Bolivia: La Asunta (or the Next Frontier)

La Asunta held a mysterious quality for us even before we began our project on coca. The town is considered to be a no man's land in the middle of a dense forest, where anyone looking for a patch of soil and coca plants on steroids -- that can be harvested up to five times a year -- could easily set up shop. Under the law that regulates coca cultivation in Bolivia, La Asunta is considered a "zona excedentaria", or an area outside of the legal zone where coca farming is now rapidly spreading.

La Asunta is one of a handful of coca-farming community in the Southern Yungas region that does not have a Quechua or Aymara name. "Asunto" means "issue" or "deal" in Spanish -- and in feminine form, it turns out, Asunta is the name of a Peruvian Catholic virgin. There's something about La Asunta that comes across as forward and independent and proud, and somehow the name fits this community's personality.

We'd tried making the trip a couple of times, but either we couldn't find a good driver, or the road was said to be in bad condition, or both. Finally, at the end of February, we headed to La Asunta in David Montevilla's taxi on a rare sunny day when the roads were open.

But the fact that the road was open didn't mean that it was particularly safe for driving -- especially not in a little old Toyota taxi. We got stuck in the mud more than six times, and David's car got two flats. Fortunately, he can change a tire in record speed. But each stop gave us the opportunity to really appreciate the landscape -- deep green and tropical, a patchwork of ferns and high canopies, and the Bopi River down below, flowing with force, and the color of mud.

After two hours of this driving and getting stuck routine, we stopped in a nondescript spot near a small village called Cruce de Mercedes. A short, stocky man approached our car. He told us his name was Roberto Rojas -- a civil engineer from the city of Cochabamba who'd been hired by the local leaders in Cruce de Mercedes to bring electricity into town.

"Since 2002, the economies of these little villages have been thriving thanks to coca, and yet they still had no light", he said. "Come with me and I'll show you what they brought me here for."

We followed Roberto a few hundred feet off the road into the forest, next to a stream that fell from the top of the mountain. He took us inside a wooden shack with a simple bed, a few kitchen utensils, and a sizable hydro-electric generator right at the center, churning along rather loudly. The generator alone, he said, cost $17,000. And setting up the operation -- from diverting the water from the nearby waterfall-fed stream, to wiring the entire village, cost a few thousand dollars more. "They have electricity all day-long now, after years of begging their municipal government to do it and not getting an answer," said Roberto. The money for both the generator and for Roberto's maintenance work had been pooled by the villagers, who, for the first time in many years, are making enough money from coca to improve their lives so significantly.

This kind of story is common throughout the small coca-producing villages of Los Yungas. We've heard about how coca profits brought cell phone technology to the village of Chulumani two years ago. And how a growing number of cocaleros, most of them men, are now starting their own taxi-driving businesses thanks to the money they've made growing coca. Our driver, David Montevilla, is one of those cocaleros-turned-cab drivers, who's making a pretty decent living at both - at least by Bolivian standards.

After chatting for a while with Roberto Rojas, we got back inside David's cab and drove for another hour until we got to La Asunta. And the village was as intriguing as we'd imagined it to be. Close to the shore of the Bopi River, it is located in a clearing of dense forest. There are many three, four and five-story buildings at the center of town, built on either side of a wide and straight boulevard, a la Champs Elysees -- except this grand avenue is dusty and without any tourist attraction -- or even electricity.

As in Cruce de Mercedes, the light in La Asunta is powered by generators -- only here they are of the small, gas-powered variety. And there are so many of them, that the entire village hums, even during the day.

We meet the owner of a hardware store who's standing on a sidewalk facing the wide boulevard, as if waiting for something to happen. His name is Julio Jove.

"Yes, we have generators and three-story buildings, right in the middle of the forest," he says. "But we have a terrible road, and it takes us over nine hours to get to the city of La Paz. If the government cared at all about the cocaleros, which it claims it does, it would do more to make us feel like we're part of civilization."

Suddenly, we hear the much louder hum of a bus coming into town. The dust rises. Many of the villagers rush towards the avenue to welcome their family members that are about to get off the bus. "That's my daughter, coming back from La Paz!" says Julio. And with that, he says goodbye, and says that we should come back to visit him again "sometime".

To learn more about this reporting project, click here.

Comments

[Carol Blenda Reyes Avila]

Asunta it is not the feminine of Asunto , Asunta is a female name, there is a virgin in Bolivia also called Virgen de la Asusta , I did have a nanny called Asunta when I lived in Bolivia and Knew several ladies with that name, kind of old name but there is people around Bolivia that still has it

[loris mirri]

I have been living in La Asunta, 1988 - 1990
I was working with GVC, an Italian NGO, we built the small hospital, supported he national health program and we installed power generator ( better the community installed it with our little help)
So:
Adelante Asunta
Adelante FEUTCA
Adelante Companeros
Loris