Latin America’s Poor Are in the Climate Change Crosshairs

Countries like Bolivia are already suffering from climate disasters, and affected communities can’t keep up with the damage

Amy Booth
12 min readAug 28, 2018
La Paz, Bolivia — February 18, 2018: Debris of a building seen after a flood due to heavy rains brought by El Niño. Photo by Jose Luis Quintana/LatinContent Editorial/Getty

Running through a mountain valley in Bolivia, Avenida Ecológica is the road connecting the small town of Tiquipaya with the neighboring city of Cochabamba. Broad and green, it’s shaded by tall eucalyptus trees, their bark gently flaking in the sun.

If you reach the gas station and look uphill toward the Juventud Chilimarca neighborhood, the scenery changes dramatically. Vast mounds of churned earth and boulders the size of small cars line what might once have been the central thoroughfare. The houses by the roadside have been gutted. Holes in the walls reach from floor to ceiling, and although these were people’s living rooms a year ago, all the furniture is gone.

On the evening of February 6, a huge landslide in the mountains above town tore its way down the hillside, devastating everything in its path. Homes, bridges, cars, and roads were destroyed by a rush of thick mud carrying tree trunks, boulders, and debris.

The first warning was an earth-shaking roar. Some residents, unaware of the scale of the impending disaster, went up to the bridge crossing the river…

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Amy Booth

Hi! I write about social issues in South America and study politics. Bylines: The Guardian, The Independent, Vice, New Internationalist and others.