Since childhood, Juan Carlos has known he wanted to devote his life to the well-being of others. He experimented with jobs as a surveyor and analyst at the Ministry of Labor, as an art teacher and as director of an educational radio program, while doing volunteer work with hospitalized mental patients.

Juan Carlos's environmental focus stems from 1992 when he led a group of children along an Incan trail. There they saw where hundreds of trees had been burned. One child entered a peasant's home and found a starving caged bird with clipped wings. As a result of the trip, the group of youths resolved to "defend our brothers the trees and animals" and the first brigade of Inti Wara Yassi was born.

The activist youth-led movement, which already spread outside the borders of Bolivia is engaging people in life-affirming activities to defend the environment and protect wildlife.

Juan Carlos believes that informed and engaged Bolivian youths can successfully persuade their society to take better care of life in all its forms and safeguard opportunities for future generations in their country. He is organizing the first national Bolivian youth movement, Inti Wara Yassi, to defend the lives of animals, plants, trees and even human beings. For the first time, brigades of young volunteers are cleaning rivers, lakes and parks, organizing protests and marching to denounce illegal logging by timber companies.

They target their actions for maximum coverage by the media, in order to make others care and to bring them along. For producing environmental awareness, there has never been anything like Inti Wara Yassi in the entire Andean region.

Juan Carlos has expertly cultivated the media to promote Inti Wara Yassi. Reporters have been there when the members bought the puma or marched about illegal logging or shut themselves in cages to protest animal abuse. Juan Carlos always has a monkey or a parrot on his shoulder; the youth and animals are very attractive. The power of those images contributes to Juan Carlos's goal to oblige the government to strengthen and comply with environmental protection laws.

Ultimately, Juan Carlos hopes to have 70 percent of Bolivian youth mobilized to defend the environment-and themselves.

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