A TRIP TO ARGENTINA

A TRIP TO ARGENTINA

August 25 1994

On Monday August 21st. we set out on what was to be an overland journey to Argentina where Robert was to look at machinery for the  dairy plant and do some other business.  We took our own car because it is more comfortable and because we were travelling with the dogs.  The journey to Santa Cruz was uneventful and Robert went off to do business there on Monday afternoon while I took the dogs to the vet to get their vaccinations up to date and also to get an international travel certificate.

On Tuesday morning we started off fairly early.  We had been told that we had to take the old Cochabamba road for 13 Kms. and then turn left.  Getting about in Bolivia is no mean feat because, apart from the odd fluke now and again, there are no road signs whatsoever.  The turn-off was between two checkpoints (there are plenty of those).  We passed one checkpoint and the only turnoff we could see on the left was a dirt track, so we carried on.  Shortly we came to the next checkpoint where we were informed that the main road to Argentina was indeed the dirt track which we had just passed, so we turned around and made our way back.

The dirt track was dry and sandy and grew more so as we went on, to the extent that on some stretches we were driving over veritable sand dunes where the sand reached up to the car axles.The vegetation was arid and sparse, in sharp contrast to the exuberance of the Chapare.  I think there may once have been exuberant vegetation here too because, from time to time, great dead trunks with lianas entwined about them stood in splendid isolation amid the low scrub, but the trees had no doubt been cut down to make way for cattle farming and this dry panorama is the result.  Dead, dry, and deadly!  

We carried on.  Not only was the countryside arid and sad, but the people and even the animals too. Nothing happened.  Time stood still.  The dogs lay unmoving.  The donkeys hung their heads. This surely is pure misery: ramshackle wattle habitations; desolate poverty; no water; no electricity; no nothing ....... only fruitless striving and barren bleakness.  In comparison to this horror the people in the Chapare are kings and queens.  They may be poor. They may have as little as these other people, but they are surrounded by a natural paradise which, in some measure, counteracts the misery.  

When you think the road can get no worse - it does just that.  If driving on the Chapare roads is like riding in an Irish jaunting car, this is like hanging on for grim life (or death) to a bucking bronco.  I thought I had a bad back, but this trip must surely have fixed it - or finished it.  The "road" which is unsurfaced and full of potholes is a rally track second to none.  You have to weave around to find the spot with the fewest holes and where the car wheels will not sink in and never come out.  When it rains it must be absolutely impassable, because the sand will turn to runny mud and it will be like a skating rink.  We carried on.


We stopped and asked a lorry driver what the road was like further on.  He replied that for another hour and a half it would be the same or worse and then it would improve.  We carried on.  After an hour and a half we came to an asphalted stretch which lasted for about a mile.  We then had to be diverted into a dry river bed about a mile wide where the wheels sank deep into the ruts and the sand mound in the middle rubbed against the undercarriage of the car, which, you must remember, is a high level four-wheel drive. This was Río Seco (Dry River). After the river bed there was another stretch of asphalt along which we sped for some miles thinking that this was the end of the jogging and jumping.

Then , just as suddenly as it had begun, the asphalt came to an end.  The "road" turned into a settlement.  A clutch of goats lay in the shade of a low building on the first corner on the right as we turned in.  After that building there was an embryonic "square".  The left side of the road was lined with ramshackle, tumble-down wooden or wattle houses. In all, the street would be about 100 yards long.  A bus stood at the one end opposite the goats loaded up with bundles on the roof and a group of men were talking to the driver.  Standing in all its incongruity in the middle of the "square" was a satellite dish - bright and shiny and proud and new - amid the dusty, sandy, sleepy panorama.

The street was cut off by a check-point.  The police control, yet another tumble-down edifice painted a sad shade of pale green, stood at the end of the "square".  The man operating the checkpoint languished in a hammock which swung to and fro like something out of a Spaghetti western.  He did not rise.  Robert got out of the car.  He rose and came lurching forward in a state of total inebriation.  To the police post.  Yes, this is the road to Argentina.  But how does it continue?  The road stops here.  Yes, just turn right and then left over the bridge.

An impressive bridge spanned the river bed.  The Río Grande.  We took to the bridge, which at that moment was being crossed by a load of schoolchildren going home for lunch.  The bridge is the railway bridge!  Once we had started to cross it, there was no turning back.  It creaked.  It groaned.  It seemed to sway. The water seemed an awful long way down.  Half the slats were missing and huge nails stuck up in greedy anticipation of perforating a tyre.  

With a sigh of relief we reached the end.  Then to our horror we saw that the road on the other side was a continuation of the first part of the journey - no asphalt, just sand and rocks and stones.  At that point Robert turned the car around and we returned to Santa Cruz.  It had taken four and a half hours to travel 100Kms.  

This was Camiri, the place where Che Guevara was assassinated.  What a waste.  What a wasteland.  And what utter uselessness.  A sadder place to end one's days I have never seen.

If it served any purpose at all, this abortive trip showed me why Che Guevara's revolution did not prosper in Bolivia.  It never could.  Despite the abject poverty, the place he chose could never be the birthplace of a revolution.  Peasants are notoriously conservative everywhere, but peasants living in these conditions, scattered throughout the countryside and scraping a subsistence from the soil, every man for himself, could never agglutinate to form a united front or to struggle for a common good.  Just filling their own bellies is too hard a task.  If he had gone to the mining areas he might have stood a chance, but this was always a non-starter.  He did not do his homework and the effort was doomed to failure even before it got under way.


Some days later Robert made the trip to Argentina by plane.  He thought it was a magnificent country with a natural potential greater than any country he has visited so far.  The people are highly educated and he was most impressed.  He spent most time in Rosario that stands on the wet pampa on the banks of the River Paraná which, at that particular point, is 12 Kms. wide.  The city, which grew up because this was a natural stopping off point for people travelling across the pampa, is quite magnificent with beautiful buildings of many different architectural styles, because people from 40 different nationalities helped build the city  The British stamp is also there because they built the railways in Argentina and there is a fairly large Irish contingent too.  The only thing wrong with Argentina is its government which is implementing World Bank neo-liberal economic policies which are bringing the country to its knees.  Rosario also has huge parks which are very beautiful.  Anyway, Robert was most impressed with Argentina.