Press freedoms at risk in Bolivia

Reporter: Alex Golden

Bolivians have a constitutional right to freedom of speech, but journalists say they feel pressure to censor what they present to the public.

Bolivian student Jose Gonzales, Santa Cruz resident Yessica Vidal, and University of Arkansas student Blythe Nelson contributed to this report.

Indigenous students find a new life in Santa Cruz colleges

Reporter: Alex Golden

Coming to college is not easily attainable for indigenous Bolivians, but some make it work.

Bolivian student Jose Gonzales and University of Arkansas students Blythe Nelson and Amanda Simmons contributed to this report.

I ate this at a mall food court just a few days after we landed in Bolivia. When I looked around, I saw no paper plates, no to-go bags, no plastic forks. The concept of “to go” does not exist in Bolivia. Even in a mall food court, there are real plates, real silverware and no one is in a hurry.

This is grilled chicken with a mildly spicy sauce on top. It came with a potato dish, pasta, beets, yucca with sauce and something I can only compare to potato salad without potato. I gave the pink sauce a try because I was feeling adventurous and I was told it would be tasty with yucca, the bulky fried potatoes you see on top. As it turns out, it is impossible to go wrong with yucca. They serve it with everything and dip it in infinite sauces, and I was never disappointed. Bolivians are not reluctant to put two starches on one plate. This meal had both pasta and two forms of potato, and I discovered it was not uncommon to have rice and French fries in one sitting.

The only thing I didn’t care for here were the beets, but then again, I’m not sure I would care for beets anywhere, so I won’t hold it against Bolivia. Overall, everything was delicious, which can be said for almost everything I tried while abroad.

By Alex Golden

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia ­– A Bolivian university student plays his cello for all his neighbors to hear on the balcony outside the studio apartment that he shares with another student.

This is not the same world Eddy Vailava’s parents grew up in or the one where he started.

Vailava is indigenous to South America, and he is the first in his family to go to college or to move from his hometown of Concepcion to Santa Cruz, a bustling city of more a million people.

Eddy Vailava plays his cello outside his Santa Cruz apartment. He lives in a studio apartment with a roommate and teaches music lessons to children to pay his expenses. He has to take a six-hour bus ride if he wants to see his family.

Although indigenous people make up more than half the population in Bolivia, Evo Morales became the nation’s first indigenous president in 2006. They live in some of the poorest conditions, and many reject modernized living. It’s not uncommon for indigenous people to practice traditions and languages specific to their heritage.

Consequently, coming to college in a big city like Santa Cruz is not easily attainable or a smooth transition for young natives.

Vailava began learning to play the cello in his church in his hometown of Concepcion, where indigenous people were once held as slaves, including his great-grandfather.

“If I hadn’t learned to play my music, I wouldn’t be here in the city,” he said.

Paying to live in the city and attending classes at Universidad Autonoma Gabriel Rene Moreno has proven difficult, but Vailava makes it possible by earning money teaching children how to play the cello and guitar. He is a second-year systems engineering major and wants to use what he learns in his career as a musician, he said.

He can’t afford the six-hour bus ride to Concepcion, so he rarely sees his family.

Third-year English and French student Jose Luis is in a similar situation. Almost no one in his hometown owned a car, and, as a child, he would leave school in the early afternoon to walk to work with his father to chop wood.

He chose to major in two languages because he thinks it’s necessary to be able to communicate with people from other places.

“I’ve never been in another country,” Luis said. “I would like to travel.”

This is not an opportunity people in his family have had.

His father passed away, and Luis often travels about two hours away to his hometown on the weekends to help his mother earn money by taking care of and selling bulls.

Jose Luis tells about what his home life was like before coming to college in Santa Cruz. He lives alone in an apartment, instead of with family in his hometown two hours away. 

At the same time, Luis struggles to pay for his apartment, transportation around the city and other living expenses, but he is able to go to school for free thanks to a program the university implemented 10 years ago.

The university recognizes that indigenous students typically come from poor backgrounds, and most are first-generation college students, said Julio Waldo Lopez Aparicio, director of research at UAGRM. It’s a common struggle to sustain the transportation and housing.

This has led the university to make efforts to make it easier for indigenous students to go to school. UAGRM allows 500 indigenous students per year free tuition and meals on campus, but most of them still must work to pay for their housing and other living expenses. There is no entrance exam; students only have to prove that they are native, Lopez said. UAGRM is at its 500-student limit for this year.

UAGRM is one of Bolivia’s largest universities. A program there allows up to 500 indigenous students to study at the university for free. The program also works with professors to make sure they are aware of indigenous students’ experiences and culture.  

The university has also made it a priority in recent years to help students who come from indigenous families by keeping professors informed of their students’ cultural backgrounds and encouraging students to share their native languages.

The university is working on a plan to make inexpensive student housing available for indigenous students so that more are able to enroll in school, which will hopefully take effect within the next three years, Lopez said.

  Bolivian student Jose Gonzales and University of Arkansas student Blythe Nelson contributed to this report.

Press freedoms at risk in Bolivia

Reporter: Alex Golden

Bolivians have a constitutional right to freedom of speech, but journalists say they feel pressure to censor what they present to the public.

Bolivian student Jose Gonzales, Santa Cruz resident Yessica Vidal, and University of Arkansas student Blythe Nelson contributed to this report.

Indigenous students find a new life in Santa Cruz colleges

Reporter: Alex Golden

Coming to college is not easily attainable for indigenous Bolivians, but some make it work.

Bolivian student Jose Gonzales and University of Arkansas students Blythe Nelson and Amanda Simmons contributed to this report.

By Alex Golden

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia – Despite a constitutional right to freedom of the press in Bolivia, journalists in this South American country are increasingly being pressured to censor themselves, and the situation is only getting worse, said the dean of communications at one of the nation’s largest universities.

“As journalists, we are scared about what we are producing because our government has control of justice,” said Ramon Fernandez, dean of communications at Universidad Autonoma Gabriel Rene Moreno in Santa Cruz. “It’s like we control ourselves because we don’t want to have justice troubles with our government.”

He referenced a book, Control Remoto, released in March 2013, by Bolivian journalist Raul Penaranda that explains the government’s strategy of buying out media outlets so that government officials have the overall say in media content. There is no law requiring public officials to release reports or information to anyone, like the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S.

“In our country, we have rights, and we are free to express our ideas, so I don’t think what our government is doing is correct … because we need to express what is happening in our country to our society,” Fernandez said through an interpreter. “Every single human in the world has this right to express their ideas in a free way.”

El Deber is one of Santa Cruz’s largest newspapers with more than 200 reporters. El Deber’s multimedia editor Esmir Cortez said that despite attempts by the government to repress journalists, it cannot take away the paper’s freedom, and reporters will still cover any relevant news.

Reporters at El Deber, one of the largest newspapers in Bolivia, work to meet their deadlines. With more than 200 reporters, they take shifts using the computers.

“We will do it because our society needs it, and we love our jobs,” he said through an interpreter.

Despite his confidence, Cortez expressed concerns for El Deber after witnessing government attempts to shut down a La Paz-based newspaper, El Diario, in response to that paper’s continuous coverage of the government’s wrongdoing.

El Deber is a daily newspaper based out of Santa Cruz. It is one of the most widely read papers in the nation.

“If we as a company always try to report what the government is doing wrong, maybe we will be abolished,” he said.

The Bolivian government has its own TV channel, newspaper and radio station to address the public.

“As a journalist, I don’t think the government is honest in its channel or newspaper,” Cortez said. “They just report what is good for them … not the wrong things they do.”

Reporter Alex Sortez has been practicing broadcast journalism at Santa Cruz’s Channel 11 for more than 20 years.

Reporter Alex Sortez takes notes as he covers an event to recognize faculty at UAGRM.

"Based on experience, you can conclude that you have to be very careful with your words,” he said, through an interpreter. “People will be paying attention to everything you say and everything you meant to say.”

He said that because Bolivia is so divided between pro- and anti-government sectors, journalists who are within government lines get persecuted by the opposition and vice versa.

“You will be persecuted from either side,” he said.

Sortez knows this all too well from being caught in the middle of several protests throughout his career.

Journalist Alex Sortez shows where pellets from Bolivian police guns put holes in his protective vest during a protest.

The most severe incident occurred in 2007 when Santa Cruz was seeking autonomy and staged an event called “One Million for Autonomy,” intended to gather a million supporters. Pro-government Bolivians from a rural area tried to block all the roads that gave access to the event. Journalists covering the event were caught in the middle and, at some point, started trying to escape.

“Fear. All you could feel was fear. We were all spread out everywhere,” Sortez said. “At that moment when everybody ran out and just kind of escaped, you were separated from your cameraman, you were separated from the driver, and we were trying to get rid of our vests or anything that said we belonged to the press.”

Sortez was not able to get away and was taken hostage by the group of pro-government, anti-autonomy Bolivians. They circled Sortez and the other captured journalists and threw stones, dried leaves and other objects at them. Sortez lost a lot of blood after a brick was thrown at his head.

“They took me to a gas station bathroom nearby, and they had lots of gallons of gasoline with them. Their intention was to burn up the place with us in it,” he said.

“I was trying to get ahold of my family, and I couldn’t. Calls wouldn’t go out, calls wouldn’t come in, and there was a point when the TV station knew were being held hostage, but they didn’t know where, and they didn’t know how to contact us.”

The hostages were let go, because some of the perpetrators realized that the TV station was not aligned with the opposition as they had thought. Sortez was able to get medical attention for his head and fractured bones in his foot.

Sortez is a member of Bolivia’s Federation of Journalists, an organization fighting for the rights of journalists – everything from getting paid for overtime hours to looking into legislation that prevents journalists from getting caught up in conflict as Sortez was.

He said that it is also difficult to get needed information from authorities. When journalists are denied information, citizens are denied as well.

“Usually, they will seek the mass media when they need to say something,” Sortez said, “but when you need specific information, it’s hard.”

  Bolivian student Jose Gonzales, Santa Cruz resident Yessica Vidal, and University of Arkansas student Blythe Nelson contributed to this report.