Liberal democracy has never dared face the fact that industrial capitalism is an intensely coercive form of organisation of society that cumulatively constrains men and all of their institutions to work the will of the minority who hold and wield economic power; and that this relentless warping of men’s lives and forms of association becomes less and less the result of voluntary decisions by ‘bad’ men or ‘good’ men and more and more an impersonal web of coercions dictated by the need to keep the system running

(Robert Lynd)

Typical Bolivian music. Our guide and driver gave us the run-down of this and many more on the 8 hour drive back. Imagina this music, the landscapes, the bouncing car and a guy blabbering off in Castillano for the whole feeling.

The biggest salt field in the world. Notice the volcano in the back on one photo is about 100 km far away. Amazing wide views.

Uyuni is a small town in the west of Bolivia, basically in the middle of nowhere. It used to be the central point for trains in Bolivia. The town knew many immigrants from Europe and America who where working in maintainance of the trains and the system; most of the locomotives came from countries like England, Germany and later the US. In the train cemetary there are still some old trains lying around ( photos in a later update ).

In the nineties the Bolivian government decided – cough – was forced to privatise the train system which almost meant an overnight end to the town of Uyuni. Many people moved away to find work in other places. Luckily the town survived only because tourism picked up for the nearby salar. Nowadays the town fully lives on tourism.

Without tourism the town would be another ghosttown hit by the here devastating nightmare of neoliberalism.

Villazon is a border town on the Bolivian side of the border. Crossing the border was remarkably easy. Usually there is a rudimentary bag check or guards try to give the impression checking anything. Not from Argentina to Bolivia; to stamp-stamp done. Which took quite a long time because of the line. Anyway Villazon is nothing important, just a small town.