Andean Nation Does The Numbers

For our Geo Quiz, we focus on a South American nation where there’s no war or national crisis to report, but where starting at midnight this Wednesday, everyone’s under a strict curfew.

This landlocked Andean country is about to conduct a census. So officials ordered a curfew to make sure everyone’s at home to be counted.

The only people allowed out on the streets will be the thousands of census volunteers recruited to carry out the census.

At last count a decade ago, this country’s population was just over 10 million. That number includes members of more than three dozen indigenous groups, who have new rights under a new national constitution.

The leader of this South America nation is an Aymara, the country’s first indigenous president, in fact.

The South American country where a curfew goes into effect at midnight is: Bolivia.

Bolivia’s National Institute of Statistics is in charge of the census to take place over the next three days across the country. In addition to measuring population, census workers will collect demographic, social, and economic data, and survey housing conditions. Question #17 on the census asks: “Does this household have Internet service?” BBC Mundo’s Vladimir Hernandez says there’s a lot at stake in the new census numbers so the government is taking it very seriously.