Riots and Rio

This isn´t the best written of my emails but probably the most exciting...

Our last day in Santa Cruz was probably the most exciting of the two months. We were woken up about half ten by the sound of explosions outside the hostel so ran out to see what was going on. There were a few protestors firing firecrackers at what I later found out was the tax office which was coincidentally opposite our hostel. We´d known that there´d been some protests in Bolivia and especially Santa Cruz and Sucre—the most affluent areas incidentally. Unfortunately, from the salt flats we´d had to head through Sucre and Santa Cruz to get to Rio.

The protests initially began as a handful of students firing firecrackers at the tax office and a little later some tear gas started being thrown about. I´ve never felt tear gas before so the first time it was thrown down the street in my direction and people began running away, I ignored it. It was a bad move. The stuff disables you completely. I began running as I started realising that the stinging in my face and eyes especially would be too great. However, I was too late. My eyes stung so much I couldn´t keep them open and tears were streaming out of them.

Thankfully a protestor, or he may have been a reporter, had a spare face mask and he tied that round me and doused my face with vinegar which seems to counteract the tear gas. Eventually, most people on the scene had these. I was lucky to have mine so early as I´d need it all day.

The police eventually arrived with riot shields and attemped to keep the protestors on the plaza end of the street. The scene was a straight road that led to a plaza. Our hostel was on the road just behind the police front line. The police then had another line about fifty to a hundred metres behind this. The protestors´ front line was just ahead of the plaza so their numbers could swell infinitely without congestion.

The situation escalated when the police arrived and the lines were drawn. There were no barriers as yet but both were attempting to gain territory on the road. The police edged forward but had to retreat slightly or at least pause as protestors hurled bricks and more firecrackers their way.

The police here are much more keen than the British to use rubber bullets and they began flying soon after their arrival. By now, many news teams and more protestors and observers had arrived. The protestors´ front line was half protestors and half TV crews and photograhers cowering behind pillars.

Every few minutes there´d be shouting and we´d all sprint back towards the plaza as the police had fired either tear gas or rubber bullets. At one point, rubber bullets were fired so I hid behind a pillar rather than run all the way back to the plaza. However, a tear gas canister had landed just behind me and I hadn´t noticed. When I did turn around, I realised that unless I ran through the gas I´d be isolated with only a handful of other protestors/press. So I legged it through the gas knowing how painful it would be and reached the plaza coughing and spluttering on the floor again. At least this time I knew the pain would be gone soon. After every gas canister thrown, there´d be people caught out by it who didn´t run quickly enough.

The rubber bullets had caused a few casualties and they were run/carried into the square to waiting ambulances. Their would be a stampede of protestors and press towards any injured person. Protestors were either trying to help or making sure that the press got the bloodiest photo possible of the person, which was of course what both protestor and press wanted.

The standoff carried on for some time. The protestors found a white board to use as a barrier against the police´s bullets. Got some great photos of them behind it. The press here were mainly behind pillars just behind the protestors´ front line, now defined by the board. I do remember being behind a parked car at one point too with them. This is where I got one of my better photos that the BBC used.

Later on the police took the board originally held by the protestors and so their front line edged forward as they hid behind it. The protestors used small ice cream trolleys as a new defence instead. The police would occasionally rise up from the board with guns pointed our way. I spent ages with my camera trained on them from behind a pillar hoping for them to do this but never got that great photo.

We decided to try to head back to our hostel. It was between the police´s front and second line. I was lucky getting through with my camera—them assuming I was press—but Jamie and Nick had to argue their way through. This was where I possibly got my best photos. The area was completely clear between the two police lines except for a white car with three or four photographers behind it. This is where we could get photos of the police behind the white board they had taken earlier and this was the photo the BBC used to illustrate a few of their stories about the situation in Bolivia.

Got back to the hostel and then went and got some lunch. After lunch, the numbers had swelled hugely though the situation was pretty much the same. A group of protestors drove a small van into the police line but I wasn´t in the best place to see this.

Eventually the police gave up and let the protestors storm the tax office. They started fires outside and would burn everything they could find that wasn´t worth looting. Over the afternoon, they would do the same to a handful of other government buildings. Looting was taking place in all of them and there´d be a huge scramble whenever anyone emerged from a building with a box containing anything of any value (phone cards at one point) to computer equipment etc.

I´d gotten bored of it all after lunch, just as the police clearly had as they let the looting and burning go on. The most exciting point had been in the morning. Once the buildings had been looted and the protestors had made their point, they also got bored and things cleared out as the sun went down.

We were meant to be flying to Rio at five the next morning but there´d been loads of reports that the airport had been taken. South Americans seem great at giving bad advice or claiming to know something that they don´t and this happened with advice about our flight too. We decided to head to the airport around midnight and everything was as normal except a few tires sat outside probably waiting to be burned the next day.

We flew out fine and arrived in Rio mid afternoon the next day. We´d intended going to a World Cup qualifier between Brazil and Bolivia in the evening but everyone told us not to bother as we wouldn´t get tickets. This turned out to be bad advice again. As we watched the game in a bar, we noticed that barely half the seats were taken! Disappointing.

Later that night I emailed some photos to the BBC. I was very excited when I got an email—and later we spoke on the phone—from a lady asking me about them, what was I doing there etc. Got a lecture about the lack of safety and the fact that the other press had training, flak jackets and proper gas masks but she was grateful for the photos. It was great to wake up the next day and find that they were being used.

Since we arrived in Rio, we have spent a day on Rio´s Copacabana beach, had a look around the city which reminds me a bit of London and is very different to every other South American capital we´ve visited. Been to a place called Lapa last couple of nights. It´s where the party´s at and here it´s a huge street party outside all the clubs and bars that we´re used to. Watched a group of drummers playing samba with locals dancing under an arch under Lapa´s iconic acqueduct last night. Heading there again in an hour or so and hoping to make a bigger night of it.

My pic has been used a few times now as the situation has escalated. The protestors were the rich end of Bolivian society complaining about the indigenous and socialist Evo Morales´ policies against them. The US ambassador to the country was expelled the next day as Morales claimed that the US had incited the riots in an attempt to begin an overthrow of his government. I can very much believe this as the whole thing has huge parallels with what happened in Hugo Chavez´ Venezuela just before the attempted coup there in 2002. Chavez has now also expelled the US ambassador in his country as an act of solidarity with Morales. It doesn´t look like anything will change now until the new US president is inaugurated in January.

Anyway, time to party in Rio.

Girish

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7609487.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7610915.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7611705.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/in_pictures_enl_1221139158/html/1.stm