and human-rights violations in Bolivia.

We sympathize with former civic president Branko Marinkovic and the first vice president of the committee, Guido Nayar, who are being persecuted by the judicial officers of the government.

The Pro-Santa Cruz Committee calls for and demands a fair, impartial, and transparent trial that respects the natural jurisdiction, rights, and guarantees of persons, and that the investigation also include the brother of vice president, the Venezuelan pilots, the alleged key witnesses, Captain Andrade, M. Clavijo, and the quantity of videos that demonstrate manipulation against Santa Cruz.

Why haven’t the forensic reports of international experts been taken?

Where are the key witnesses? Where are the Venezuelan pilots that were in the hotel?

Where is Mr. Clavijo, who was a government functionary?

There is much evidence that the participation of the government and prosecutor Sosa are distorting the truth for political gain.

The Pro-Santa Cruz Committee, civic institutions, and the Human Rights Foundation of Bolivia will take actions that this case warrants in order to defend against the continuing political persecution.

Ïf the government wants an uproar, the committee will be there in order to defend Santa Cruz leaders and the Bolivian people.

My translation.

Comunicado de Prensa 02.02.10
Comité pro Santa Cruz

El Comité pro Santa Cruz condena y rechaza la persecución política contra los líderes cívicos cruceños

Nuevamente el gobierno central ejecutando un terrorismo de Estado a través de los operadores de justicia serviles a este gobierno.

Por esta razón, el Comité pro Santa Cruz condena y rechaza las persecuciones política y las violaciones a los Derechos Humanos en Bolivia.

Nos solidarizamos con el ex presidente cívico Branko Marinkovic y el primer vicepresidente del Comité, Guido Náyar, que están siendo perseguidos por los operadores judiciales del gobierno.

El Comité pro Santa Cruz exige y demanda un juicio justo, imparcial y transparente, donde se respete la jurisdicción natural, los derechos y garantías de las personas, y que la investigación también incluya al hermano del vicepresidente, a los pilotos venezolanos, a los supuestos testigos claves, al capitán Andrade, al señor Clavijo y la cantidad de videos, que demuestran la manipulación contra Santa Cruz.

¿Por qué no se toma en cuenta los informes forenses que han hecho peritos internacionales?

¿Dónde están los testigos claves?. ¿Dónde están los pilotos venezolanos que estaban en el hotel?.

¿Dónde está el señor Clavijo?, que era funcionario del gobierno.

Hay muchas evidencias de la participación del gobierno y el fiscal Sosa está distorsionando la verdad, sólo con un afán político.

El Comité pro Santa Cruz, la institucionalidad cívica y la Fundación de Derechos Humanos de Bolivia asumirán las acciones que el caso amerite a fin de evitar que la persecución política continúe.

“Si el gobierno quiere bochi, ahí estará el Comité, para defender a los líderes cruceños y el pueblo boliviano”.

Former head of the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee Branko Marinkovic was formally accused by prosecutor Marcelo Soza of financing the alleged terrorist cell that was broken up by Bolivian police last year, according to El Día. The prosecutor is linking Marinkovic, Santa Cruz prefect Rubén Costas, and cattle rancher Guido Náyar in the plot to assassinate president Morales and destabilize Bolivia, which, according to some accounts, would help the lowland departments either secede or form a quasi-independent state outside of La Paz’s grasp.
Marinkovic’s lawyer, Erick Feifert, says the charges violate due process on constitutional grounds.

We’re back! It’s been a busy month, and there’s a lot of catch-up to do.

Let’s start with an excellent report from the Bolivia Information Forum, which has a new bulletin out about the re-inauguration of Bolivian President Evo Morales. The BIF not only has a good rundown of the official ceremony–held in the ruins of the pre-Inca city of Tiwanaku–but also delves into the new makeup of the Bolivian legislature, of which Morales’s MAS party has a commanding majority. (MAS even won big in the lowland regions, which goes to show how much the opposition has been deflated in the last year.) Other interesting facts gleaned from the BIF report: Germán Antelo, former head of the Comité Pro-Santa Cruz, gains a seat on the assembly, and whipping boy to the opposition Jaun Ramón Quintana is out as Morales’s cabinet as minister of the president. (Quintana was accused by the opposition as somehow manufacturing the crisis and massacre of campesinos in Pando department in September 2008; could Morales be trying to placate the opposition with this move?)

There a lot more in the report, and all Bolivia-watchers should read it.

Yesterday a powerful earthquake hit Haiti, devastating its capital, Port-au-Prince. Reports–the ones that are getting out, anyway, as most communications are cut off–are pretty bleak. Haiti’s had a spat of natural disasters lately, which has already tested its resilience, and this powerful earthquake is just brutal.

Via the Brooklynite on Ice, who suggests that concerned people donate to Oxfam or the Lambi Fund, here’s a Twitpic photo stream of the devastation. Frightening, scary stuff.

The AP (via NYT) presents a story today about the Guarani in the Bolivian lowlands, who are finally getting lifted out of serfdom by Evo Morales’s policy of appropriating fallow or unproductive land–or land from fugitive landowners and rich American expats–and redistributing it to poor indigenous groups. Great read, great reporting. Kudos to the AP on this one.

Ousted Cochabamba prefect and failed Bolivian presidential candidate Manfred Reyes Villa is apparently stateside, as a fugitive from Bolivian justice, which is looking into how the onetime army officer and bodyguard is now a very, very rich man (hint: by steering government funds into his pockets).

Also: Real Coca Cola (or Colla) will be available in 2010!