People still think I'm English

Because of the beard, apparently. Especially Europeans associate English people with beards. Which is funny, because no where in my mental filing cabinet have I stored a picture of a bearded English guy. Unless he's a Muslim immigrant, maybe. Se la vie, I suppse.

So let me explain Latin time: bascially, it's the concept that an event - such as a meeting - will happen anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour after it's scheduled. It's particularly bad in Bolivia, I think. I was supposed to have a 9am interview today, set up by Nelson (Nelson works in the MAS building; to what capacity I'm not sure. "Errand boy" or something, near as I can tell). So Martijn and I were supposed to meet him at 8:45 outside the congress building. For starters, I was late, because my mini got caught in wicked traffic on the hill up to the governmental plaza: this light was letting two cars through at a time, with a 30 or 40 second wait, and I was maybe 20 cars back. So I got out and was RUNNING up this hill (and La Paz is at 10.5K feet, remember) with all my camera gear, cursing because it was almost 9! Nelson had kept telling me to "have my batteries charged and get ready to run from interview to interview" because the government folk are real busy and I was only going to get 20 minutes or so with each person. But what ended up happening was I got to the square (right at 9), where Martijn was waiting but Nelson was nowhere to be seen.

So we call him, and about 15 minutes later he comes out. We go to enter the building, where I have to leave my passport, get my bag x-rayed, go through the metal detector, and register my camera (apparently to make sure it leaves the building again). Then we get led into a large conference room that also doubles as desks or offices for a couple of women, who don't look to be doing more than cutting out paper hands with their kids. Everyone is dressed informally; I guess when the president goes around in a jumper or campesino clothing no one wears suits anymore!
After Nelson introduces us to the people in the "office," we get sat down, and are sitting for a while when a guy comes and starts talking to us. He's explaining the privatization process of the 90's, and the nationalization process today, and about how the idea is to re-nationalize all of the industries that were sold off in the 90's, like telecommunications, electricity, state airline, etc. I got real excited at first, because I thought maybe he was a senator's aid or something, and I was getting an inside look at future policy decisions. But it turns out he's a professor who, while employed by MAS, is more of an outside consultant. On the record, the MAS folks say expropriation is over.

So after about an hour and a half of waiting, we get taken upstairs to the office of Senator Antonio Peredo, where we wait for half an hour more in a smaller room with less comfortable chairs (can we go back downstairs?). Finally; I get to talk to the senator, a man in his late 50's who ran for vice-president in 2003. I only got 15 minutes with him, but he was pretty direct with his answers (I had a special list of extremely paired-down questions for these interviews). All the while, he would smile large and lean back in his chair when I asked a confrontational question, like "was this really a nationalization?" or "haven't you chased away foreign investors by expropriating mineral facilities in Bolivia?" I wasn't sure if he was pleased with my approach, or perhaps showing some sort of paternal displeasure. I've been told he's a very left-leaning political figure - maybe he's tired of the same old accusations. Especially since I was ushered out after only 15 minutes, I wasn't sure if he was busy or just didn't like some 20-something white boy from the States trying to insinuate how to run his country. Or maybe both.
After the senator, I spoke with the Chief of Deputies Gustavo Torrico. I got about 45 minutes with him, and we discussed more at length the recent expropriations of mineral processing facilities in Bolivia. 45 minutes was longer than I expected, and I had actually geared my questioning towards a much shorter interview, and there was a point where I was worried he was going to stop talking and I was going to be at a loss! Fortunately, I had saved my open-ended question, "why did Bolivia need to nationalize its gas?" which was easy for him to talk about for 10 minutes before I think he was ready for lunch.

I had been given the impression that I would have two back-to-back 20 minute interviews, and would be out of there by 10am. But after more than four hours, I had an hour of interview footage. This is Latin time. What's crazy to me is to think about how slow this must make everything, just for the sake that no one ever comes on time. I mean, if I had 20 minutes with a US senator, you can bet that it would be those 20 minutes or no minutes, because the 20 minutes before and after are already full (even if the next appointment is tee-time). Maybe part of it is because I'm a low priority, and they feel like they can get other stuff out of the way (maybe I need to start telling people I'm from the New York Times, and they'd better be on time with me because I have a camera and light crew scheduled). But even if that's true, there has to be a lot of sloppy time-keeping involved.

Supposedly I'll be getting the rest of my interviews, plus the Minister of Hydrocarbons, on Monday and Tuesday next week. Man, if Nelson can get me the Minister, I'll have to buy him a cake or something.

But this felt good today; it made me feel like I'm back in the game - and also made me realize how lazy I'd been, moping around and waiting, and forgetting that I wanted to do stuff like go up to El Alto and just talk to people on the street about Evo and gas and stuff. And I need to get my interviews burned to discs and find someone to translate them, and try and interview someone from Apex mining, and now I'm thinking about doing something (or using someone Else's work) to talk about water privatization in Cocha to show why Bolivians distrust private companies and multinationals in particular...

busy busy busy