barrio flores

Chapare in Cochabamba, originally uploaded by e avila.

I have been discovering some of my photographs from my time traversing through South America at various times during this decade. Long before I bought my first digital camera, I used what they called a “regular camera”. As a result, there are no digital files to upload, but had to rely on a scanner.

Three years ago, I had taken a gig as a document translator for an alternative development organization that worked in the Chapare. Even though I had the luxury of working from my home in my pijama, they allowed me to tag along for a week at their homebase of Chimore.

My primary host was a young economist named Paola, whose main job was to inventory the family crops, to gain an assessment of the value of potential income. Families lived kilometers apart, while others lived in tightly knit villages. The poverty that I saw was similar to places that I visited on the Altiplano. Even though many families had excess of fruit, which had relatively little market, they had not much else. As a result, we would spend from sun-up to sun-down, trying to collect some quantifiable data.

However, Paola did not particularly like to drive and handed over the wheel to me of the NGO’s vagoneta. With a small selection of cassette tapes in the glove compartment (there was no radio signals out there), we were out for eight hours at a time. I became well acquainted with the Chilean singer Alberto Plaza, which was the best musical selection in the car. Whenever I hear one of his songs, it transports me back to those backroads of the Chapare.

We had stopped along the road because we had crossed another of the NGOs economists and needed to share some information. I snapped this photo and was amazed at the colors that resulted. I swear it is non-Photoshopped and really captures the tranquility of the Chapare, in spite of the mala fama that the area holds.