ISSUE #100 - SPECIAL EDITION
The Bolivian Express celebrates its 100th issue and tenth year this month. Over 300 interns have come to Bolivia to be part of the BX experience and left, we hope, with a better understanding of Bolivia and its culture. Some, actually, never left. We wrote about, among other things, chickens (Bolivians really like chicken), ice-cream vendors, chullpas (pre-Columbian tombs) and fat-sucking vampires roaming the altiplano (yes, that’s a thing); we tried to explain local trends (there are so many vegan restaurants now!) and current events (where to begin?) as clearly as possible. There are some questions we were never able to answer, though. Is it spelled Abaroa or Avaroa? Where do taxis disappear when it rains?
This couldn’t have been possible without the participation of the many interns who wrote for the magazine and gave it life. They’ve come from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Belgium, France, Ireland, Indonesia, Italy, Germany and South Africa, bringing some of their culture to Bolivia and taking back with them a taste for salteñas (because salteñas are, very objectively, the best). There was romance, a cat called Kandinsky, dog bites, roadblocks, a kitchen fire, a very long bus journey to Vallegrande, a few ghosts and an inexhaustible number of stories that never made it to the magazine’s pages but are nevertheless a part of the BX experience.
Ultimately the BX was and is a human adventure. We wanted to tell stories about Bolivia but we ended up doing something better. Over the years we built a network of interns and contributors which now spreads all across the world, hopefully bringing some attention to Bolivia and all its wonderfully weird idiosyncrasies. This project started as a group of friends with an idea and it became a family with a home in Bolivia. In these uncertain times, there are few things we can be sure of, but regardless of what the future brings, the friendships and connections that have formed inside the BX house will remain, and we hope there will be many more to come with many more new stories to share. (And maybe, one day, we will tell you what happened on that trip to Vallegrande.)
To all the people who came to Bolivia to be a part of the Bolivian Express, to the photographers and illustrators, to the people who were interviewed and featured in the magazine, to our past and present team and to all our readers: thank you.
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Wooden ladders are available throughout the La Paz cemetery so that family members can access the rest places of their family members and keep their shrines up to date.
Photos: Lauren Minion & George Fearnley
Amongst the many Bolivian sacred celebrations is Todos Santos, which lies on the first and second of November every year. Despite adopting its name back in colonial times from the Spanish equivalent, the Bolivian festival maintains many of its original Andean rituals and traditions. According to Andean beliefs, death is not an end to life, but more a transition to eternal existence.
During this event, Bolivian families return to the rest places of their beloved family members and prepare exquisite food and offerings, all of which carry much significance. With this in mind, BX decided to show the vibrancy of the event through a series of photographs to demonstrate the thought and care that goes into this unique and sacred event.
People celebrating Todos Santos, their bags filled with offerings of bread, flowers, and other delicacies.
People walk by sites containing ashes of the deceased. Momentos and flowers are placed behind the glass doors to pay homage to loved ones.
Tantawawas are sold at many market stands and supermarkets in the lead up to Todos Santos, they are to symbolise family members that have passed away.
Elsa Condori, 52, and Jaqueline Condori, 17, produce hard boiled sweets in the shapes of ladders and baskets to symbolise the gateway between those who have passed away and their living relatives, and the goods that both parties carry. Elsa’s grandmother used to work in La Estrella a former famous sweet factory in El Alto.
Faces for tantawawas can also be bought at many markets all over Bolivia, for when family members would like to bake the bread themselves.
Photo: Juan Pablo Crespo Rocha − BX Collaborator
Among the heights of the mountain range and charming landscapes surrounded by lagoons and rocky areas, a thriving activity that puts the focus in Cochabamba can be observed: the production of camelids, especially llamas.
Dr. Juan Pablo Crespo Rocha is an avant − garde medical doctor, who obtained his degree from UNICEM, UMSS and SOBOMETRA. He is a nature lover, passionate about photography and traveling. His love for the worldview of the andean peoples, made him to collaborate in a law to regularise the exercise and practice of traditional Bolivian ancestral medicine. He currently lives in Cochabamba.
José imagines an animal that is a mixture of fox and eagle (11 years, Challapampa)
Photos: Courtesy of Mateo Caballero and Natalia Peña
A ‘micro revolution’ of art, education and play
This story begins in 2018 at 4,100 metres above sea level in the small town of Challapampa, on the Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca. Mateo Caballero, a photographer, visual artist and musician, and Natalia Peña, an artist and teacher, met a woman there who said that her community was waiting for their ispayas to pray in order to solve a dispute they had with the Challa community, on the north of the island. The ispayas are the children of the community, and the adults hoped that they could come up with a solution with their prayers to nature and the elements.
The fact that the adults would look to their children’s wisdom for a solution to a problem they couldn’t solve themselves was fascinating for the two artists. An idea sparked in their minds. ‘We had to somehow get closer to this knowledge,’ Caballero says. ‘And the most fabulous tool to approach children’s wisdom is art.’ For Peña, art and education are the salvation of the planet. ‘Art is a fundamental tool for knowing oneself, for life,’ she says, ‘art not only as a subject in the curriculum, but also as a methodology to learn and teach from creative thinking.’
Emely took us to a cocal on the way to the cemetery. ""The power to sow"" (10 years, Chicaloma)
Thus, by combining the powerful tools of art and education, the Mitologías Imaginarias (Imaginary Mythologies) project was born. ‘The objective is to use art as an excuse for children to make new characters, new mythologies, and, through them, to soak up their wisdom,’ the couple says. With the cooperation of the director of the local school in Challapampa, Caballero and Peña started the project in April 2019, spending a week with 15 girls and boys between 8 and 10 years old.
Mornings were spent at the school, with the couple reorganising the classroom to create a space to break up the routine of a traditional class. Caballero and Peña started the kids off with meditation to help them be present and mindful of their surroundings. Then came art – crafts, paintings, storytelling and more. The children created imaginary characters using masks they constructed and other crafts. In the afternoons, the children went on different excursions, and Caballero and Peña listened to them and learned about the plants, animals and local myths that the children shared with them. ‘It was deliciously tiring,’ the couple says.
""My other lives in the forest and on earth."" (Javier, 9 years the most shy of the course in Challapampa).
The workshop went beyond arts and crafts. It followed five stages: story, collective fabulation, exploration of the territory, reimagining of characters and imaginary mythologies. The children learned to use critical thinking to analyse the ‘why’ of their own creations. Once their characters were ready, pictures of the ‘mythological’ creatures were taken, with the children receiving a copy. The couple also recorded the entire project using video and photography.
Teamwork, taking the town in Chicaloma. (From left to right: Josías, Nadir, Ángel, Jhael, Emely, Alexandra and Ramiro)
Six months later, in October 2019, Caballero and Peña headed to Chicaloma, a village in the Yungas region, to start their second adventure. They adapted the workshop for 20 children of the same age, and there was a presentation of the children’s artwork at the end of the programme. Peña says that the long-term plan is to continue traveling and connecting with more children and communities. The masks, characters, photographs and videos are elements that allow them to show children’s realities and to learn how their stories are told. The future objective of the project is also to generate change through the teachers as well, because they are the ones who are teaching the children.
Peña calls this project a ‘micro revolution.’ She and Caballero aim to provide a play space for children where they can learn, through art and education, that it is possible to emotionally connect with what they are doing. Peña and Caballero say that the most moving aspect of Mitologías Imaginarias is how they connect with many different people, and the realisation of how generous human beings can be when they are given the opportunity to share. For them, Mitologías Imaginarias is a project with a life of its own, born out of love and the desire to do something, little things, to generate changes little by little.
To learn more about the project visit the Mitologías Imaginarias Instagram profile @mitologiasimaginarias.
Natalia and Mateo. ‘Playa de la Sirena’, Challapampa.
