I’ve been working in that project since I arrived to Bolivia at the end of 2008 and it’s still in progress. I really don’t know when I’m going to finish for two reasons. First because I find new aspects each day and second, I’m not completly happy with the stuff I did.
Coca leaf is used as raw material for cocaine, one of the most common drugs in Europe and USA with twenty one millions of consumers.
I was in the Corani Lagoon a month and a half ago more or less. This is a small reservation of fresh water close to Cochabamba, one of the most important cities of Bolivia.
The drug traffickers threaten the farmers who try to denounce that situation
I was the last days in the X Ordinary Congress of the Coordinator of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba. This is the long name. The short name is the Cocaleros Union Congress of Chapare. This is the social organization where Evo Morales base his power. They are only 45000 unionists but they are the most important union of the country.
It’s interesting that anyone can talk.
I grew up in a small town without any photographic tradition, in a not very large country with little tradition of documentary photography. I moved to a southern hemisphere country where his biggest concern is that people do not starve and I live in city 800 km from the capital away from virtually any other photojournalist. And despite this I pretend be photographer. I say pretend because these days there are more people trying to be something than getting it.
I feel like the character in “Gulliver’s Travels” on the island of the giants
Santa Cruz de la Sierra. My new city.
