Voces Bolivianas expands to a remote city of Bolivia

On July 5 Voces Bolivianas started its workshop in Beni, a remote district in the Amazon region. Trinidad is the name of the city, the eighth in Bolivia where the Voces Bolivianas workshop was held. Ericka Pinto worked with 19 participants to teach them the basics of blogs and help them open blogs. Univalle, a local university let them use the computer lab free of charge.

Trinidad1

Workshop Images courtesy Ericka Pinto

From Ericka's blog Alkolica we learn that it was a challenge because of a epidemic of Mayaro epidemic (a strain of dengue) but they succeded. Here is a link to the new blogs created in Beni (Trinidad).

If you follow the project blog of Voces Bolivianas you have probably read about Gabriel Zuleta from Voces Boliviana Santa Cruz Project who is a budding citizen journalist:

Gabriel has the making of a great citizen journalist, as he is very knowledgeable about places and people in his neighborhood. For someone in his early 20s, he knows an enormous amount about the history of this part of Santa Cruz that rarely is seen in the mainstream media. Perhaps, most importantly, he is also very curious and not shy when it comes to interviewing others. Here is one interview he helped conduct of the caretaker of one of the schools where ballots were stolen in the middle of the night.

Marisol Medina writes [es] about the Aymara new year celebrated in every July 21st.

TIWANAKU currently receives more than a hundred both Bolivian and foreign visitors all awaiting for the first rays of sun with hands up to receive energy emanating from the sun god and some even have wishes. Not only is the longest night of the year but also the coldest (10 degrees below zero).

It is interesting that in this part of the world celebrate the New Year twice.

Cristina Quisbert writes in her Bolivia Indigena blog:

As is known in Bolivia is experiencing a wave of racism, discrimination and all kinds of abuses against indigenous people.
….
It appears at this stage of the twenty-first century, there are still colonial circles who think they are still in the sixteenth century.

A ritual for a car

In her English blog Cristina laments on her participation in the Global Voices summit 2008 in Budapest:

I felt as if I were part of a World Parliament because there were people from the different continents, all of them very well represented.

Deisy writes from Santa Cruz De La Sierra, Bolivia in her Turismo en Bolivia (Tourism in Bolivia) blog about dancing:

It is painful to see that current generations do not value their cultural identity may be the fault of those who think that life is just this. Santa Cruz lost their traditions and dances that we do not appreciate and we should try to eradicate the destruction of dance as well as recover the indigenous dance in traditional dress.

Blogging in a cybercafe in El Alto -Image Alberto Medrano

Alberto Medrano writes that it is no longer a novelty to blog in El Alto.

Monica Ticona shares a brief description of the City of Laquinamaya which is located in the municipality of Andres Machaca the department of La Paz:

Laquinamaya ..is an immense plateau filled with straw bravas, and many animals such as herds of llamas and sheep, and small groups of vicuna, a landscape beyond immense dark green (trees).

Mario Durán of Palabras Libres blog [es], who has been blogging for the past three years from El Alto, Bolivia, tells about his blogging life. He blogs from internet cafe where the speed is slow and time is costly. He first sent opeds to newspapers who did not publish them. Then he started to send the notes to digital media and some were published. When one of his article was censored he started looking for alternatives and started a blog in Blogger platform. First it contained his published article. In those days he did not have a digital camera so described images into words.

The 2nd annual Bolivian bloggers conference will take place for two days in El Alto and La Paz on August 29-30. Voces Bolivianas is offering four travel scholarships to the local bloggers this year. To participate the participants will have to post in their blog an entry responding to the following questions (300-400 words):

How can blogs help create bridges between regions, social classes, ethnicities or cultures in Bolivia? Do you have an example from your personal experience?

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