Fatal accidents, child labor, devastated environment: in the Porco mine, operated by Glencore in the Bolivian highlands, cooperatives extract zinc, lead and silver in inhumane conditions. The multinational looks away but buys a large part of these minerals.
A story of organized irresponsibility that shows the importance of accepting the initiative for responsible multinationals.

Amateur inter-club Kick Boxing championship in La Paz, Bolivia.

Kick boxing is part of MMA. by Mixed Martial Arts Practitioners who want to progress further go through tournaments in the various disciplines separately. Thus, they pursue and find over time their strengths and weaknesses, their style, their limits, what they must overcome. In Bolivia, Mixed Martial Arts are still wrapped in a cloak of prejudices and stereotypes often very far from reality. However, each practitioner finds there a motive usually far from those given to him. At the end, they all know what makes a good "dojo", once the entrance door is passed, they can leave the entire universe and its problems outside, forget everything...

When they get in the ring, or enter the so-called "cage", the "amateurs", in these fights that do not propose fame or money, end up facing their reflection and someone else "of the family". For three rounds of three minutes, if they do not go through the KO, they will feel more alive than ever .The practiced hundreds of times is erased from the mind, adrenaline tries to compensate for cardio quickly in free fall, the bell of the end of the round is lost in the very distant future, blows come and go... and even if the public can hardly see it, they are already in another universe, connecting with another type of spirit, and they had the guts to go to fight...

  2020...COVID-19
     Plasticized souls and liquified brains

It is in all news from all media: the virus. In all gossip, discussion and debate, in every mouth, every word, every screen, every breath. It is so invisible that it can be seen everywhere. Fear of virus and virus of fear ...

  2019...Coup d'État...or not... 

​During the end of October and the all month of November, the polarized country, divided
between Evo Morales supporters and the rest of the population, with opposition supporters

heading the movement, get to the streets. Then, it gets as a strange movie: everybody against everybody. Police go to mutiny and finally, the Army calm down everything to ensure a transition government while Morales flies away from the country.

Welcome to Saltydise...

Some stairs made of salt blocks, in the middle of nowhere and leading nowhere ... everyone poses for the photo. Then, they get down to make room for the next group. With cities like Tokyo, counting as 6,224.66 people living per square kilometer, Japanese tourists who come to see the Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia have something to feel off the planet with. Luxury hotels, specially cared food, once facing the indiscernible horizon, they are left in zero gravity.

Then, your guide will bring you back to earth to entertain yourself to take photos in forced perspective, this strange local fashion phenomenon, a tourist "must see" and "must done".

Broken promises 

Like sandcastles thrown into the air, the promises and dust kicked up again, then disappeared. They had been rampaging through the highlands, biting the clouds and spitting smoke, flames, and coal. These horses of pure fine steel stopped finally overthrown by an invisible wall: that one of progress broken promises...

On the deserted outskirts of the small town of Uyuni, Potosi region, Bolivia, is the Great Train Graveyard.

This town has been an important transportation hub for trains in South America since the end of the 19th century. Plans to expand and build an even bigger network of trains out of there in the 19th century were halted by the collapse of the mining industry in the 1940s. Many of those trains were imported from Britain and abandoned outside Uyuni. A big part of metal pieces have been robbed because there’s no fence or guards surrounding the place, while  salt winds of near salt flat have corroded all the remains.

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Disabled Protesters  

La Paz, Bolivia -2016 - Abandoned by their government and their fellow citizens, the oft-overlooked disabled individuals of Bolivia had what felt like only one option: to march...

(Full Pics Version: click here)

  Embedded News  

Called now "Dark Times" /1997-2001: Embedded during

four years with Bolivian Jungle Narcotic Special Forces

​

Being integrated into the troops, embedded, is a very recent form of recovery by war correspondents.

It can go back to 499-449 BC, during the wars between Greece and Persia, with Herodotus, historian present on "the ground", becoming one of the fathers of journalism, and in this case journalism in conflict situations armed.
In the 21st century, in 2003, 775 reporters and photographers were brought in by the US Army as integrants, during the invasion of Iraq...and so on...

​

About Oblivion 

May 2016 - La Paz, Bolivia - From oblivion to ashes: Forgotten dead bodies reduction in La Paz cementery

 The Origins     

2004-2005 When Cholitas Wrestling just emerges in Bolivia: Firstly invented to help old classical wrestling shows, with no money, no press, no strangers. Cholitas wrestling begins his ascension with some two or three women putting everything in the spectacles, for their little public, mostly low class people and their  childrens...Then, everything changed...get lost...

Bolivian Gas rush 

Neighbors stalk the Senkata crimp plant in El Alto, and some trucks launch to make their tour of the neighborhoods of La Paz.

A lady sitting on her empty bottle, one of the many that blocks the avenue near the railway station, wonders if, as the politicians say, gas is a blessing ...

Well, in this daily yellow waltz, this reality in which there are no millionaire sums but scarce food to cook, are the colorful metal tins that carry the dance ...

Woden Pirate Leg 

Manufacture and repair center of prosthetics by the disabled.
They know perfectly the advantages and disadvantages of each material used and the need to adapt each imported or locally manufactured product to the conditions of La Paz. In Bolivia, many times, due to the materials used and the little importance that aesthetics have, since the member is generally hidden, it can be thought that the wooden leg of the old pirate movies was not entirely forgot ... But well, for many, "as long as I can walk", the essential is already done ...

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