Word: bolivia
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Outside of the Himalayas, the highest country on earth is Bolivia, which nestles in the Andes, landlocked in behind Peru and Chile. Since the altitude of La Paz (pop. 350,000) is 11,900 ft., visitors are warned to get used to the thin air before taking a cocktail or attempting anything so athletic as trotting upstairs. At the airport, 1,400 ft. above the city, no jets come in; Panagra's prop pilots sometimes take a whiff of oxygen during stopovers. Yet 4,000,000 people inhabit Bolivia; 75% are on the altiplano (high plain), a vast, barren...
Potatoes for Survival. Last week Bolivia's President Victor Paz Estenssoro, 56, flew to the U.S. for a state visit. Most inhabitants of the altiplano-who don't even know what goes on in La Paz-were unaware that he had gone. It is spring in the Southern Hemisphere, and the Indians are plowing and planting. As their ancestors have done for centuries, those fortunate enough to own oxen bedecked the horns with white streamers and draped their backs with magenta cloth to bring luck. Those without animals simply tore at the grey earth with metal-tipped wooden...
...National Revolutionary Movement operated with a heavy hand, sending its enemies to concentration camps or into exile. Today, though it is plagued by entrenched party politicians ("Tammany Hall," Paz calls them), the party probably speaks for the majority of Bolivians. Its greatest problem has always been transforming Bolivia's land and mineral wealth into a workable modern economy...
...revolution threw out the "tin bar ons"-the Patino, Aramayo and Hochschild families-and nationalized the mines that provide 90% of Bolivia's exports. Under state management, however, payrolls became featherbeds and machinery wore out. The once-rich mines now lose an average $8,500,000 a year. Only lately has Comibol, the government mining company, reached an agreement with the U.S., the Inter-American Development Bank and West Germany for a $38 million modernization of the tin industry-provided Comibol reduced its padded 27,000-man payroll. Last August, when the first 1,015 workers were laid...
...victory left Paz in firm control of Bolivia. Violence is still possible; Paz rides to the palace each morning in a bulletproof Cadillac and keeps a tommy gun in the car. But he is the odds-on favorite to win the party's nomination for another four-year term in the presidential election next June...