‘After I took this, police officers bundled me into the back of a car and drove me to the local station where I was questioned for a long time. On the way out, they took turns to punch and kick me’
I
n 1993, a photograph I’d taken of a bus driver in Luxor, Egypt, won a competition. The prize was some money, a camera and a return ticket to anywhere in the world. I chose Chile. The camera was an all-bells-and-whistles model: I sold it to a taxi driver at 3am. I’ve always preferred working with light 35mm cameras.
After three months in Chile, I caught a train that rose up to the high Bolivian Altiplano plateau, leaving me with a splitting headache only relieved by some coca tea. I had an open-ended commission with the Financial Times to provide photographs from financial areas of the South American cities I went to, so while my main aim was to wander around photographing exciting things I came across, I also made sure to head to the financial district and government quarters in the city of La Paz, which is where this was taken.
This was the year Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was elected president of Bolivia, and my visit coincided with his campaign. As the election loomed, there was a real sense of apprehension in the city. There were loads of soldiers and police around; there were rumours that any unregistered land would be sequestered by the new government, and I think that’s why the people in this picture were queueing with their papers.
