Word: paz
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...first view of La Paz, Bolivia's capital and largest city, approached from the west, is perhaps one of the most spectacular moments in world travel. From the border with Peru the bus jaunts along a stumbly dirt road for three hours through the barren spaces of the altiplano, the 14,000-foot-high plateau that covers the western third of Bolivia. Above the tree line, this gaping wasteland is broken only by the occasional adobe huts and the surrounding protective adobe walls of the Aymara Indians, who have scratched out a living here for countless centuries. Soon the huts...
...fall away abruptly into a bottomless chasm. Black craggy walls slope sharply down into the bowels of this deep crater, where shiny steel skyscrapers beckon mystically in the clear sunny air. Spread out below and beyond, extending almost to the snow-capped Andean peaks in the distance, sparkles La Paz, a booming city seemingly dropped from space into a lunar landscape...
...ride down from the crater's lip to the center of the city is not only an unusual topographical experience, but a striking sociological one as well. In fact, the layout of La Paz can be viewed as a metaphor for the stark contrasts between wealth and poverty that pervade all Latin American societies. Dug into the stony walls near the top of the canyon are the most wretched hovels, those of the peasants most recently arrived from the altiplano. The weather in this part of the city, which is 12,500 feet above sea level, is pleasant...
...some point halfway up the slope of the La Paz canyon, rural and urban Bolivia meet. The Indian Quarter of the city is situated just where the western wall of the crater begins to rise sharply. The narrow sidestreets here are lined with the old, deteriorating shops and grocery stores owned by the mestizos (people of mixed white and Indian blood). Most of the real activity, however, takes place not in these dusty little buildings, but in the streets themselves. Everyday the Indian peasants, who live higher up in the poorer sections of the city, make the long, strenuous climb...
...review, Octavio Paz described Los Olvidados as "implacable as the silent march of lava." I can't imagine a more apt metaphor to convey its impact. Famous scenes: the gang of young boys tormenting a blind man; Pedro's dream (more powerful and more complex than any described by Freud); the "second chance" offered by the liberal reformatory...