La Paz, Time & Bolivars

By Miro Siegel
Greetings readers! I know it’s been quite some time since the last post, and for that I am sorry, but my mother and I have been very busy in our endeavors, and our schedule fell to the wayside. But now that we’re on the road again and traveling once more, I feel incredulously inspired to return to the blog!
 

Where are we traveling you may ask? In Bolivia, the land of Bolivars ideals and home to La Paz, the highest capital in the world. We’ve only been here for about a week now, but already I can say that I have fallen in love with this country. We’ve visited many iconic places here in La Paz, such as the innovative Teleferrico systems, the witches market, and the valley of the moon, but what I’m interested in talking about today is some of the governmental buildings we saw a few days ago, and more notably, the counter-clockwise nature of the congress building clock tower.

When we noticed it at first we decided to ask a few locals in the area, (street vendors, photographers, street performers) and they all had the same response: “It’s counter-clockwise because we’re in the southern hemisphere.”

Peculiar, right? But after some research I found an article online (which is linked here) that had the answers to some of the questions I posed.

Well, basically the change was made for symbolism’s sake, so the Bolivian government could show it’s people that they’re proud of their ‘southernness’ and Andean heritage. It’s an effort to re-discover some of the countries lost culture, and to find Bolivia’s way.

So, in a sense the denizens of La Paz that we asked were correct. It was because we are in South America, but not exactly for the reasons they thought.

Very interesting, very interesting indeed; time is one of the most symbolic concepts available to man-kind, and by changing the way it flows, the Bolivian government made a pretty large statement.

That’s all, folks, And please expect more updates from us as we see more of Bolivia!