Evo Morales portrait

From a collection of world leaders that Platon took for The New Yorker during the U.N. General Assembly in October. Says Platon of Evo in the accompanying commentary: "His culture: He wears it with such pride."

Along the Rio Parapeti

On a reporting trip in southeastern Bolivia's Chaco region I got an hour one morning to run along the dirt track that parallels the Parapeti river above Camiri, the local oil/gas boomtown and home to the Guarani national leadership. Just don't fall in the river. "Parapeti" means "Death River" in Guarani. Every few months you hear of another life its fast waters have taken, said Vidal Gomez, a Guarani educator I met who was raised on the river's lower banks. Where Gomez is from, the Parapeti's wide bed is dry half the year.

In my run, I spooked two steers and they ran ahead of me for a full kilometer before veering off the road. Then I ran into more cattle, which was older and almost inert. On the last stretch I sent some pigs scattering off the roadside.

If you're ever in Camiri, stay in the Tinajitas Hotel on the north side of town by the river and do this fabulous 6-miler. The JR in town is where the foreign oil drillers stay. No hotel in town has Internet.

On the Parapeti run return trip you cross over the "puente viejo" and run north until you hit the local military garrison. Run right through it, waving and smiling to the perplexed soldiers.