Postcard from Sucre

Greetings from the White City. No, not Gondor (for you Lord of the Rings fans), but Sucre, Bolivia's colonial capital.

I'm here for a meeting of organizations working to establish or strengthen libraries in Bolivia. Over the next two days representatives from a number of NGOs and local governments will get together to diagnose the needs and talk about the possibilities. I'm hoping to find out what other organizations are working toward the same goal as our libraries program, learn from their experiences, and bring some fresh ideas back to Santa Cruz. I'm especially interested in the "sustainability piece," as I keep referring to it in my head--the elusive quality that enables a library to take root in a community (with or without government funding) and keep growing for years to come.

But yesterday was my day for sightseeing. I climbed along the steep city streets to the convent of La Recoleta, reminding myself to walk slowly because of the unaccustomed elevation. (Sucre is 9,153 feet--2,790 meters--above sea level.) From there the city spread out before me--white colonial buildings with red tile roofs below, massive grey and white clouds ahead and above. As it started to rain, I bundled my sweater around me and descended back toward the center of town. I spent an hour and a half in a magnificent textiles museum, where I learned about the techniques and the symbolism of an art the women of this area were practicing in the time of the Inca empire--and which many continue to practice to this day. Before leaving the plaza of La Recoleta, I'd bought a weaving from nearby Tarabuco; in the museum I saw many of the same designs worked in the same sheep's wool and dyed with the same natural dyes. Some of the weavings in the museum were crafted as recently as the 1980s; others were 2,000 years old.

In the evening I strolled around the main plaza. I saw the same richness and variety in the people as I'd seen in the Tarabuco weavings: old women with long black braids selling balloons and potato chips; parents chasing kids attracted by said balloons; businessmen in tailored suits deep in discussion; middle-aged couples walking arm in arm and chatting with friends; high school couples walking hand in hand; the occasional tourist, mostly Argentine neo-hippies or body-pierced Europeans. As the weather turned cooler, I turned into a cozy, candlelit café across the street and drank a cup of hot chocolate slowly, almost reverentially, as the cars outside rumbled around what has been the heart of this city since the 16th century.

Now, sitting in an internet café housed in what must have been a colonial-era building, I find myself thinking about contrasts and continuities in the life of a place (or, for that matter, of a people). I'm reminded of William Faulkner's words "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Or as T.S. Eliot put it, "History is a pattern / Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails / On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel / History is now and England."