La Paz, Bolivia: A Wealth of Potential

La Paz is striking for its contrasts and its colors: set in a stunning but challenging landscape, it is a city surrounded by rich natural resources, but inhabited by a largely impoverished populace.

Mirrored in the glassy facades of well-to-do downtown buildings are ramshackle adobe brick homes that cling to surrounding canyon walls.  La Paz is set in a deep basin ringed by the Cordillera Real mountain range: at over 13,000 feet in elevation, it is one of the highest altitude cities in the world.  La Paz´s correspondingly harsh climate leads wealthier inhabitants to claim the canyon´s basin as their home, while less prosperous homes scale the hillsides.  Sprawling outward from the top of the bowl, El Alto – La Paz´s ugly stepsister – teems with traffic, markets, mud brick homes, and garbage.  

A majority of the city appears to be engaged in informal commercial activity.  Markets bustle, selling everything from local phone calls, to freshly squeezed orange juice, black market electronics, and (more exotic) llama fetuses, which have religious and ceremonial purposes.  At any point in time, we were within smelling distance of street food, and we awoke each morning to the aroma of beef and chicken frying in vendors´vats below.  Young boys shine shoes to earn cash; they wear ski masks while doing so, presumably to keep their identities concealed.  These costumes pale in comparison to those of Cholas, however; these women of Aymara and Quechua descent wear traditional costumes of full, brightly-colored skirts and bowler hats. 

Outside the city, deposits of gold and tin historically have been an economic mainstay. Today, natural gas and lithium holdings speak of economic promise: Bolivia boasts the second largest natural gas reserves in South America and holds over 50% of the world´s known lithium deposits.  The country´s mountain ranges, jungles, Lake Titicaca, and Salar de Uyuni (a striking salt flat) draw tourist dollars, as well.  

Despite an abundance of natural resources and rampant captialism, a majority of Bolivia´s inhabitants are poor: average annual income is only $900 USD, relegating over 60% of the population to lives below the poverty line. 

The lack of specialization in goods produced and sold no doubt results in their commoditization, which in turn leads to their low market value.  Higher levels of specialization require a well-educated workforce.  Surely, education is a prerequisite for economic development. 

However, poverty´s causes are more complex and difficult than this formula suggests, and in the face of it, I sense injustice, without clear solutions.  These are the limits of capitalism – the reality that one´s birthplace is a greater determinant of opportunity than so many other factors, including our most cherished American ideals of hard work and an entrepreneurial spirit.