LAND OF CONTRASTS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11832, 13 January 1933, Page 3

LAND OF CONTRASTS

STRANGE-AND SPECTACULAR! BOLIVIA.

THREE SEPARATE - ZONES... '

Ono of-the most spectacular cquti* tries in the world is Bolivia. It is do Abided itito three sharply contrasting iaOiies. The *‘ultiplano,” .from 12,000 to 14,000 foot* above sea level; is almost, without vegeta tioili Many Of its inhabitants', etttt never liavo seen a tree (writes Rosita: Forbes, in the Lon don Daily Telegraph. It is a table-land of brilliantly colored rocks split into winged shapes., .La Paz, the!capital, lies in a hollow of this “lunar” plateau, surrounded by a painted forest of cliffs and dominated by the snow of .Illimani. Yet within, six hours ij is possible to cross the snow line, pass through a cleft .walled with icicles, and drop down first by lorry and then ou mulehack, to the sub-tropical Yungas.. These are the most beautiful of the many villages running; eastwards, which; constitute the second and most • fertile zone-ol- Bolivia. Most-of them begin as crevices between 1500 ft cliffs, completely barren. They . widen as they descend. Vegetation increases until, at COO feet the land is preposterously fertile.

In the Yungas tobacco grows wild, Coffee trees spread high across the mule tracks. Ferns and giant maidenhair, poinsettias, and bougainvillea are weeds which threaten the terraces of cocoa. Oranges run riot. There are forests of oranges and whole hillsides of ban as. Among them the pinkwashed mud huts of the Indians are so deeply sunk that only the thatch is visible.

A road thrugli the Yungas, is under construction, but generally in the dry season the river beds of the astern watershed are the highways of traffic, and the only link between the “altiplauo” and the third zone. This is low-lying and tropical. Ti consists of plains, Brnz’lian in character called “luncras": of the rubber swamps of the Beni, and of the forests or scrub of the disputed Chaco.

Bolivia is supposed to have a population of approximately 3.000,000. of which 00 per cent, are Indians, anything lit) to 30 per cent, are Cholos of m’xed Indian and Spanish blood, and the remainder, a bare 300.000, including foreigners, are whites. Here, therefore, is a country approximately in size to a third of Europe, not only governed, but financed, by one-tenth of its population. At present the Indians are too quiet and possibly too cowed a peop’e to require more than a mininum of rights, providing they are. left alone. Some of them have evolved a ' simple typo of communism. The land in such case belongs to a group, who annually elect a chief. Ibis eacimie collects taxes and does all the buying and selling on behalf of the community, who sli-n-e labor and profit. When the Indian’s family is over’arge lie is apt to sell a child for a few shillings to work ; n some hettorelass household until it is grown up and realizes that it need not' labor without wages. Foui’ or fire thousand Indians are conscripted every year. They return to ithe ; r villages with idea, of disolid in 0 and force. When they consider themselves ill-treated by tho -. Cliolo fanners they refuse to work. Sometimos they return on their landlord, and blood flows frcolv, clrefly Indian blood, for thev are shot down irrespective of riglit or wrong by hastilysummoned troops. Unbmited is having a peculiar effect on the race. Tt is a leaf which contains o«v*aino. Mixed with a plug of cactus ash. it makes a bulge in every Indians cheek; Cocoa slows the action of the heart at an excessive altitude, and Bolivian Tnd'ans appear to he able to jog along all day ever 1600 ft passes with no other nourishment than the plug distorting their cheeks. ‘

In the Middle Ages the Spanish took 500,000,000 doubloons out of the' 5000 mouths of Pottosi’s metal mountain. During our generation a section of Bolivia became rich on two successive booms—first silver and then tin. Even now landowners say “Come and see my mountain, instead, of “I want to show -you my farm.” ' Bolivia is inclined to look in the wrong direction. Certainly slio needs a seaport. . South America could put every other agricultural zone out of action if she "faced tho rest of the world ,as a federation instead of a series of blind-ly-compctitivc units.