http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=622363132134&saved

I took this video of one of the four llamas sacrificed that morning. It’s on facebook, so only those of you with a facebook account will be able to see it…apologies.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=622300308034&saved#!/video/video.php?v=622300308034

Key bullfighting vocabulary:

Corrida de Toros: Bullfight
Toro: Bull
Capear: To bullfight (literally: to use one’s cape)
Capeador: Bullfighter
Chicha: Homebrewed corn-mash beverage

1) When the local Pasorapa men explain over their 10th bucket of chicha the night before the festival begins that the bullfights are no big deal and are actually pretty safe, they are lying. No amount of questioning, however, will get them to admit the truth.

• Note: The confident assurances that a few weeks of cow-milking is sufficient preparation for any and all bovine-related activities are false.

2) On the day the festival begins, do not casually inquire if it’s perhaps possible to enter the ring with an experienced capeador after the corrida ends. This will be taken as a binding contract pledging your participation in the actual fight.

3)    Prior to the bullfight, do not casually inquire if it’s perhaps possible to try some of the specially brewed bullfight chicha. This will be taken as a binding contract pledging the consumption of a dozen large gourdfuls.

• Note: when the Pasorapa men promise that the chicha is really not very alcoholic and you shouldn’t worry about drinking, they are lying. It is very alcoholic, and you should worry about drinking.

4)    When offered a chance to take a graceful exit from said binding contract by fighting a calf, do no let said chicha goad you into demanding to be allowed to fight the full-grown bulls.

5)    Do not, under any circumstances, accept more chicha while waiting for the bulls, no matter how strongly the Pasorapenos assure you that you are not buzzed because the chicha really isn’t that strong and you must just be nervous. You are, as they suggest and with good reason, nervous. You’re also buzzed.

• Note: The chicha drinking may or may not be a ruse to distract gringos from noticing that the bulls keep getting larger, faster and angrier over the course of the afternoon.

6)    When the final and most intimidating bull of the day enters the ring and none of your chicha drinking companions enter to fight, this not a cue that it’s your turn. It’s a cue that none of them want to fight Large Brown Bull, because he’s known around town as being muy bravo.

• Note: The word “bravo,” when applied to a bull, does not mean brave. It means “wild” or “uncontrollable.”

7)    When Large Brown Bull enters the ring and does not appear mad, that does not indicate that he was not previously mad nor that he will not become mad. It just means he’s momentarily confused and hoping his cow-harem mates or some fresh alfalfa might suddenly appear.

• Note: Assurances by your now quite large circle of drunk Pasorapenos that Large Brown Bull is really quite playful in his little bull heart are in no way to be trusted.

8)    Unlike in the movies, you will not be given an elegant red cape or flag with which to capear; come prepared with a broomstick and a red article of clothing.

• Note: The red article of clothing should preferably not be a Colombian© ski-jacket that weighs ten pounds.

9)    Unlike in the movies, you are not expected the kill the bull with a sword, but simply to incite him into charging you with your makeshift flag and, while he is charging, simply untie a colored bandana wrapped around his horns, into which has been tied the prize money.

• Note: The bandana will be so tightly tied that, even if you actually manage to get your hand on the fabric during the charge, you will not be able to untie it without a pair of scissors and a magnifying class.
• Note: Absolutely nothing about this process is simple.

10)    The loud shots of “gringo” from the crowd, while intended as encouragement for you, will merely enrage Large Brown Bull to a fever pitch of intensity.

• Note: Rocks thrown by the local boys are not supposed to be encouraging. They’re just trying to further enrage the already furious bull.

11)     When Large Brown Bull lowers his head and begins pawing the ground, that is not a sign that he’s admitting defeat and wants you untie said bandana. It is a sign that he’s about to charge, horns first.

• Note: The bull is not actually charging the Colombia jacket; the jacket has simply attracted his attention to you.

12)    Be aware of large rocks in your general vicinity: tripping while backpedaling rapidly is a very good way to get hoofed in your ribs.

13)    When, after 20-odd charges, your broomstick breaks in half, do not attempt to continue fighting: the relationship between flag length and danger is inversely exponential.

14)    Take advantage of your first goring to quit the ring, and do not be fooled by the clapping of the crowd into thinking you’re doing a good job. They’re just excited about seeing a little blood.

15)     Remember that style counts for everything: if, after your third fall and nearly fatal stamping, when the bull handlers race in with lassos to gingerly trap the steaming, fuming bull, you stand up with a smile and give a bow, you will receive a standing ovation. And then more shouts of “gringo,” and taunts about how you didn’t even get the prize and how you should get back in the ring.

• Note: Be aware that virtually no one ever actually takes the prize off the bull’s horns, a secret that will only be shared after the fight is over.

16)     If you’ve fought bravely and/or been gored, you will receive the prize money for which you vainly strove, once it has been pried off the still-angry-but-now-safely-tied Large Brown Bull.

• Note: Any and all prize money must be immediately spent on buying your extremely drunk chicha drinking companions another 10 buckets of chicha while they ask you to admit that the-bullfight-wasn’t-such-a-big-deal-after-all-and-why-were-you-so-nervous-you-silly-gringo.

17)     Be prepared to receive a minimum of two proposals from drinking companions for their daughters’ hands-in-marriage. It will not be clear if they were (1) impressed by your bullfighting skills, (2) impressed by your prize money, or (3) just really drunk.

• Note: unlike discussions of bullfighting, marriage proposals made while drunk do not carry legally binding status, no matter how many enthusiastic handshakes have been forced on you.

18)    If you ever have the opportunity to capear en una Corrida de Toros, do not, under any circumstances, pass it up.

And there we were, day two of the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, filling an overflowing classroom serving double duty as the home for the Working Group on the International Climate Tribunal. Her words pierced the dense clouds of Venezuelan flags, lefty beards, cholita skirts and raised hands that misted the air, capturing perfectly the mix of optimism, anger and political courage that defined the conference.

As the applause died down, the activist retook her seat and the discussion returned to the more mundane topic at hand: the location of the proposed Climate Tribunal. The question had been more than thoroughly reviewed over the last forty minutes, but, sensing the room was not quite ready for a decision, I turned my attention to the small mound of coca leaves piled on my desk. Where conferences in other countries might have had coffee urns, we were supplied with a sizable percentage of the country’s favorite leafy crop, encouraged to chew by the handful while working group sessions jogged through their labyrinth discussions.

Like nearly every element of the conference, the coca carried a political message of resistance and opposition to the United States; from the initial planning to the elaborate opening ceremonies, the event was a brilliant act of public theater, one designed to not only bolster Bolivia’s international role in the climate debate but to attack the capitalist, imperialist Western powers. It is well-trodden ground. For years Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, has placed the struggle against capitalism in the context of environmentalism, promoting Bolivia as an alternative model of development. His stance was put to the test during the recent Copenhagen accords, where Morales made international headlines by refusing to sign the final climate agreement.

Andean traditions dominated the conference's opening ceremonies; here, a priest blesses coca leaves.

It was within this context that the self-proclaimed spiritual leader of the Andes announced La Conferencia Mundial De Los Pueblos, declaring it an opportunity to bring together the governments of the world “who want to work with their people.” Convened on April 19-22 in Tiquipaya, a small town just outside of Cochabamba, the conference was designed as an opportunity for the gathering’s eponymous pueblos to voice ideas excluded by the elitist Copenhagen talks. Evo’s major goals were to develop a proposal for the climate tribunal, as well as to agree to a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and to organize an international referendum on climate change.

In addition to the stated goals, el cumbre climatico was also an opportunity for Evo to strengthen his political position at home. His vision of an alternative model to capitalism is built around a vague concept of living well rather than living better – in Spanish, vivir bien no vivir mejor. Living well is a catchphrase for what Evo sees as a historical, indigenous cosmology, one that emphasizes harmony with Mother Earth. In Evo’s vision, this cosmology offers a path to save civilization from its overconsuming ways. Though lacking in specifics, it is a deeply empowering narrative for a people that occupy a small, poor, landlocked country, providing the Bolivian people with their own rendezvous with destiny.

Though a large international crowd gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivian students and activists also had a strong presence.

Though the actual influence of Evo’s rhetoric is open for debate, the conference did attract a truly global crowd to little known Cochabamba. International activists, government officials and social movement leaders exchanged greetings and retorts with northern envo-NGO personnel, university students, Bolivians campesinos, and an uncomfortable number of the dredded hippies. The eclectic climate community filled the Tiquipaya township from morning to night, buying, selling, eating, lounging, sunning and generally festivaling, pulling together the best traditions of craft fairs, political rallies and farmers markets into one organic whole.

Meanwhile the formal proceedings centered around 17 working groups focused on issues ranging from carbon markets to forests to climate migration. Each working group, which met for a total of 16 hours over three days, pulled together some few hundred of the attendees with the goal of producing a series of documents that could be presented at the December UN climate talks in Mexico. While the streets were filled with merriment, the working groups were all business. Or, rather, all politics; the sessions were sites of democracy in true action, with all the good, the bad and the ugly. Sets of exchanges would linger over word choice for hours while casually sweeping away decades of legal precedent with the click of a powerpoint-projected mouse. At the same time, the debates were inspiring as only participatory politics can be; meaningful issues were raised, opinions heard, consensus found.

Yet while intellects strived, the debates were anything but academic. While developed countries still debate the validity of climate science, Bolivia is already suffering the consequences of what Evo had dubbed el crisis climatico. La Paz, the capital, draws 40% of its water from surrounding glaciers, which  are already in the process of melting. Climate change is not a question of if, or even when, but how: how bad will it get before the world acts. As one local activist described it to me, climate change is not a potential future but a set of lived experiences. He had made the long journey from La Paz to tell his own story, to tie his own history into the greater tapestry. His aspirations were widely held; there was a sense among Bolivians that the conference was a moment to share their unique perspectives, to be heard by the world at large. “I know the problem is big,” a friend told me, “but this is our chance to change things.” She paused. “We have to change things.” There was hope that, if only they were loud enough, clear enough, if only they could only make us Westerners understand the realities facing Bolivia – the realities facing their families and their communities – we would respond. We would have to respond.

This sense of hope, though, was countered by a deeper undercurrent of anger, an anger focused not on the fact of climate change but on its dynamic. A tragic irony of global warming is that the worst effects will be felt not by the wealthy, emitting nations but by the poorer countries, those least prepared to respond to them; it is in the developing states of the global south, places already prone to environmental fluctuations, with weak infrastructure and little discretionary government funding, that climate change will wreak the most havoc. To students of colonial history, the story is all too familiar, as the countries of south Asia, Africa and Latin America suffer once again for the sins of the West.

It was this anger that reverberated through microphones and strode across fliers, shaking heads and raising fists. Each working group I visited was regularly interrupted by invectives against The West, aimed largely but not exclusively at the United States.  Unfortunately, that justifiable rage took material form through politically preposterous proposals. Working groups demanded that 6% of the GDP of developed countries be put towards repaying a “climate debt” to developing nations, while insisting on a complete reform of the United Nation and the opening of international borders to climate migration. Meanwhile, carbon markets, free trade agreements, agribusiness, genetically engineered crops, privatization and intellectual property rights were among the many global trends opposed by the final Peoples’ Agreement.

These ideas ignored political practicalities, following instead the logic of Bolivia’s social movements, movements that have been empowered by their own successes in domestic politics and further bolstered by the rhetoric of their president. It is a logic that places faith in the visions of indigenous peoples and believes that capitalism, imperialism and colonialism are elements of a single, evil, unitary phenomenon: “Humanity confronts a great dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism, depredation and death,” the Agreement reads, “or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life… [which requires] the recovery, revalorization and strengthening of the knowledge, wisdom and ancestral practices of Indigenous Peoples.”

The conference was structured to provide space for expressing indigenous worldviews and customs.

With this logic dictating the conference proceedings, little in the way of realistic short-term strategies or actions was accomplished. But then, there was little the summit could accomplish in those terms. World powers haven’t listened seriously to the demands of developing countries in the past, and they are unlikely to do so now. Power is power, and those who have it have it. Developed countries shift policies when their people demand it, and not before.

But it is here that the conference – and the logic of Bolivia’s indigenous movements – may ultimately find its purpose. For while political action is always dependent on current political realities, those realities can change. And major change always begins with big ideas that come from the margins of society and slowly gain credibility. The arguments put forth by conference participants were of conviction and overwhelming moral force, and over time, they may move to the center of debate. Meanwhile, by providing a common, democratic space for activists from developing countries, the conference took an important step forward not only by shaping those big ideas but by providing a more unified voice for the low-income nations of the world. This is exactly how movements around big ideas form, and exactly what is needed to start pushing powerful arguments — about climate change and our relationship to the earth – into the center of global political debate.

In the short-term, the glaciers of La Paz and those who depend on them face a difficult if not impossible battle. But in the long-term, it is the emotions and ideas arising from places like Bolivia that may ultimately help us confront climate change. Because any serious attempt to deal with our mounting environmental and resource issues will require a hard look at our basic economic systems and our emphasis on growth; eventually, it may just require a revision of our fundamental understanding of and relationship to Pachamama – and a recognition that harmony is more than just a word.

My first globo – as water balloons are known here – was nearly four weeks out from the beginning of Lent. In the days that followed, the streets became ever more aquatically treacherous. I found myself avoiding open doorways and suspiciously eyeing kids on the streets, knowing their predilection for gringo targets. Americans and women being the prime balloonees, my gringa friends had it even worse. As the days wore on, the soakings became a nearly unavoidable daily ritual, moving from charmingly refreshing to frustratingly inevitable. Luckily, I was to learn, Carnaval holds out charms to the young and old, and the only thing that flows more freely than water is beer.

Though the season’s liberal spirits are in the air – and in the cups – for many weeks, the partying starts in earnest on the first Thursday in February, designated as “Compadres” – technically “godfather” but here closer to “drinking buddies.” Bands of guy friends gather up for a boy’s night out, hitting barbecue restaurants and bottles with equal intensity before regrouping for the bars and discos. Only after midnight can women join the party, though due to the dubious mix of roasted meat and alcohol few seemed so inclined. Femalelessly uninhibited, the toasts continued toasting till the sun rose.

A week later the roles were reversed as the city’s female population sallied forth for Comadres. Comadres most closely resembles a massive bachelorette party, with each group decked out in their unique – to choose a generous word – costumes; bright green headbands, 80’s-style leggings and unsubtle sexual innuendo held the dance floors against all comers.

On Friday morning, after a few hours sleep, a good portion of Cochabamba’s under-30 crowd heads a hundred and fifty mile south to the city of Oruro, home to Bolivia’s most famous Carnaval celebration. Pulling up to the bus terminal after the blessedly brief five-hour ride, however, I feared a mistake had been made. Oruro is a cold and rather somber location, with fading paint, decayed buildings and a noticed lack of street repair. It reminded me of nothing so much as a rough neighborhood in my hometown of Baltimore, a city all-too conscious of its long-past industrial glory. But as we cleared our way from the transit hub, the city’s festival unfolded before us as a quintessentially Bolivian cultural collage: streets filled with roasting chickens and waving flags, youngsters carrying water guns and sweets, masks, streamers and ponchos for sale on every corner. A visit to Oruro at any other time of the year might be hard to justify, but the week of Carnaval is a glorious, noteworthious exception.

The weekend’s events center around la entrada, a dance parade that snakes five kilometers through the city’s central avenues. From early Saturday morning straight through till dawn on Monday, these dances slither and shake uninterrupted through the streets. The route is lined on both sides with large bleachers to accommodate the 300,000-odd festival-goers. The thronging spectators, filling the barely-standing stands, cheer loudly for 48 uninterrupted hours, drinking thousands of beers and exchanging – in true Carnaval spirit – tens of thousands of globos over the heads of the dance groups.

These are no ordinary dance groups, however. From the jungles to the north, lowlands to the east and mountains to the west come more than 30,000 Bolivians, each part of one of more than 100 dance fraternities. These fraternities are both social clubs and dance organizers; over the course of a year, each group might perform five or six times in various festivals while holding dozens of other parties and get-togethers. But these are mere limbering exercises for the Oruro weekend, the apogee of the fraternity calendar. Groups begin weekly practices three months ahead of time, while each member is fitted annually with a hand-stitched original costume. Costumes, though unique to each group, identify the fraternity with one of a dozen dance traditions, each with its own rich history and set of associations. Corporales, for example, growing out of southern, horse-country Tarija, incorporates large metal spurs on each caballero’s ankle. Tinku, meanwhile, is a stylized Andean fight-dance, developed from annual rural boxing matches among young men, historically savage enough to result in death. More than merely a performance style, dances serve as cultural markers, uniting fraternity groups and individuals around the country.

The dedication and seriousness of purpose shows through in each and every troupe. The proud performers spring from foot to foot for more than five hours as they process through the streets, their bright costumes shimmering with each acrobatic move. By day, eagles fly and bears waggle before the crowds, men somersaulting and jeweled, bedecked women of all ages eliciting loud shots of “beso” – kiss – from the eager crowd. By night, the streets alight with live flames licking from ornate headdresses and firecrackers shooting from otherwise-traditional spears. It is a flowing sea of coordinated movement, with waves of hundred-person marching bands cresting among the agile human waters.

Most famous of all the dances is la diablada, a performance narrative that pits El Diablo against the Archangel Michael in a battle of temptation and purity for the soul of Carnaval. Fierce devil masks and blazing swords parry back and forth as the eternal adversaries joust in perfect sync over the asphalt and through the plazas. The contest is more than metaphor amidst a weekend that so strangely yet smoothly unites the base and the spiritual. Carnaval would not be Carnaval without heavy drinking and everything that accompanies it – merrymaking, boisterousness, sex and the occasional outbreak of violence. Yet it maintains a deeply and authentically religious air. Saturday morning begins with a procession of priests blessing the parade and offering thanksgivings. Early Sunday morning, fraternity member still on their feet unite at the city’s cathedral to receive a blessing from the city’s Virgin del Socavón, the patron saint of miners, to whom the festival is dedicated. This is far from formulaic – praying for the year ahead, many tears are shed by the exhausted but pious devotee dancers.

The weekend is not only religious but civic. Each fraternity shoulders the cost of their performance; the hand-made customs, instrument rentals and transportation to and from Oruro can cost more than $20,000, a small fortune here in Bolivia. The dances are a gift both to the Virgin and to the citizens of Oruro, given as a sign of religious devotion and community spirit.

This gift, in turn, is recognized and respected by the crowds. While la gente party beyond their heart’s content in the stands, they maintain a deep appreciation for the dancers; globos, for example, can be hurled with alarming force at friends and foes alike, but let an errant balloon hit a costume-clad bailerine and the crowd will turn with immediate anger. There are two simultaneous fiestas – the tawdry party of the stands and the holy celebration of the streets. And though the physical lines between participants and spectators blur as the weekend intoxicates itself, an ethical boundary remains.

The alcohol-infused pilgrimage is not the only strange weave of the weekend. While the horned dancers who make up la diablada – the devil’s dance – purportedly represent the Christian Satan, the tradition dates directly back to the worship of Huari, a pre-Columbian god of the underworld who jealously protected his mineral wealth and demanded elaborate ceremonies. His symbols, especially the snake and the grasshopper, are in proud display in many of the weekend costumes. The history of the weekend is one of this kind of continuous adaptation to new practices and new cultures, passing not only the two religions but myth and folklore through one vibrant loom.

After a long weekend of partying – many Bolivians come without lodgings and stay on the streets for the full two days – attendees return home by the bus and truckload late Sunday and early Monday. But while Carnaval Orureno slowly unwinds, the same colorful weave of practices is unrolling across the country. Monday and Tuesday are feriadas, national holidays, with every school and virtually every company and store in the country closed. The commercial pause lets families gather in their homes. Many use the time to attend church and prepare for Lent. Many more – including some of those same Catholics – hold challahs, a traditional Andean ceremony to bless homes and businesses. Koas – collections of herbs, coca leaves, and other small offerings to pachamama – are burned over coal fires, drifting earthy smoke through avenues and alleys. While these parallel religious devotions are being offered, families of every cloth are buying bonbons and confetti in ample measure, filling children’s mouths with sweets and streets with brightly strewn fliers. Brightly strewn wet fliers, that is; las feriadas are the height of the water wars, as trucks filled with young people careen through town with tanks of water, bucketing unlucky pedestrians and generally wrecking mayhem.

The following weekend, floods subsided, towns and cities large and small hold their own entradas. Though not on the scale of Oruro, these are still massive celebrations that shut down city centers and draw tens of thousands of spectators; Cochabamba’s proceso de procesos, their version of the parade, is the city’s largest party of the year.

Exhausted from the previous week, I had only joined Cocha’s festivities at 8 pm, 12 hours behind my already drunken compatriots. And I must admit that, despite my late start, by the proceso’s last procession late Saturday night I was over-ready for rest, relaxation and a bit of mental and physical cleansing. Rising early Sunday morning for an ambitious jog, I realized I was not the only one ready to forget the exuberances of the last few weeks – there was a an army of city employees filling the streets, dismantling the bleachers and cleaning up the debris of Cochabamba’s great hoorah. Within hours, the city was back to its quasi-orderly self, and bleary-eyed families were heading through the now-clean streets to Mass.

The rapid shift from cheap beer to holy sacrament was strangely in harmony with the rest of the season. It is these contradictory elements – the raucous boozing and the pious praying, the Christian and the pagan, the tranquil family gatherings and the riotous streets – that ultimately define Carnaval. It is a plurination-wide moment of release, a month of relaxed hierarchy, occasional lawlessness and the flaunting of social mores. And yet it is also a festival deeply rooted in community, a space in time where people come together to celebrate in a form that binds together Bolivia’s complicated cultural fibers. More than even the water balloons, I was most struck by the deeply communal sense of joy that bounded through each and every household throughout those early weeks of February, a social fabric woven more tightly than any I’ve seen in America.

My first visit to La Cancha was an overwhelmingly mix of sights, smells, sounds and jabbed elbows. Crossing Calle Aroma, the traditional northern border of the market, there is a veritable assault of vendors vending from above and below, from left and right, from the streets, sidewalks and storefronts. The sheer variety of products makes Wal-Mart look like a provincial corner store: flat-screen televisions and empanadas, coca leaves and Nike cleats, Levi jeans, hand-made jewelry and imported French colognes. The market is chaotically well-organized; there’s no map or guide to the endless labyrinth, but Cochabambinos can steer helpless gringos to rows of belts, wholesale fruits, electronics, kitchenware, and artisan goods (a mortal tourist trap).

The market’s physical form reflects a hierarchy of income: at the higher financial end, individuals sell their wares from rented or owned shops; outside these stores, salesmen and women rent street and market stalls, while circling around them others set up shop on corners and on the edges of sidewalk; finally, thousands more ambulate, selling from wheelbarrows and baskets. These layers also represent a chronological progression – the market has slowly grown over the preceding decades, expanding both in territory and in density as the region’s population has swelled and as more and more of the economy has moved to the streets.

from store to street

Not all of Cochabamba exhibits the same frenzied economic activity; in fact, in the city as a whole, there is a far more relaxed attitude towards commerce than one would find in any Western country. On any given street, three or four out of every ten stores may be closed – because the owners are on vacation, because business is slow, because no one has yet arrived to open it. As in many other Spanish-speaking countries, lunch is the primary meal of the day, and many businesses close from 12:00 to 3 to allow their employees to return home to eat. This holds not only for small family corner stores but for large banks, cell phone distributors and government offices. Hours are not only endlessly variable but invariably unposted. In the same vein, customer service could not be described as highly prized – there is an underlying assumption that the stores are providing a service by being open for business in the first place. Because chain stores are rare and most operations are family-owned and independent, there is an unpredictability and informality to business that – for better or worse – is rare in the ever-orderly commerce of the United States.

But things are different on the south side of Calle Aroma. There, stalls open bright and early Monday through Saturday, and lunch is taken on the job. Each and every vendor is eager for your business – because if they don’t get you, the competitors on either side, in front and behind surely will. The intensity of competition gives new meaning to the term marketplace – in the central clothing region, there are at least two hundred stalls selling virtually identical selections of jeans; the laws of supply and demand unfold in real time. Capitalism sparks in the air from the sheer energy exerted to make sales and turn a profit.

Making the sale

The products on display, meanwhile, speak to Bolivia’s integration into an ever-more global economy. Tens of thousands of pirated DVDs go for a few bolivianos a piece. [Even more appealing than the prices are the astonishing provenances of the movies – a recently purchased copy of Inglourious Basterds was dubbed from French to Spanish, filmed inside a movie theater using Russian subtitles and delivered in an English DVD case.]

Next to the DVDs are ripped software packages – a program as expensive as Microsoft Suite goes for less than $2. Shampoos, cell phones, vacuums, cameras, mugs, backpacks, pencils and polo shirts all bear the stamp of intercontinental commerce. Meanwhile, imported used t-shirts, button-downs and trucker-hats from the US fill street after street, dressing lower-income Bolivians in bizarrely retro outfits (“Give Hugs not Drugs,” reads my local fruit-seller’s baseball cap). Nowhere is the turbo global-consumption more evident than in the sneaker neighborhood, where Puma and Nike battle it out with Adidas and Reebok, all competing against identical Chinese knock-offs in every imaginable shape, size, color and quality. Never could I have imagined that were so many varieties of shoe-wear in all the world.

But a small sampling of the vast shoe menu

Yet despite the tremendous range of goods — and the cornucopia of sneakers — La Cancha bears little relation to modern malls. It is a unique hybrid of traditional Bolivian commerce and modern capitalism, of dead baby farm animals and Nintendo gaming systems; it is a collision of worlds. Unlike other more traditional businesses in Cochabamba, La Cancha is always open and the customer is almost always right. But as in traditional Bolivian towns, Wednesdays and Saturdays remain Market Days, when the already crowded streets are flooded with more goods, products and peoples. When it storms, the streets are literally flooded, washing the debris of twenty thousand people along the ankles of buyers and sellers alike. Imported home theaters go for $5,000 while home-grown bananas sell seis por un peso (42 bananas for $1 US). Cactus fruit fight for space with the latest Abercrombie & Fitch designs. The rich come for computers and the poor for rice.

It is this collision that makes La Cancha such an accurate microcosm of the Bolivian economy. Like any market, it is a site of commerce and competition. Money is exchanged, profits earned, goods distributed. Bolivia’s economy functions like any other Western economy in this regard, providing for consumer freedom and protecting private property. But capitalism requires much more than free exchange – it requires the aggregation and investment of capital. It is here that Bolivia lags behind. Virtually all electronics, heavy machinery, luxury goods and processed foods sold in La Cancha are produced in foreign countries, and the real profits from their sales return home. There is no industrial base in Bolivia, nor any domestic demand – given the globally enforced trade liberalization policies – to stimulate one. Without that industry, without organic economic growth, there is a sharp disparity between the goods for sale and the conditions in which they’re sold, between the dollar-priced electronics and Boliviano-priced vegetables, between the luxuries of the upper-class and the necessities of the lower. While La Cancha has received the goods and absorbed the forms that constitute Western commerce, Bolivia still lacks the economic content that would truly drive growth.

I took out my camera, and looked around nervously. I feared neither robbery nor lynching but the bemused looks of the neighborhood’s paceñas (as those from La Paz are known). I had spent the last hour getting myself purposefully –and thoroughly — lost in the city, and now found myself in a most untouristy outskirt of town.

“Outskirt” is actually a misleading term – “highskirt” would be more accurate. Founded in 1548, La Paz is built into a deep valley. As the city grows out, it grows up. And with the rapid population increase of the last decade, that’s meant serious vertical integration; while the downtown is hilly, the surrounding neighborhoods are upright mountainous. Walking in nearly any direction from the center, you soon reach shantytowns built on slopes of 15˚ and 20˚. Too steep for cars, roads are replaced by staircases. Rather, the staircases are the roads – small corner stores are located at major intersection, and drainage systems run alongside them. Without trucks to carry goods, human backs and large, colorful canvas bags – tied at the top and thrown over the shoulder – fill in.

The houses and infrastructure – not to mention to the robbercrows – are a testament to the lack of government presence; the roads are built largely through community efforts, resulting in construction that, while sturdy, lacks any coherent plan or uniformity. The sewage system is makeshift at best; deep, narrow ravines interspersed among the neighborhoods have become waste channels, converging on the river that runs through the heart of the valley. Still, the views are so incredible, and the air so clear, that the neighborhoods maintain a certain clarified beauty.

Above the neighborhoods run long ridges traced by single lane highways – the stairways end along these roads, where residents can transfer to trufis to drive down in to the city. Trufis are like buses, only not. Large vans run privately by unions, they follow set routes around Bolivian cities. There are no maps for the trufi system; rather, each trufi has a sign in the window which lists major landmarks by which the van will pass. Locals, of course, know the routes. Foreigners, of course, do not. Adding to the excitement of the trufi ride is the boarding and seating process. Desperately trying to read the trufi sign as they zig by, you raise your hand. The trufi swerves to a stop, and the van door swings open. Jumping in, you realize there are 17 people already sitting in 10 seats. As you fail to make yourself comfortable, the door speeds back into place behind you and the snaking journey continues.

After trufi-snaking my own way down from the ridge I had just ascended, I wandered through La Paz’s central market. Like the population, it has expanded upwards and outwards from the city center, so that many of the narrow streets – too steep for cars – are home only to stalls, vendors and shoppers. The sheer commercial scope takes one’s breath away – a blessing in the fish and seafood zone. There are kilometers of sneakers, alleys of butchers, avenues of fruit and ramparts of potatoes. Before coming to Bolivia, I thought potatoes came in two flavors: red and white. Here, they come in 800. Literally. Try to imagine 800 kinds of potatoes.

Overcoming my potato-induced paralysis, I finally managed to navigate my way out of the sellable labyrinth and into La Plaza de La Catedral de San Francisco, the historic center of the city. Resting in the public square, fresh-baked empanada in hand, I realized that, somewhere over the course of my adventure, I’d fallen in love with the city, charmed by the unique combination of human ingenuity, rock-hewn elegance and the light-headed breathlessness only possible in a capitol city located more than 3,000 meters above sea level. Nowhere else have man and mountain, I believe, shaped each other in such a strangely beautiful way.

Evo is declared Spiritual Leader http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/01/21/recibe-evo-morales-baston-de-mando-indigena/

The setting was appropriate. Kalasasaya lies at the center of the remains of the most important city of the Tiahuanaco civilization, a pre-Incan empire that controlled large swaths of the Andes from the 7th to 12th century C.E. The ancient complex is one of only a few testaments that remain to speak of the peoples that flourished in the Bolivian highlands before the Spanish invasion; as a result, the social movements that seek to link themselves to the region’s pre-colonial history have adopted the ruins as a spiritual home. The site has particular resonance for the Aymara, Bolivia’s largest indigenous group and the one to which Morales himself belongs; as the traditional people of the altiplano, they consider themselves directly connected to the Tiahuanaco.

Driving west from La Paz early that morning, I could see why the region had served as a spiritual center for over a thousand years. The remains of the timeworn city still stand proudly above the plateau, echoing the sharp-crowned mountains that surround the sun-battered, wind-fused plains. The land has a tundra beauty of bright flatness and green mountain air, of open horizons crowded by distant-clear peaks.

By the time I arrived at 8:30 am, thousands of elaborately dressed campesinos and campesinas were already drifting slowly from the highway towards the ruins, stopping along the way to buy fresh fruit, fresh coca and refreshing MAS paraphernalia. Decked out in my own brand-new bright-blue MAS headband and Evo scarf, I joined the crowd’s mile-long trek. Circling round a long police arc, we made our way into an open field facing the Temple.

View of the Temple of Kalasasaya, without crowds http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalasasaya

The official ordination, scheduled for the following day (Friday, January 22) in La Paz at the Presidential Palace, was designed primarily for journalists, political elite and foreign dignitaries; there would be a long speech to the new Congress, a formal military parade and the ceremonial oath of office. But Thursday’s investiture was a celebration of and for Evo’s political base. And the base was keen to take advantage. From 9 to 11 am, the crowd grew from perhaps five to thirty thousand, as troupes representing various indigenous groups, unions and political parties arrived not only from all regions of Bolivia but from Argentina, Peru, Chile and other Latin American countries. Crews of cholitas (campesina women) wearing traditional skirts of bright red and dark umber sat in large circles sharing rice and corn. Musical troupes in luminescent green and orange danced to folk songs springing from Andean flutes and drums. Hundreds of banners large and small proudly displayed associations and affiliations, while a giant fifty-foot Evo balloon-doll graced the sky. The gathering was part political rally, part religious pilgrimage and part music festival; I couldn’t decide whether to shout slogans, meditate or crack a beer and join in the dancing.

Traditional Instruments and Outfits http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/01/21/recibe-evo-morales-baston-de-mando-indigena/

The day was designed not only to celebrate Evo’s victory but to demonstrate the right of his indigenous supporters to mark that celebration with their own customs. It was an opportunity fully embraced. At 11 am, as the helicopter cruised to the ground behind the temple walls, Evo was met by the community’s amautas aymaras – somewhere between wisemen and priests – who ritually cleansed him with holy water and herbs before dressing him in a specially woven llama-wool robe – unku, in Aymara.

http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/01/21/recibe-evo-morales-baston-de-mando-indigena/

The wool itself represented communication, while the Andean symbols decorating it imbued prosperity, wisdom and success. On his head, los amautas placed a ch’uku, a hat with four corners representing the four cardinal points.

Properly attired, the politician turned priest-king ascended la pirámide de Akapana, a small nearby hill with the remains of a Tiahuanacoan altar, where he received the blessings from the South, North, East and West, respectively representing economic stability, the union of the country’s Orient and Occident, health for all Bolivians and wisdom for the leader himself.

http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/01/21/recibe-evo-morales-baston-de-mando-indigena/

Benedictions received, Morales and his entourage threaded their way back down to the Temple, escorted by an Aymara anciana (elderly woman) of more than 100 years of age and borne along by the galloping applause of the assembled crowd.  Framed by a large archway in the Temple wall, the coronation began in earnest. Morales received two bastones de mando indígenas – which I will poorly translate as “scepters of indigenous authority” – from a pair of children in llama white. Representatives of important constituencies, including labor syndicates, women’s collectives and community coalitions, paraded by in formation and were duly recognized in turn. Finally, leaders of indigenous social movements from across the Americas – from Peru, Ecuador, the US, and Canada, among others – climbed the stairs one at a time to present the Chief with laurels, robes and other symbolic gifts.

Fully adorned, Evo turned to address the crowd, now fifty thousand strong, in both Quechua and Aymara, before launching into a longer discourse in Spanish. He touched on themes familiar to those who have followed his presidency: on the power of social movements, the transition from a colonial to a plurinational state, and the need for ongoing political reform. He leveled his standard attacks on Capitalism, a term that stands in for all things American (U.S.), Western, Imperialist, Colonialist and Generally Wrong.

http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/01/21/recibe-evo-morales-baston-de-mando-indigena/

Cheers, however, were reserved for his discussion of the historical purpose of the Bolivian people. In a world endangered by capitalism, a “new light of hope emerges from the people that never forget…a form of life lived in complementariness and solidarity…with Mother Earth … [in which] we know how to distribute wealth among all and live in harmony with all.”  The Bolivians are descendents of people who have long waged a battle against capitalism, “always standing and never kneeling in the confrontation.”

http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/01/21/recibe-evo-morales-baston-de-mando-indigena/

Throughout the speech, repeated references to native predecessors, complemented by pledges to fight for future generations, reinforced a blunt political effort to fit the Morales administration – and the movements that brought it into power – into a historical social narrative; the morning as a whole sought to reach both back and forward in time, stretching across three millennia from the Andean nobility of the Tiahuanaco people to the recently purchased Chinese helicopter fleet. Evo was not only taking on the spiritual mantle of a centuries-old struggle for the rights and dignity of the indigenous peoples of America but proudly leading Bolivia forward in to the 21st century.

Yet while the morning’s narrative captured the imagination (at least of this partial observer), it also perfectly encapsulated the tensions latent in Evo’s reign. The ritual consciously invoked kingship while investing Morales with a heavy spiritual and political charge, thereby casting the president as a leader apart, the luminary of the world’s indigenous movements. And yet by defining the struggle in broad historical terms and situating his worldview firmly in the traditions of Bolivia’s peoples, Evo simultaneously presented himself as no more than an expression of movements that have long driven Bolivia forward.

These tensions manifest themselves in the relationship between Evo and his supporters, as that morning’s festivities well demonstrated. While supporters had made the trek from wide and far to bear witness to the ceremony, there seemed to be at least equal enthusiasm directed towards fellow political travelers. Attention would shift to the ceremony or the speech at moments of particular valence, but remained largely focused on the festivities themselves – the dancing, the hearty congratulations, the reunions of veterans of battles won and lost. I had the feeling that while Evo felt he had won the battle, la gente knew they had won the war: a victory of, by and for the people. The question is one of power and its balance. In the United States, when the elections end, the vast majority of people return to their apolitical lives. But Bolivia’s social movements, empowered by victories over the last decade, retain a keen sense of agency; Evo did not create them, and does not control them.

Or, at least, so believe the movement actors with whom I’ve spoken. What Evo believes – whether he sees himself as the indispensable spiritual guide or the humble movement cipher – is harder to determine. Though he rose to elected office through his work as a union-leader and organizer, it can be difficult to retain one’s grassroots orientation when in power, especially amidst such pomp and ceremony. As long as Evo’s political decisions remain aligned with the will of Bolivia’s social movements, the tensions between the two roles will remain dormant. But if paths diverge – if Evo finds himself a leader with no followers – the social movements may begin to view him as an obstacle in the way of reform, and then neither North nor South nor East nor West will be able to save him.

At the moment, this possibility seems remote – Evo won an election with 64% of the vote only a few short weeks ago. But in the months and years ahead, Evo must confront a series of critical policy questions that will pit the interests of his base against other national constituencies and needs. He has promised communities control over their natural resources, while also pledging to expand natural gas production; already, the state-run gas company YPFB has expressed concern about tensions with indigenous groups. His rhetoric around Pacha Mama and pledges to protect the environment come into clear conflict not only with these proposed exploitations of natural gas but with his ideas for lithium, timber and hydro-power use. He campaigned partially on regional and municipal autonomy, and yet has a government filled with Marxists keen on central state power. While advocating a move towards socialism, he has made few moves to challenge private property. With a five-year term ahead of him, it will be near impossible to avoid making political decisions that alienate his allies.

Morales is aware of these challenges. His speech touched on the importance of plurinational consensus and on the challenges of building a unified state. But the assemblage seemed relatively uninterested in these details of governance; by the time the formal remarks concluded, they were more than ready to return to the celebration. The crowd shouldered towards the open fields beyond the temple grounds, where hundreds of vendors stood ready with cold Paceñas and hot plates. They were joyful, united by a collective embrace of indigenous power embodied in the person of their president. That joy carried over in to a two-day long party that continued long after Evo had returned to La Paz to face the more mundane and complex tasks of governance. In that effort, he may very well succeed in balancing the interests of his traditional base and the exigencies of the country as a whole. But if he fails, he may discover that luminary though he is, and spiritual guide though he may be, he is at the same time only one actor in a struggle greater than himself.

Of course, Christmas in Bolivia is not an American invention. Christianity has deep roots in Bolivia – more than 80% of the country is Catholic, a legacy of the Spanish conquest and centuries of missionary work. But historically the nativity has been celebrated in a subdued fashion; it was marked by the exchange of simple gifts of utility within families, and the religious observations required by the Church. A cause for celebration, but a far cry from the season of elaborate decoration and gift-giving that we associate with the holiday in America.

Over the last few decades, however, traditions have started to shift, especially among the urban middle and upper class. Here in Cochabamba, for example, there are an awful lot of snowmen running around the streets of a city where the temperature never drops below freezing. Sleds and fake icicles fight for precious shelf space with jolly, white cherubic Santa Claus figurines and imported fruitcakes. Outside the Cine Center — a monolithic movie theater that is the most poignant testimony to Western-style development in the city — stands a massive lime-green plastic tree, which has been drawing local attention for nearly a month; exiting a movie last week, I saw a couple in the midst of their wedding day posing for photos in front of it. The tree is replicated in households around the city; pines are not native to this clime. Meanwhile, Christmas carols sound their customary jingles on the streets and in the houses – sometimes with Spanish dubbing, but more often with the same lyrics that are playing through the radios of the U.S.

Cochabamba's Cine Center. Notice the sled floating above the palm trees...

Bolivians still celebrate in their own fashion – Christmas dinner starts at midnight, and gift giving at 2 am. But it all carries an American touch. My family’s special Christmas tablecloth is decorated with those same ubiquitous yet utterly alien snowmen, while their red hats all read “Merry Christmas” (not “Feliz Navidad”); nearly all their holiday trappings are in English. They are celebrating the birth of Christ, but they are also celebrating their ability to participate in a northern version of the sacred day.

My family's snowy table cloth

Though I’ve yet to speak to any representatives of the Catholic Church, I can imagine there are mixed feelings about the growth of the Christmas industry here. Manufacturers of Christmas goods, on the other hand, are only too happy to oblige the growing demand.

Like many patterns of consumption, however, corporations are not just meeting demand, but creating it; international corporations helped spur the growth of the holiday in the US, and they have played a similar role here. Coca-Cola, for example, sponsors Conciertos Navidades and festivals in plazas around the city, and the ever-smiling Coke Santa Claus speaks remarkably fluent Spanish. That same Cine Center tree bears their logo proudly. At a minimum, American corporations have helped to spread a very specific notion of what constitutes holiday cheer, and its not just quality time with the family.

Coke uses its brand to construct a certain image of Christmas. Here, they've literally built a Christmas tree out of Coke bottles.

US corporations here both propagate American culture and benefit from its popularity. Evangelical churches proselytizing in Bolivia seem to operate in a not dissimilar way [in Bolivia, “evangelical” is a blanket term for all protestant churches]. The country was nearly universally Catholic for most of its history, but beginning in the early 1970’s los evangelicos started gaining ground among the population. The missionary work started in cities, and is still largely an urban phenomenon. But despite their relatively small size, they have a tremendously loud presence. While the old Catholic church buildings that populate Cochabamba blend in to the landscape of the city, las iglesias evangelicas broadcast their presence through huge billboards facing the sidewalks. These broad-signs feature bright, smiling, devoted families, who stand out not for their cheery countenances but for the fact that they universally lily-white; I have yet to see a single darker-skinned devotee in any church’s advertising campaign. One can’t help but feel that the draw of the churches is not only their religious message but also the potential they provide for identification and connection with American culture.

Religion and religious practices are always tied to cultural and economic power. But there is an interesting parallel to be drawn here specifically between the relationship of colonial missionary work to its current version, and colonialism more broadly to today’s projection of Western economic power.

Whatever the exact cause of the shift in Christmas rituals here – market forces, cultural aspirations – we can be sure that images of American life are playing a significant role. How else to explain a White Christmas in a tropical land?

As the legs slowly stopped kicking, the llama was flipped over. I could tell the town’s leader had some experience with these ceremonies – he cut a small hole in the chest, peeled back the skin, plunged his hand in to the elbow and came out immediately with the fading heart. “Ha-ya-ya,” the small assembly shouted in support, as the organ was reverentially placed on the coal fire smoldering alongside the broad, flat rock. A local elder dipped his finger in the blood, and gave each of the men a fingerprint on the forehead. Drinks were poured out to Pacha Mama – mother earth – and then the party resumed. Chicha (a Bolivian corn mash) was shared round, as young musicians struck up beats on tanned drums and flutes and reached into the communal stash of coca leaves. If it had not been for the eagerly-wielded camcorders, Nike-emblazoned t-shirts and Coke bottles being shared among the children, I might have believed I was in the midst of an Incan festival.

An Andean llama, heart included (courtesy of National Geographic).

The scene was all the more dramatic for the surroundings – three hours south of Cochabamba, we were in a large, sparsely populated valley deep en el campo (the countryside). A few hundred feet below us, the remains of the bonfire from the previous night’s party still smoldered amidst a small clearing populated with ramshackle tents and lean-tos. On the plateau around us were the remains of a large Incan city – some 2000 people had called the valley home five hundred years ago, and large sections of buildings stood extant. Besides the village ran a deep ravine, in to which fell a stunning 20-meter waterfall. Tall mountains surrounded the valley, running for a hundred kilometers in every direction.

“We are here to celebrate a new year and to bring luck for the seasons ahead,” the mayor continued, blood-stained and heart-smoked. “And we are blessed to be able to do so during a historical moment of change led by our own president Evo Morales. Today, we can all take pride in the heritage of los pueblos originarios and embrace their relationship to mother earth – an relationship that provides us with an alternative vision to the capitalism that threatens our traditions, our communities and our world.”

I had heard a few of these speeches over the last 12 hours. We’d reached the gathering around 9 pm the night before, spending the last hour of the trip navigating our way along the dirt track that covered the last few dozen kilometers from the highway (I use the term generously) to the remote site. It was a miracle we’d made it at all; we had to deboard our ancient sedan to ford multiple rivers that flooded across the narrow path, which I was sure we’re going to sweep the car downstream. Crossing an ancient log bridge lit only by the meager light of our cell phone screens and shivering in the cold country air, I had nearly regretted agreeing to the adventure; all 8 people who’d squeezed in to the car were guilty of not only gross vehicular negligence but of a noteworthy lack of preparation [predictably, my camera ran out of batteries five pictures in to the evening].

Despite the mishaps, the party was only just beginning when we finally arrived, and lasted through hours of darkness, gallons of booze and a thunderstorm that graced the valley from 4 to 8 am. While the party had itself been an unforgettable blur of dancing and shadows, it was that moment of sacrifice that best encapsulated the flavor of the festival, a blend of equal parts ancient tradition, questionable historical and cultural narratives and political rhetoric (add alcohol, coca and tobacco to taste).

A pre-thunderstorm, pre-camera-death picture of the celebration.

The night before, over cups of chicha, a local guide had explained that the ceremony, which was marking its 14th anniversary, was to celebrate the traditions of the Incans who had lived in the ancient town. From its heights, they had ruled the surrounding region, employing innovative farming methods and spreading their language and religious practices.

I was surprised neither to hear the story, nor to detect the note of pleasure in his voice when he implied that his townsfolk were the inheritors of these noble traditions. The desire to trace one’s lineage back to pre-Spanish Andean empires has spread widely among the campesino communities of Bolivia’s west and central regions over the last few decades, and with it a sense of historical pride in their (possible) forebear’s accomplishments. The shift towards eagerly embracing these lines descent can be traced back to the early 1970’s, when campesino social movements –composed of rural farmers, miners and workers, of both native and mestizo descent — began emphasizing the history of indigenous civilization as a powerful source of identity for the people of the countryside. Building on the practices and stories that survived – or emerged from — hundreds of years of cultural intermixture, oppression, and natural evolution, social movement leaders constructed a powerful narrative of origin from which to build cultural pride and political power.

Las historias de los pueblos orginarios (historias translates as both story and history) blend together the accomplishments of both the Incan and Mayan empires with those of other regional tribes and peoples. Distinctions are rarely made among these incredibly diverse ethnic, religious, geographic and cultural groups; “pueblos originarios” is an all-encompassing term-of-art. The narrative highlights the advanced agricultural technology, astronomical knowledge and organization of the various indigenous groups. The most important theme, though, which threads through all the tribal strands and binds them together, is the ancestral relationship of balance with Pacha Mama.

Historically, the emphasis on the organic connection to nature and her gifts provided a sense of pride to campesinos about their land and its cultivation. More recently, social movements have also turned to the tradition of respect for nature as a model for Bolivia’s future, confronted as the plurination is with not only a history of resource extraction and exploitation but the accelerating impacts of climate change (as highlighted in a recent New York Times article). Much of the rhetoric that carried Evo Morales to power was derived from this story – his recent attacks on capitalism at Copenhagen, for example, reference both a historical balance with Mother Earth and the effort of Bolivians to recover this sustainable relationship with nature.

Like all historical narratives of identity, the darker sides of the region’s history – of internecine warfare, human sacrifice and brutal empire building – are carefully ignored. Or, sometimes, like in the case of my radical friend Inti denied completely and attributed to the revisionist European historians. While its seems pretty clear that the Incans did engage in human sacrifice, there is plenty of revisionism to go around on both sides.

Campesino traditions today both pull from these shared historical accounts and continue to inform them. Before one drinks from a bucket of chicha – it is always drunk communally – a few drops are spilled to Pacha Mama. On the first Friday of each month, kohas – small sacrifices of coca leaves, incense, and the occasional baby llama fetus – are burnt to express thanks for the blessings from the earth. Coca is chewed not only for energy but also as an act of cultural demarcation. Like many such cultural markers, these practices are also deeply political. But because of the history of oppression of the indigenous populations – of both rights and customs — social movement and their leaders draw little distinction between the cultural and the political, between social and social movement. One of the founding documents of the campesino movement, El Manifesto de Tiahuanacu, made this point explicitly in 1973:

“Our culture is of first importance…the systematic attempt to destroy…cultures is the source of the nation’s frustrations…We campesinos want economic development, but it must spring from our own values. We do not want to give up our noble inherited integrity in favor of a pseudo development… Campesino participation has not been achieved because campesino culture has not been respected or its character understood…We must incorporate new technology and modernize while not breaking with our past…If they are to liberate the campesinos, political movements should be organized and planned with our cultural values in mind.“

To be sure, indigenity remains far more complex than any single political narrative can capture, and pueblos originarios does not fully capture the identity of any Bolivian. Each of the 36 distinct ethnic groups recognized by the constitution have their own sets of traditions, and many speak their own language. The Aymarans consider themselves Aymarans first, and the Quechuans Quechuan. But this complicated interplay of ethnicity and culture is exactly what created a need for a more universal notion of original people, and it was this notion that allowed the campesino political movements to build – and ultimately seize — power. To describe oneself as pueblo originario – or to sacrifice a llama to Pacha Mama, as the case may be — is less to say something specific about ethnicity or descent and more to stake out a political position and make a socio-cultural claim. But exactly because of the broad nature of that claim, and the racial intermixing of much of the population, it is one that a large majority of Bolivians are entitled to make — or soundly reject.

The sacrifice concluded and the barrels of chicha emptied, the locals had a final meal before dismantling the speaker system, packing up their tents in their trucks and heading back to the neighboring villages. It was Monday morning and time to go to work.