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DAVID ATKINSON The following articles are copyright to DAVID ATKINSON, and may not be reproduced in any form without his consent in writing. His image reigns across Latin America from T-shirts to street murals. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre described him as "the most complete man of our age" and, as of this summer, he is the star of the hit film, The Motorcycle Diaries, which traces a journey across Latin America by two idealistic young medical students in 1951. He is, of course, the asthmatic Argentinean doctor turned revolutionary hero, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, aka Che. For the people of La Higuera, the remote pueblo in Bolivia's eastern lowlands where Che was executed by Bolivian troops on October 9, 1967, his presence is ubiquitous along the dusty main drag. The local people have guarded their memories of Che's final days closely over the years. But all that will change on October 8 this year when a new tourism initiative brings the first international tourists to this Bolivian backwater located well off Latin America's traditional gringo trail. The opening of Bolivia's new Che Guevara Trail represents one of the largest ever initiatives to bolster the country's beleaguered tourism industry. It couldn't be more needed. The country has been hit by strikes, blockades and protests since social unrest brought chaos to travel itineraries in October last year. Last autumn, after a popular uprising, the Bolivian president, Sanchez de Lozada, was unceremoniously dumped and images of violent riots were broadcast around the globe. In subsequent months, the once-busy traveller cafes of La Paz and Sucre were near deserted. In a country where 14.4 % of people live on one dollar per day or less, the effect on livelihoods was devastating. The Bolivian Ministry of Tourism hopes this new initiative will herald a major change in fortune. A £340,000, 36-month project, part financed by the by the British government's Department for International Development (DFID), the project has been managed by CARE Bolivia, the local branch of the international NGO CARE International. The organisers sought the support of Che's daughter in Cuba to rubber-stamp the initiative. "The objective is not to exploit Che's name but to help local families through the creation of small-scale, tourist-based enterprises as a spin-off to the project," explains Jacqueline Peña y Lillo, project manager for CARE Bolivia. "We have been working since 2001 to oversee the improvement of the tourism infrastructure along the trail, with the aim that 500 Guarani families living along the route will directly benefit from the influx of tourism." In this respect the project is relatively unique for Bolivia. By fostering tourism based around the draw of the Che legend, it will specifically generate new income for the indigenous community in what is one of the poorest rural areas of Bolivia. Local families are being employment in new cultural projects, improving the services available to tourists and as official Che trail guides. As the project grows, CARE Bolivia aims to hand over its management entirely to the local community. One such beneficiary is Juan-Pablo Escobar. One of the newly-assigned official Che guides, Juan-Pablo formerly worked as a thatcher in La Higuera and supported his young family on a meager income. Now, as well as receiving a fee for guiding, some of his salary will be pumped back into local community projects to raise the overall standard of living across the village. "I can't help thinking that, if Che had succeeded in launching the social revolution he was planning for Bolivia, perhaps we would be a better country today," says Juan Pablo, sheltering from the midday sun in the central plaza. With that he leads me down a dirt track to hut, where a small door marked 'Museo Historico del Che' opens onto one of the trail's new cultural attractions, a tiny but comprehensive treasure throve of photos, old newspaper cuttings and Che memorabilia. Spreading across seven dusty, remote Bolivian municipalities, there are, in effect, three routes through Che country, which retrace the guerrilla fighter's last journeys – as documented in Che's final tome, The Bolivian Dairies (published 28 October, 2004 by Pimlico, priced at £8.99). Of the three, the northern trail that runs from Santa Cruz via Samaipata, where the sacred rock of El Fuerte marks one of Bolivia's most famous Inca sites, and onto Vallegrande, before terminating in La Higuera, is the most rewarding for Che pilgrims. Tour operators in Santa Cruz will arrange three to seven-day itineraries, or independent travellers can throw themselves at the mercy of Bolivia's bus network as far as Vallegrande, after which a jeep is required; the road is completely inaccessible during rainy season (December to March). Visitors are encouraged to act responsibly while travelling along the trail, respecting the natural environment and making use of local facilities along en route. By frequenting local eateries and places to stay between Santa Cruz and La Higuera, and by taking locally arranged tours that employ official Che guides, tourism activities will provide a vital boost to the local economy that would not normally filter down to local people. Che had come to Bolivia in 1966 to start a social revolution. Instead of liberating the rural underclass, however, he was betrayed and, after being wounded in a gun battle, he was captured and held prisoner in the schoolhouse at La Higuera. His lifeless body was taken the next day to a hospital in nearby Vallegrande, where his corpse was paraded before the world's media. The bodies of Che and his combatants were secretly dumped in unmarked graves in 1967; his corpse was only unearthed and returned to Cuba in 1997. Under the remit of the project, the tomb is to be converted into a Che museum with photos and memorabilia. Today La Higuera is dominated by a large bust of Che, erected in 1997 to mark the 30th anniversary of his death. But the schoolhouse remains virtually unchanged from the fateful day of his capture. Except, that is, for a burgeoning collection of revolutionary graffiti, daubed like blood stains across the walls and with tributes from across the globe. Like Jim Morrison's grave in Paris' Père Lachaise Cemetery, the tiny building is becoming a site of international pilgrimage. "I'd heard that the soldiers had captured a dangerous guerrilla," remembers Julia Cortes, who was a 19-year-old trainee teacher at the schoolhouse on the day that Che was held captive. Still living close by in La Higuera, she remains one of the last people to see him alive. "When I met him, he struck me as a person blessed with great charisma and intelligence," she says. "I brought him soup and we talked; he was very polite and respectful to me. Not at all dangerous." As the sun blisters the scrubland and roaming mules seek shade under looming cacti, I soak up the silence and spend a few moments reading the graffiti. As I make to leave, one particular inscription catches my eye on the building's sun-bleached faÁade. It reads: "Through this door one man walked out to eternity." More from: www.rutadelche.com www.carebolivia.org It's not often you see the Japanese loose it. From the passive tolerance of the battalions of stony-faced salarymen riding the Yamanote line in Identikit charcoal suits, to the tsunami of so-called ëoffice ladies' washing through the coffee shops of Tokyo's Shibuya district each lunchtime in matching sensible two-piece ensembles, it's hard to imagine anything rocking the status quo. Harder still, in the face of such group conformity, to conceive of a mass display of public emotion. In a country where the whole national identity is built around a strict code of social etiquette, only Japanese matsuri (festivals) offer a rare glimpse of real life behind Japan's aloof collective façade. And none more so than the bi-annual Osore Taisai festival, one of the most bizarre witchcraft festivals in Asia. Here, half way up Mount Osore, a barren volcanic peak in remote Aomori prefecture, people are giving free reign to their emotions: wailing to the right of me, gnashing of teeth to the left. Given the eerie remoteness of the location and the prevailing atmosphere of melancholy, a plague of locusts could descend upon us right now and nobody would even bat an eyelid. Mount Osore (the very name itself means 'fear' or 'dread') is, to the Japanese, an earthly incarnation of Buddhist purgatory. Considered one of the three most scared peaks in Japan, it is a site of ultimate pilgrimage for superstitious Japanese. Whether you're a believer or not, it's certainly one of the most eerily atmospheric places in a desperately overcrowded island. Ravens cast a murderous black wingspan shadow over the scores of tiny shrines adorned with children's toys, while statues of the guardian deity Jizo peer through clouds of hissing sulphurous vapour to overlook the craggy sulphur-strewn landscape. Each July and October visitors arrive by the coach load from Aomori and Hachinohe, the main towns of Japan's far northern Tohoku region, seeking to help the poor, lost souls of their deceased relatives with their underworld penance. They add stones to the cairns that litter the mountain while bright pinwheels commemorating the souls of children killed in tragic circumstances spin in the light summer breeze. In central Tokyo, especially among the snakepits of the notorious Roppongi nightlife district favoured by foreigners for its odour of strong beer and cheap perfume, it's easy to forget that the Japanese still hold their spirituality very dear. Here, though, in the rural heartland of Japan's long-forgotten agrarian economy, mysticism and folk religion traditions still have a powerful hold. They also serve as major source of revenue in one of Japan's poorest regions. As the festival starts, the grounds of the Osore-san Bodai-ji temple come to life as groups of itako (mediums), wizened, blind old crones with the gift of vision into the afterlife, congregate in makeshift huts outside the temple. They come to offer their services to grieving families in mediating with the restless souls of the dead – for a fee of course. It's an elaborate show with reciting Buddhist sutras and rattling rosary beads all part of the histrionics in return for your Y3,000. One of these old maids, Setsu-san, is renowned for giving particularly good séance and, as such, attracts the longest queue of pilgrims snaking across the sun-blanched temple grounds. Waiting up to eight hours for a private audience and a chance to contact the dead, some meditate silently while others grieve openly. Aoyama Setsu is younger than most of the itako and distinguished by a shock of bright purple hair. She was blinded, according to local legend, after attempting to dye her hair as a teenager. Having lost the use of her eyes, she then miraculously discovered she had the power to commune with the dead. Doris Stokes would no doubt have been proud. As the next in line hands over his money, she starts to chant, eyes rolling back in their sockets as she begins to invoke the spirits. "My wife died three years. I came to know if she is troubled," the customer tells me after the encounter, tears openly rolling down his cheeks. "Now I feel finally she can rest," he adds, before heading off to bathe himself on hell's doorstep at free onsen (mineral hot springs) to the side of the main hall temple complex. Japanese folk legend has long talked of Osore, with its surrounding smaller mountains resembling the eight petals of a lotus, as a place where restless souls wander the barren landscape. The priest Jikaku Daishi founded a Buddhist temple on the mountain in 862 and, even today, all Japanese children learn to fear the legend of Osore. "My Grandmother told me when I was kid that if I didn't go to temple then I might end up lost at Osore," says a Japanese friend in Tokyo. "There's no way I'd go there," she adds. "Just the idea of that place gives me the creeps." Mount Osore may be only five hours from Tokyo by train and bus but it feels a million miles away from the capital's corporate go-getters, neon entertainment districts and high-tech gadgets. Indeed, wandering around the temple grounds during the festival offers a rare glimpse of Japan's hidden face: emotional, vulnerable and in need of spiritual reassurance. The eerie calm of the afternoon is only interrupted by the distant hum of what sounds like construction work. After a sustaining bowl of udon (noodles in broth) at a makeshift temple snack bar, I pluck up the courage to ask a monk about the brouhaha as he drifts serenely through the crowd in long brown robes. "Ah, yes. We have too many visitors these days to stay at the shubuko (temple lodgings)," he says, oozing an aura of Zen calm from every pore. "So now we are building a hotel on the temple grounds." As the coach parties depart for the day, half weeping openly, half laden with Osore-san souvenirs, the sound of welding is left to drift like tumbleweed across the deserted temple grounds. Nothing is safe from the mechanical diggers of progress in contemporary Japan. But, while the souls of the dead are still restless, the property developers are sleeping easy. ALL THE RAGE...IN LA PAZ, BOLIVIA Abdul probably has the best legs in La Paz. As he strides around the de facto Bolivian capital in his kilt – a tartan from the Steward clan borrowed from a Scottish friend – he attracts attention not only for unusual attire, but also for his finely-crafted calves. Then again, Abdul Aspiazu is not your typical 25-year-old Bolivian man about town. As the first Bolivian dance enthusiast to join the Las Paz Scottish Dancing Group three years back, he is now more likely to be found dancing a highland fling than salsa-ing the night away in a steamy Sopocachi nightspot. "I travelled around Scotland with my grandfather when I was 17 and fell in love with the Celtic culture: the music, the countryside, the whisky," he smiles, adjusting his sporran. "When I heard an advert on the radio for new members to join a Scottish dancing group here in La Paz, I had to give it a go." Every Saturday afternoon a 20-strong group of European ex-pats and local Bolivians gather at a ballet school near La Paz's Plaza Espana for a two-hour dance session. With a shared love of Celtic music and a token contribution of five Bolivianos (about US$0.75), the group is growing fast. "We have seen the Bolivian membership grow dramatically since the political turmoil of last year," explains Valerie Mealla (nee Black), a native of Sterling, who leads the practice sessions. "Bolivians love to dance and, while Scottish dance involves complicated routines, I'm constantly amazed how quickly the locals pick them up." With anti-gringo feeling running rife since a popular uprising unceremoniously dumped the previous US-backed Bolivian president in October 2003, the social aspect of these weekly sessions provides a means to foster mutual understanding and tolerance between La Paz's small foreign community and local Bolivians. "Dancing provides a great medium for solidarity and friendship," says Valerie, casting a beady eye over attempts to master a new routine. "Despite the country's political divides, we all support each other. For us, the music and love of dancing provides a common language." It's also tremendous exercise. Given that La Paz is one of the world's highest cities at 3,600m, the sessions can bring a whole new meaning to 'out of puff', even for those well-prepared for the effects of altitude sickness. Regardless, the group last year broke the record for the world's highest Scottish traditional dance, performing a Dalkeith Strathspey (a slow dance) at the Chacaltaya ski resort outside La Paz -- an altitude of 5,260m above sea level. The Guinness Book of Records refused to acknowledge their achievement but, undeterred, the group is now planning a trip to the Scottish Highlands. "I like dancing and I like the music," says the group's youngest member, eight-year-old Erika Guerra of La Paz's Miraflores district. "I want to go to Scotland and eat haggis." Back on the dancefloor, the group are attempting a Burns Hornpipe routine. Valerie shakes her head wearily: there's a lot of practice needed before the group is ready for its next performance at an Anglo/Bolivian fiesta. After practice, as night temperatures plunge across the Bolivian Altiplano, the members bid their farewells in a mix of English and Spanish. Abdul pulls on his boots and strides out into the La Paz night. "We all take the dancing and the traditions of Scotland very seriously," he winks, sinewy calves glistening in the moonlight. "That's why I'm not wearing any underwear." |