At the end of November, 2010, I took a trip to Istanbul and Bursa, Turkey. Istanbul is a very old city with a long history of conflicts between European and Asian based empires. Everywhere you go there is evidence of layers of culture stacked on top of each other.

Election season is over in Bolivia with Evo Morales very securely still in power for the next presidential term. Here is a review of the election process there, hopefully it gives you a context to look at the ongoing developments within Bolivia and between Bolivia and the international community.

With the campaigns last fiestas on Thursday evening, La Paz settled down to be pretty quiet. And today has been quiter still. By law, no cars or buses can be on the roads, so La Paz is experiencing once in five years´clean air, and I´m guessing a lot of people over-slept this morning without the honking horns and rumbling engines rolling by their windows.

Yesterday was the final campaign event for Manfred Reyes Villa, candidate for the PPB party for president of Bolivia. It started off with various PPB legislative candidates staked out along the Prado, playing music, dancing, handing out flyers and generally having a good time.

Most of the activity today (aside from the day’s protest – this one about the location of an artisan’s Christmas market) was at the Corte Departamental Electoral where people from all over the department of La Paz (a much larger area than just the city of La Paz) were registering to vote.