The La Paz traffic zebras, locally known as Educadores Urbanos Cebras ("Zebra Urban Educators"), are a group of "urban educators" dressed in one-piece zebra costumes. The "zebras", at-risk youth employed by the city government, work to calm traffic and educate citizens in road safety.
Founded in La Paz, Bolivia, the program has since expanded in scope and been implemented in several other Bolivian cities.
The La Paz traffic zebra program was founded in 2001, in response to growing traffic concerns caused by rural flight in Bolivia and the resulting increase in commuter traffic. [1] Antanas Mockus, who founded a similar mime-based program in the 1990s as mayor of Bogotá, consulted with Pablo Groux on designing the traffic zebras. [2] The zebras, or cebritas (a choice inspired by "zebra crossings", or "pasos de cebra"), were conceived of as a humorous way to educate citizens about road safety, on the theory that drivers might respond better to their mockery than to normal law enforcement. [1]
The program initially employed just 24 "zebras", with two people in each zebra suit. [3] These early zebras policed the streets, directing traffic with whistles and flags. [2] As the program developed and grew, the suits were redesigned to single-person outfits which could navigate traffic more easily, and the zebras' techniques shifted more towards humor and encouragement. [3] [2]
The traffic zebra program works with local youth organizations to employ at-risk teens and young adults. The young people, who are employed part-time by the La Paz city government, are given two months of training, paid the local minimum wage, and provided with health insurance. In addition, the program offers them access to classes, mentorship, and training in job skills for future employment. [3] [1] A "Zebra for a Day" ("Cebra Por Un Día") program also allows locals and tourists to try working as a traffic zebra. [4]
Zebras encourage safe driving behavior at pedestrian crossings and traffic lights, often through antics like lying across the hood of a car stopped in a crosswalk, in addition to more standard methods like distributing leaflets and directing traffic. [2] [4] Their mission has expanded to include citizen education on topics besides road safety, such as recycling, water conservation, noise pollution, and bullying. [3] Zebras make appearances at schools, hospitals, nursing homes, homeless shelters, television shows, and street festivals. [5] [2] In 2006, the program added "donkeys" as a negative counterpart to the friendly zebras; the donkeys were later discontinued. [6] [7]
As of 2017, the program had employed over 3000 local youth, at a rate of more than 250 each year. [1] Sister programs in Tarija, Sucre, and El Alto bring the total number of zebras working at any given time to more than 400. [2] [5]
The traffic zebras were declared a cultural asset by the city of La Paz in 2014, and by UNESCO in 2015. [8] [9] In 2016, they received the Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation in the "safe and accessible cities" category. [9] [10]
A children's book based on the La Paz traffic zebras, Mateo Y La Cebra Que Buscaba Un Paso de Peatones ("Mateo and the Zebra who was Looking for a Crosswalk"), was published in 2018. [11] The zebras themselves have performed a similar play, "Mateo y su cebra" ("Mateo and his Zebra"), at local events. [12] A national television show, "The Z", depicts the life of a young man who works as a traffic zebra. [1] [9]
In 2017, John Oliver featured the traffic zebras on his show Last Week Tonight, discussing their impact on the traffic in La Paz and inviting viewers to add videos of dancing zebras to unpleasant news stories. [13] La Paz mayor Luis Revilla invited Oliver to visit the city and participate in the "Zebra for a Day" program, an invitation Oliver declined on-air in favor of dancing with a costumed zebra. [14] In 2020, in collaboration with the United States Postal Service, Oliver released a sheet of stamps which included the zebras among other popular characters presented in the show. [15]
Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in western-central South America. It is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay to the southeast, Argentina to the south, Chile to the southwest, and Peru to the west. The seat of government and administrative capital is La Paz, which contains the executive, legislative, and electoral branches of government, while the constitutional capital is Sucre, the seat of the judiciary. The largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located on the Llanos Orientales, a mostly flat region in the east of the country.
La Paz, officially Nuestra Señora de La Paz, is the seat of government and de facto capital of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. With an estimated 816,044 residents as of 2020, La Paz is the third-most populous city in Bolivia. Its metropolitan area, which is formed by La Paz, El Alto, Achocalla, Viacha, and Mecapaca makes up the second most populous urban area in Bolivia, with a population of 2.2 million, after Santa Cruz de la Sierra with a population of 2.3 million. It is also the capital of the La Paz Department.
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Law enforcement in Bolivia is reliant on the 40,000-member Cuerpo de Policía Nacional responsible for internal security and maintaining law and order. Unlike many South American countries, the Bolivian police force always has been accountable to the national government rather than to state or local officials. The 1950 Organic Law of Police and Carabiniers officially separated the police from the military. Frequently, however, the national police call upon the military for assistance in quelling riots and civil protests.
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Road signs in South Korea are regulated by the Korean Road Traffic Authority.
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Bolivia–Mexico relations are the diplomatic relations between the Plurinational State of Bolivia and the United Mexican States. Both nations are members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, Latin American Integration Association, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States and the United Nations. There is a community of approximately 10,000 Mexican citizens residing in Bolivia.
Tactical urbanism, also commonly referred to as guerrilla urbanism, pop-up urbanism, city repair, D.I.Y. urbanism, planning-by-doing, urban acupuncture, and urban prototyping, is a low-cost, temporary change to the built environment, usually in cities, intended to improve local neighbourhoods and city gathering places.
A guerrilla crosswalk is a pedestrian crossing that has been modified or created without jurisdictional approval, and with the intent of improving pedestrian and other non-automobile safety. These interventions are a common strategy within tactical urbanism, a type of low-cost, often temporary change to the built environment intended to improve local livability. Guerilla crosswalks have been noted in news articles since at least 2009 and have become more well known as an urban strategy in recent years. The first known example of guerilla crosswalks can be found in Canada in 1987 when social activists John Valeriote and Erik Veldman created a crosswalk in Guelph, Ontario for students to safely cross a busy road in front of their school.
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