Graffiti and some amusing pictures from our trip (Part 2)

One of the picture highlights of the trip was this little gem. After having translated the latest edition of their paper to distribute at the conference, during the closing ceremony members of the Turblence collective were confronted by a number of  policemen running towards them. It seems they were all keen to have a look at the latest ‘ideas for movement’, and some moments later were seen avidly scanning its pages.

While others utilised copies as much needed shade from the strong afternoon sun.

After the lengthy speeches of the closing ceremony, we went and relaxed at the Red Tinku‘s social centre, the buckets of chicha nicely washing down an evening of music, performance and dancing. Here’s a piece of graff adorning the wall of the women’s toilet at la Red Tinkuna.

And here’s another on an outside wall.

A couple of days later, during the march of the CSUTCB through Sucre, we spotted this piece on a wall heading out of the centre.

As well as being the official capital city of Bolivia, Sucre also boasts a number of dinosaur footprints still embedded into rock  just out of the city. A byproduct of this seemed to be numerous giant figures of dinosaurs on roadsides, and these figures on a rooftop near to the venue of the congress.

While a similar photo already exists on our post about May Day in La Paz, here is a close up of the Ministry of Work’s re-decoration.

A novel take on the usual black and white road markings was seen later along the May Day route.

La Paz is also home to the beautiful space that is run by the anarcha-feminist group Mujeres Creando, with their giant wiphala adorned with lesbian, gay, indigenous and queer positive messages.

one message reads: "you have to be brave to be queer"

It was only on one of our trips to the bus terminal in La Paz that we noticed just what a state democracy is really in, one man chuckling “House of Dictatorship” as he walked past.

'House of Democracy'

And the pictures we didn’t manage to get? The live close up of Hugo Chavez picking his nose on one of the big stadium screens during the closing ceremony, the May Day in La Paz including Coca-Cola workers all marching with half drunk bottles of the bad stuff in their hands, and the stencil of Che Guevara wearing a toque above the words ‘Chef Guevara’ are some that spring to mind.