My name is Carey Averbook. The first time I was in Bolivia was in 2012. While I was there, I visited a town called Tarata, which is in a rural region called the Valle Alto about 40 minutes to an hour from Cochabamba. I spoke to someone on the street and he asked me if I had ever been to or heard of “Arleengton, Veergeenia.” I’m originally from North Carolina and I had no idea where Arlington was. I told him that and he said “oh well I’ve been there a few times to visit my family.”

It just so happened that, in 2014, I moved to Arlington to go to grad school in D.C. I rented a house in South Arlington, walking distance from a number of Bolivian restaurants. As I made new friends in the Bolivian community, I was amazed to learn about the size of the community in northern Virginia.

As I got to know more people and researched the history of the Bolivian community, I learned more about the Valle Alto – the region of the town that I had visited. And I learned that a lot of the towns there – most of the towns there – have emigrated and a number of them have transplanted to northern Virginia. Some of the towns almost in their entirety have moved to Virginia. For example, Santa Rosa is a town whose census in 2012 had ~250 people living in Santa Rosa and over 500 people from Santa Rosa living in Virginia.

I was really moved by peoples’ stories of coming to Virginia and their lives here, by both their struggles and sadness as well as their joys and resilience. As I mentioned, I came to D.C. for grad school. The program I was in was New Media Photojournalism at The Corcoran School of Art and Design at The George Washington University. I’m an anthropologist, photographer, filmmaker, and multimedia storyteller. In May 2015, I embarked upon my thesis project, documenting, conveying, and honoring the stories of the Bolivian community in northern Virginia and the Valle Alto.

I was born in 1991 and my focus is on social and environmental issues in the Americas and my practice is heavily rooted in anthropology, which I studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an undergraduate. I split my time between Bolivia and the D.C. area.



If you have any inquiries or would like to purchase a copy of the book, I can be reached at caverbook@gmail.com. My personal website is www.careyaverbook.net