A2 · Elementary
6 min
food securityeconomicssouth americaagriculture
The Country That Invented the Potato Can't Afford One
El país que inventó la papa tiene hambre
Bolivia is in the grip of a serious economic crisis: the currency is collapsing, fuel is scarce, and basic food prices are spiraling out of reach. Fletcher and Octavio dig into how the country that gave the world the potato and quinoa is now struggling to feed itself.
Bolivia vive una crisis económica grave: el dinero no vale, la gasolina escasea y los alimentos básicos cuestan cada vez más. Fletcher y Octavio exploran cómo el país que dio el mundo la papa y la quinoa lucha ahora por alimentar a su propia gente.
5 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| papa | potato (Latin America) | Bolivia tiene más de cuatro mil tipos de papa. |
| escasez | shortage, scarcity | Hay escasez de aceite en los supermercados. |
| caro | expensive | La carne es muy cara ahora. |
| cola | queue, line | Las colas en la gasolinera son muy largas. |
| reservas | reserves | Bolivia no tiene reservas de dinero. |
Bolivia just gave its president the power to send soldiers into the streets against protesters.
And the protesters aren't angry about politics in the abstract.
They're angry because they can't afford to eat.
Sí.
Yes.
Bolivia tiene problemas muy serios ahora.
Bolivia has very serious problems right now.
Walk me through what's actually happening on the ground.
What are people seeing in markets, in gas stations?
La gasolina no hay.
There's no gasoline.
Las colas son muy largas.
The lines are very long.
And that's not just an inconvenience for drivers.
No fuel means food doesn't move.
Trucks don't run, markets don't get stocked.
Exacto.
Exactly.
La comida llega tarde.
The food arrives late.
O no llega.
Or it doesn't arrive at all.
And prices.
I've been reading numbers that genuinely startled me.
Inflation in Bolivia has been running well above what the official figures admit to.
El boliviano pierde valor.
The boliviano is losing value.
Todo es más caro.
Everything is more expensive.
The boliviano.
The currency.
It's been pegged to the dollar for a long time, and Bolivia just...
ran out of dollars to back that peg.
Bolivia no tiene reservas.
Bolivia has no reserves.
Esto es un problema muy grande.
This is a very big problem.
The central bank's foreign reserves have basically collapsed.
Which means the country can't pay for imports.
And Bolivia imports a lot of what it eats.
Sí.
Yes.
Bolivia importa harina, aceite, azúcar.
Bolivia imports flour, oil, sugar.
Here's the part that really got under my skin.
Bolivia is one of the most biodiverse agricultural countries on the planet.
The Andes and the Amazon between them produce an almost absurd variety of food.
Bolivia tiene más de cuatro mil tipos de papa.
Bolivia has more than four thousand types of potato.
Four thousand.
I knew it was a lot, but four thousand varieties of potato in one country.
The potato was domesticated in the Bolivian and Peruvian highlands something like eight thousand years ago.
La papa viene de los Andes.
The potato comes from the Andes.
Es un regalo de Bolivia al mundo.
It is a gift from Bolivia to the world.
A gift that feeds roughly a third of humanity at this point.
And quinoa.
And dozens of varieties of corn.
And cacao.
The list goes on.
Sí, pero ahora los bolivianos no comen bien.
Yes, but now Bolivians are not eating well.
Es muy triste.
It is very sad.
That tension is exactly what makes this story worth sitting with.
The country that gave the world its most important staple crop is now watching its own people queue for cooking oil.
El aceite de cocina no hay en los supermercados.
Cooking oil is not available in supermarkets.
How does a country rich in agricultural heritage end up dependent on imports for something as basic as cooking oil?
That question keeps pulling at me.
Bolivia produce muy poco aceite de soja.
Bolivia produces very little soybean oil.
Necesita importarlo.
It needs to import it.
The Evo Morales era, which ran from 2006 to 2019, built a social safety net on gas revenues.
Bolivia had enormous natural gas reserves.
When gas prices were high, everyone ate.
Antes, el gas paga todo.
Before, gas paid for everything.
Ahora el gas termina.
Now the gas is running out.
The reserves have declined dramatically.
And the model that subsidized food, fuel, everything, stopped working when the revenue dried up.
And successive governments kept the subsidies going anyway, borrowing against a future that wasn't coming.
Ahora la deuda es muy alta.
Now the debt is very high.
Y el dinero no alcanza.
And the money is not enough.
What are people actually eating when cooking oil is scarce and prices are up?
I'm not being glib about this.
I covered food crises in the late nineties, and what people fall back on tells you a lot.
La gente come más papa y menos carne.
People eat more potato and less meat.
La carne es muy cara.
Meat is very expensive.
Back to the potato.
Full circle.
The crop that kept Europe alive through famines and wars for centuries becomes the fallback again in its own homeland.
La papa es barata y hay en Bolivia.
The potato is cheap and available in Bolivia.
Es buena para eso.
It is good for that.
Bolivia's also the second-largest producer of quinoa in the world after Peru.
Quinoa that sells for five dollars a bag in an Austin Whole Foods.
Does any of that export income actually reach the people farming it?
Poco.
A little.
Los agricultores ganan muy poco.
Farmers earn very little.
El dinero va a otros.
The money goes to others.
That asymmetry is infuriating.
The people who grow the food the rest of the world treats as a superfood can't afford their own staples.
That's not a Bolivia problem, that's a global trade architecture problem.
Sí.
Yes.
El mundo compra la quinoa cara.
The world buys the quinoa expensively.
Bolivia recibe poco.
Bolivia receives little.
Now the parliament has given President Paz the power to deploy troops.
Against citizens who are protesting because they can't fill their plates.
History suggests this rarely ends well.
En Bolivia, los militares y los protestantes tienen historia difícil.
In Bolivia, the military and protesters have a difficult history.
The 2003 Gas War.
Dozens killed.
A president who fled by helicopter.
The 2019 protests that drove Morales out.
This is a country that has experienced the consequences of deploying force against hungry people before.
La gente con hambre protesta mucho.
Hungry people protest a lot.
Esto no termina fácil.
This does not end easily.
One thing I kept noticing in your Spanish just now.
You kept saying "papa" for potato, and I know back home in Madrid they say "patata." That's the same word, right?
Two countries, two words?
Sí.
Yes.
En España decimos "patata".
In Spain we say "patata." In Latin America we say "papa."
En América decimos "papa".
So the vegetable came from the Americas, traveled to Europe, and Spain gave it a new name on the way back.
And now half the Spanish-speaking world uses one word and the other half uses another.
That's actually a beautiful little map of colonial history sitting inside everyday vocabulary.
Exacto.
Exactly.
"Papa" viene del quechua.
"Papa" comes from Quechua.
Es la palabra original.
It is the original word.
"Patata" es la versión española.
"Patata" is the Spanish version.
So if I want to sound like I actually know my food history, I should be saying "papa." Which, given that Bolivia invented the thing, seems like the more honest choice.
Though I suspect if I walk into a bar in Madrid and ask for "papas fritas," you'll never forgive me.
No te perdono.
I do not forgive you.
En Madrid, son "patatas bravas".
In Madrid, they are "patatas bravas." Always.
Siempre.