Word: altiplano
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Flags v. Fertilizers. Bolivia is still a cruel, almost medieval land locked in Andean poverty. On the 12,000-ft.-high Altiplano, where 75% of its 4,000,000 people live, Indian campesinos still consider white flags draped on their oxen a surer crop guarantee than fertilizer. Some 60% of the people speak only Indian languages, and per capita income is a pitiable $114. But under Paz Estenssoro, 56, Bolivia is gradually improving...
...before taking a cocktail or attempting anything so athletic as trotting upstairs. At the airport, 1,400 ft. above the city, no jets come in; Panagra's prop pilots sometimes take a whiff of oxygen during stopovers. Yet 4,000,000 people inhabit Bolivia; 75% are on the altiplano (high plain), a vast, barren Andean plateau averaging 12,000 ft. in altitude. Of the 75%, a few tin miners produce the nation's major export; the rest, mostly Quechua and Aymara Indians who cannot even speak Spanish, spend brief lives struggling to scratch a living from the stony...
Potatoes for Survival. Last week Bolivia's President Victor Paz Estenssoro, 56, flew to the U.S. for a state visit. Most inhabitants of the altiplano-who don't even know what goes on in La Paz-were unaware that he had gone. It is spring in the Southern Hemisphere, and the Indians are plowing and planting. As their ancestors have done for centuries, those fortunate enough to own oxen bedecked the horns with white streamers and draped their backs with magenta cloth to bring luck. Those without animals simply tore at the grey earth with metal-tipped wooden...
...than any other Latin American nation. Bolivia is so poor (per capita income: $114, only slightly better than Haiti) and so afflicted by nature that the strongest hope for progress rests in a vast scheme to open up fertile eastern lowlands beyond the Andes and relocate large numbers of altiplano Indians. In the past two years, some 100,000 people have gone down from the airless plateau to new farm areas near Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Caranavi. Over the next eight years, Paz plans to spend about $120 million on new roads. He wants to resettle 380,000 more people...
...President Kennedy's desk last week was a 50-page report written by a three-man team*sent to Bolivia with orders to "review the status and effectiveness of U.S. economic policies in Bolivia." The fact-finding team spent twelve days in the barren, mountainous Altiplano, getting a first-hand look at the problems of a nation that is rich in minerals but little else...