78 CultureShock! Bolivia
two by the Bolivia-Perú border. Both Perú and Bolivia have a
Quechua and Aymara foundation.
When Bolivian hero Mariscal Andrés de Santa Cruz
attempted to create a federation of the two countries shortly
after independence, the Lima aristocracy did not trust
the Bolivian hillbillies, and Argentina, to the south, feared
competition from a potential empire to the north. Politics
and not culture determined boundaries.
The most noteworthy cultural rift in Latin America
transcends these political considerations. Highlands and
lowlands are as different culturally as they are geographically,
and only the zones of seasonal change in the Southern Cone
of South America and in Northern Mexico are exempt from
this phenomenon.
A Mexican from the tropical coast of Vera Cruz may have
more in common with a Cuban across the Caribbean than
with another Mexican from the highland State of Michoacan.
An Ecuadorian from the coastal tropics around Guayaquíl
will bond better with a Colombian from tropical Barranquilla