After sleeping in the next morning until about noon, Casey, Steph, Heather and I ventured out of the apartment to get breakfast. As we walked around the main plaza looking for salteñas, we noticed that people were beginning to shout and run towards a corner of the plaza. I was concerned to say the least, and we thought better about going further into the center. As a last thought though, I asked a man standing on the corner why people were running. He answered, ¨Su Lider, Su Lider esta aqui.¨ ¨Who though, who is their leader¨ I asked, ¨Who is here?¨ ¨Their president, Evo,¨ he responded and smiled a little, laughing that i hadn´t known.
All five of us had heard the answer and our response was the same as the the campesinos (Bolivians from the country side who constitute Evo´s biggest supporters), we ran towards the crowd! I stood on the tips of my toes in the crowd, looking towards all the ruckus, and we chanted along with everyone else, ¨Evo, Evo!¨ hoping to catch a glimpse of him. After a few minutes of not being able to see anything though the crowd started to lose interest, and we began walking out of the plaza, only to be caught up in the sudden renewed movement of the parade of the president and his officials! People were immediately on all sides of us, pushing and pulling to get close and we held on to one another trying to keep our cool. We saw the vice president walk past us suddenly there was a band playing full blast right behind us, almost running over our feet. Chanting and walking incredibly fast the crowd pushed us along and i wondered about what people thought when they saw us...the five gringitas in the middle of this campesino parade. Finally my rising fear was quelled when we were able to fight our way out of the crowd onto the sidelines. In the middle of it all, i had realized i was in the middle of history, in a snapshot of the photographs i see. I felt like a fraud, like a ridiculously large an clearly absurd fly watching the events from the middle of it all, instead of on the wall like i should be. But it was beautiful and strange to see and touch the pulse of life so closely.
Don´t worry, by the time i´d returned to the apartment the parade had already started again, at 2:30 and continued on throughout the evening. I had learned my lesson and left as soon as possible, going to meet with a guy, Carlos, who i had asked for help on finding the instructions of how to grow some of the indiginous plants here in Bolivia. He tried the percentile crap again, fake facts all sounding so knowledgable and made up. But after that, the remainder of our meeting went nice enough, and after trying to tell me i should go home with him to get books and failing, we agreed to meet again in a few days at a cafe so he could lend them to me.
We celebrated again that night along with the rest of Cochabamba, but Casey and I decided to leave early (yes that means 1am) and get some real rest. It was lovely, and the parade on Saturday didn´t start until the afternoon, and only lasted an hour. I was happy i could have cried. The end of an era.
The lesson i have gleaned from all this?
A day without parades is a day filled with peace and happiness.
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