We have 70 or 80 journalists who only have ten days to A. meet each other, B. produce good works of investigative, radio, and documentary journalism, C. travel together in the coca growing regions, D. meet, hear from, and interview campesinos, indigenous, workers, their political leaders, human rights defenders, politicians of various tendencies, some chingón Bolivian journalists and academics stopping by to do a presentation, E. daily "poolside blogging", AND F. attend a plethora of extremely valuable presentations, classes, debates, plus the daily work of the workgroups in investigative reporting, radio, and video-documentary through which good works will be produced, translated, and spread throughout the world.

The problem is not one of "not enough" exposure to the masses. The challenge is that there is already so much! ...a constant stream, both on campus, and off, of direct exposure to the social, political, cultural, and mediatic, currents in Bolivia. And in the middle of all of it we have the probability of espionage forces (and perhaps dirty tricks agencies) already engaged in efforts to discredit the school and looking to do real damage when it happens, and we're not going to lose a single participant to their efforts to cause problems. We've done this in Mexico and we know exactly how to do it, and how not to, in Bolivia, where we have long experience already.

To paint the necessary precautions as somehow against our trademark and reputation of always doing everything with, of, by, and for, the masses is not accurate, nor is it a fair characterization. It also disregards the shining truth that we've always done everything that way, and seems stingy on the matter of "benefit of the doubt" that, not being novices at this, we have earned from most corners. Forgive me for swatting it down in this manner, but a myth travels halfway around the world before the truth can put it's pants on, and I'm a mother lion when it comes to protecting the flock.

In this case, obviously, the masses are Bolivian. They're our hosts. And the security concerns come most vocally from them: they want us and all our participants to succeed in this course as much and more than we did in Mexico last year, where we also respected absolutely the recommendations of our Yucatán hosts, to the great benefit of all, the visitors and the locals. (Not to mention a good number of visiting participants have voiced questions and concerns along these lines, too, because as journalists they know that a "low intensity war zone" is nothing to shake a stick at, or be careless with.)

As for your own personal travel plans, or those of anyone else traveling through the region during the same time period, obviously a public forum is not the place to discuss details, but I and the Narco News team are at your service, and anybody else's, via email... for your own security and benefit as well as ours.