Shoeshine boys (La Paz)

On the way to Hotel Plaza, a very posh-looking place in Avenida Arce, close to La Plaza del estudiante, Karen and I are making time before I go in to meet some members of the UNITE delegation in Bolivia for whom the plan is that I do some interpreting while their visit lasts. This evening, they are meeting Nila Heredia, the ex-minister of health and currently an academic at UMSA, the state university at La Paz. At this point, one of the many face-balaclavaed shoe shines roaming the streets in central La Paz, points at my shoes-which frankly, have never had one rub, never mind a smear of shoe polish, and Karen being Karen, convinces me that not looking smart enough, the least I could do is to have polished shoes. This, of course, is something that I resist initially because of my white-liberal sense of guilt at having, what I consider anyone serve me. This is the same debate we have had two or three times in my first week in Bolivia and in relation to Nati so I won’t repeat myself here. Let’s say that Karen nods to the boy and we sit on a park bench to have my shoes polished. Very soon we are joined by another boy who looks not older than six or seven who points at Karen’s shoes this time and sits down to give them a rub.

‘So where are you from’, the first boy enquires, and we spend the first few minutes explaining Belgium’s position in the map of Europe in relation to countries that he obviously knows like Spain, his future destination as he informs us. If he did, he would follow in the steps of many of his compatriots to work in those jobs that Spaniards can’t or don’t want to work in.

I ask him about his job and the answer surprises me. ‘It is a dignified job’. The word dignified is one that one encounters everywhere in Bolivia at the moment, from this boy to the ex-minister of health, whose presentation to the delegation is “Bolivia, dignified, productive and sovereign so that we can all live well”, which just about sums up the ambitions of the current MAS government. ‘It is OK for me now but it won’t pay to keep a family or anything like that in future’, says the boy. ‘So do you go to school then?’, I ask, worried at the sight of children at work everywhere in Bolivia, from the hostel in Coroico to the supermarket down the road to everywhere in the streets of la Paz. ‘Yes’, comes the answer. ‘I have three more years left at school’ (which makes him 15, a surprising age given his size, but then he must be at least 14 in order to be able to work legally and with parental permission. The fact that he sells us a copy of ‘Hormigon Armado’, Bolivia’s shoeshines’ equivalent of the Big Issue in the UK seems to suggest this). And then? ‘I am going to get a scholarship to study further, may be in Spain’.

It seems to be testament of the current government’s message, ethos and approach to the national development plan that the only-too-real changes that are taking place in terms of delivering food security, safe drinking water, decent housing, spreading the provision of free health care to key groups in society, delivering economic benefits to over 60s, children of school age and so on, are being matched by a regained sense of dignity and worth, not just on the part of the state that swears never to bow again in front of the United States, but on the part of the population, its most disadvantaged population from indigenous peoples to street shoeshines.
http://www.boliviasc.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=198&Itemid=50