Social Evil

Life on the treeless, 2 1/2-mile-high Andean altiplano is about as bleak and miserable as anywhere in the world. Seeking release from this reality, the impoverished mountain Indians drink so much hard liquor that whole villages are sometimes knocked out for days at a time. The United Nations commission for technical assistance to Bolivia, currently investigating all phases of Bolivian life, has just about decided that drinking is the country's No. 1 social evil, surpassing even the coca-chewing habit.

From the age of 14 on, most Indians go on a mass toot for every festival of the Inca, Christian and national calendars. Bolivia's independence day, last Sunday, which coincides with the fiesta of the Indians' well-beloved Virgin of Copacabana, set off a Class One or seven-day bender. But even on less special occasions, the Indians' consumption of crude corn chicha reaches fabulous proportions.

Dancing in the Wind. One evening last fortnight, a wandering TIME correspondent found the whole population of San Pedro, on Lake Titicaca, dancing in the waterfront plaza. Nobody seemed to notice the icy winds whistling off the lake. The mayor and all the other officials were looping. The only sober man in town was the innkeeper, a young Croat refugee.

At Puno, on the Peruvian side of the lake, 2,000 garishly dressed Indians, many of them barefoot, were drinking and dancing in the biting cold. All around the town plaza shops did a roaring business selling chicha, cane alcohol or beer.

In Copacabana's handsome square, thousands of Bolivian Indians, the men in grinning masks, the women adorned with sparkling silver belts and jewelry, staged another uproarious carnival. At a border village, scores of Indians were staggering around the patio of a house where a wedding fiesta was in progress. In a room off the patio sat the bride and bridegroom, immobile, glassy-eyed, unable even to speak. "They are seasick," explained a guest.

Twelve-Mile Limit. Protestant missionaries, particularly the Seventh Day Adventists, have done what little they could to curb the mass drunks. Catholic authority over the Indians is at a low ebb because there are so few priests on the altiplano.

The Bolivian government has not done much about the problem either, but this summer a labor delegation from the Catavi tin mining region called on President Urriolagoitia and asked that the sale of alcohol be prohibited or limited in their area. As a result, the government forbade the sale of liquor within twelve miles of the Catavi mines. This act might stimulate tin production, might also stimulate activity outside the twelve-mile limit.

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