The Forgotten Towers

The man presents me with a theory - a theory supported by many historians - that the intriguing funerary towers along which we are standing in an open ravine are, in fact, much more than mere tombs for the dead. The sun is setting on the vast plains of Bolivia’s Cordillera Occidental and his theory sounds convincing. So I listen.

I had spoken to several people about the Chullpa, yet Eduardo was the first to talk passionately about these pre-Columbian towers. This unlikely tour guide told me that the Chullpas first appeared in the Peruvian-Bolivian altiplano after the demise of the Imperio Tiahuanaco in the 10th Century, and survived Inca supremacy but not colonial invasion. He believes they would have strengthened family and societal ties and served as a reminder to everyone in the community of the power once held by the Aymara aristocracy during their reign; a power some believe they would continue to have even in death.

Long hours at La Paz’s National Ethnographic Museum of Folklore had provided me with a wealth of resources and my interest in the above-ground tombs was ignited. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that the information I was getting was all too academic; that although I could recite some charming facts, I didn’t really understand them. I had to see the Chullpas for myself.

Having ventured five hours south of La Paz, I arrived at Sajama’s ambitiously named Plaza Mayor (there is nothing ‘Mayor’ about it). Eduardo, just the second person I met, showed a surprisingly keen interest in my quest to visit the nearby Chullpas. Having encountered several blank expressions upon my previous requests for information in La Paz, Eduardo was the first person not only to hold valuable knowledge of the Chullpa, but also to show a desire to share it.

Once the basis of important community post-death rituals, the Chullpas sporadically dot the landscape around many towns and villages, testament to an ancient indigenous mortuary practice. Sadly, they have been left untouched for centuries and although many can still be found intact and make for a fascinating archaeological visit, they now stand crumbling and forgotten, representing little more than a long lost burial tradition.

The sun is setting and the temperature drops below zero. Having plummeted through the valley along a winding, sandy road in Eduardo’s 4X4, flanked by the impressive peaks of Pomerape and Parinacota, we arrived at the Huayllilla cluster of Chullpas. The towers in front of me stand 12 feet tall, each one built for a different mallku or jilakata, along with their close family. They are grouped, with a degree of order, tens of metres apart. Totally secluded, their locations are by no means accidental, but strategically positioned - they once formed boundaries between different ayllus. At Huayllilla, of the Carangas province, their location had further meaning. Fighting amongst different Aymara groups, in this case the Carangas and the Pacajes, resulted in them being constructed away from settlements for protection.

I decide not to enter the Chullpa out of respect, but after a peek inside the small, ground-level entrance, I can see the compacted bones of past Aymara aristocracy, recognisable their artificially distorted crania. Decomposing, they lie feeble and disregarded; considerably different from half a millennium earlier, when the mummified body was preserved and actively worshipped. The entrance, always orientated towards the east, holds clues to the ancient Aymara conception of the natural world. They believed that the sunrise’s provision of light, heat and fertility was key to maintaining life, and that orientation towards the sun setting in the west would result in burning of the soul.

‘In the not too distant past,’ Eduardo said, breaking our contemplative silence, ‘people knew to respect the Chullpa. Grand-parents, the last of which are still alive today, would teach their children to be considerate of their historical value. Nowadays, however, few people pay them any attention and while some are aware of their existence, the towers remain abandoned. They are simply no longer relevant’.

Although the national park status of Sajama prevents human destruction at Huayllilla, I stood, silent and despondent, as the sun ducked behind the towering volcanoes, disheartened at the thought that 500 years have passed since the Chullpa alongside me last served its purpose.

The lack of explicit government protection of the Chullpa is distressing. In the La Paz department, the Chullpas at Chicani were damaged when local residents decided to build houses on a nearby site, collapsing the foundations and bringing the ancient tombs to shatter and fragment. These curious structures, once the keystone of family and community, are now left decaying; falling apart and no-one seems to bat an eyelid.

Back in La Paz, I met archaeological expert Jédu Sagárnaga, who has studied the Chullpas for 15 years. I learned that the Aymara señoríos, which formed following the collapse of Tiahuanaco, and from where the Chullpa tradition arose, each had their own individual diocese and therefore various religious differences existed between different ethnic groups. Despite this, two religious pillars were common in every community: the importance of the natural world and the adoration of dead ancestors. Sagárnaga made it quite clear that these two pillars of society were central to the ideology of the Chullpa. ‘The importance of veneration is represented by the construction of such elaborate tombs to show the respect and personal prestige that the mallkus invoked’.

Similarly, the strong influence of the natural world within Aymara religious conception was key to the ideological construction and burial. The Chullpa was built as a tomb representative of a woman’s uterus in which the soul is re-born. The mummified corpse would be placed in the foetal position, due to the pre-Hispanic belief in re-birth and death as a process of life; not the end of it. Leather or llama skin enveloped the body as a form of further preservation; such was the importance of the supposed relationship between the body and soul.

Yet there are still several unsolved mysteries surrounding the Chullpa.
‘The cult rituals involved the sacrifice of the jilakata’s servant, at times involuntarily’, Eduardo recounted, ‘but anthropologists are still investigating the ceremony that took place at the towers and there are many unknowns’. Pointing to six square holes above the entrance he explained, ‘archaeologists are still baffled as to the relevance of certain features at the Chullpa, but it is most likely that they too, relate to age-old Aymara religious beliefs’.

Mysteries aside, the physical preservation of the body, veneration and maintaining social interaction with the dead remain essential features of life in the Bolivian altiplano to this day. The tradition of sharing with the deceased is still practiced in a syncretic fashion between the Catholic faith and the Andean cosmovisión. Yet the Chullpa and its significance has been all but totally removed by Catholicism and its influence on pre-hispanic traditions; the wider population of the region remains largely oblivious to the ancestral significance of these towers once central to Aymara society. If they are known at all, it is as archaeological curios.

Whilst Andean mummification and subsequent sacrifices may not be relevant in the modern day treatment of the dead, it is saddening that the Chullpas are neither admired nor acknowledged by their rightful inheritors.

In the isolated ravine at Huayllilla, the scattered Chullpas are the only indication of civilization for miles. They continue to peer over distant communities; towns and villages that were once home to Aymara lords and are now home to Eduardo, one of remaining few who still care for the towers. Listening to this man, looking out on these towers peppered across the horizon with Volcán Sajama dominating the austere backdrop, it still remains possible to find comfort in his pride and passion.

An Obituary

Our dear feline friend Kandinsky, known by the hundreds of people who passed through the Bolivian Express flat, passed away on the 9th of October 2012. His human father, Amaru Villanueva Rance, remembers a life lived in purrs.

Kandinsky was born on my sister's bed in 2003, on a month no-one now seems to be able to pinpoint. The smallest kitten in a litter of four, he was spoiled from a young age, for some time by his mother Gata and until his very last days by the inhabitants of the Rance household. His three siblings were given away: the alpha kitten, who later came to be known as Martes, was snapped up by a niece; the other two were given away to friends of my sister’s. Kandinsky, 'the slow one', was the one who remained, so although he was not chosen by anyone, he was in a strange way the one chosen to stay with us.

On the day my family moved to the penthouse flat where Kandinsky was to spend most of his life, he immediately realised something big was afoot. He acrobatically escaped several times from my sister who was frantically trying to get him into a taxi that was waiting at the door. Trembling and forlorn, he eventually realised there was no way out. Resigned, he surrendered to the embrace of my sister’s hands and hid his head in the towel she was carrying, as if to say ‘ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente’ - what you can’t see can’t harm you. Making a conscious decision not to look back, he was cradled into the taxi to face life in his new home.

Kandinski was neutered from a young age, in part to stop him spraying, and in part because our incest taboo was challenged by the increasingly randy behaviour that evolved between him and his mother Gata. I’m certain this mutilation had an incalculable impact on the development of his sexuality and general temperament.

At some point during his youth, a Siamese kitten entered the household. Her name was Gatita, in keeping with the uninspired family naming conventions for female cats. She later became known as Moka (both on account of the colouring of her fur and the Spanish word for 'little snot'). Kandinsky and Gatita appeared to date for some years, much to his mother's despair. When I say 'date', I ought to make it clear that their relationship was largely platonic and that despite her occasional interest in him as a mating partner, after his castration he was only ever able to reciprocate through his signature vanilla cuddles and perennial willingness to use her as a napping partner. Moka was eventually given away due to the incessant and sometimes vicious fighting which erupted between her and her mother-in-law. I liked to think they fought over Kandinsky - who rose above the bickering - and his affections, without it ever being clear whether he was indifferent or merely oblivious. Either way, my mother would say that he was a 'sexist pig' - shrugging his shoulders to the oestrogen apocalypse erupting all around him. She would say he had ‘cara de yo no fuí’ (an ‘I didn’t do it’ look of feigned innocence), and I must say that few descriptions have captured his spirit and appearance with such accuracy.

I'm pretty sure I was the only being he was ever truly in love with. He would stare longingly into my eyes, holding my gaze for several seconds longer than I was comfortable with, often weirding me out. Like many cats, he liked to think of himself as the centre of attention in all situations, and he frequently was.

Despite his deluded sense of self-importance, Kandinsky was a pathetic being - he had zero dignity and seldom displayed the integrity and finesse associated with cat archetypes, of which his mother Gata undoubtedly remains a better exemplar. He was more like a dog. Yet make no mistake: his pathetic-ness was, perhaps, his most endearing trait. Minutes after meeting him, guests could pick him up, hold him upside down, cradle him like a baby and make him play a miniature air-guitar, without him putting up any sort of resistance aside from the occasional feeble meow.

I came to believe he was the product of some reincarnation conjured up by some god to punish a morally-corrupt-yet-incompetent being of a higher order, like a petty thief or a greedy dolphin. The point is that he seemed to be on a downward trajectory in the cosmic order of the universe. Yet despite his simplicity and semi-inanimate inertia, he most likely redeemed himself during the short decade his life lasted and did so not through a courageous or benevolent disposition, but by unknowingly brightening the lives of the hundreds of people who had a chance to meet him. If there's justice in the afterlife he might return as something noble and simple like a benevolent beluga whale, or even as himself, should he be given a chance to relive a happy and unphilosophical life.

What was he like? He was an easy cat. Easy in that he was easygoing, and easy in that he was socially promiscuous and all-too-easily won over by complete strangers. He quickly warmed to the endless stream of people coming in and out of the flat, approaching them with under-alertness and over-familiarity. Kandinsky was communicative, if confused; mistakenly thinking he could hold conversations with humans. I remember him rubbing himself against my legs when he decided it was food time. He was grateful and appreciative of cow lung, which the flat's inhabitants invariably hated and the thought of which makes some wretch, even now.

My fondest memories of him involve holding him every which way: stretched out like a baby, cradled in my arms, nested under my shirt. He was invariably inert, you could remould him into any shape and he would just stay that way.

Depending on who you ask, cats have seven to nine lives. Whether or not this is true, most cats certainly need at least this many to dodge death from their natural sworn enemies: cars, murderous neighbours (two of my previous cats were poisoned by my former next-door neighbours - fact), dogs and even other cats. Kandinsky only had one, and it's the only life he should have needed. Unlike my previous cats he was not exposed to the dangers of the streets, courtyards and rooftops of La Paz - he lived in a penthouse flat most of his life and had no fears - not because he was brave, but because he knew no dangers. The world happened outside the windows of the flat like images in a multi-display reality TV-arrangement. Always there, always out of reach. Looking out of the kitchen window now I can see the majestic Illimani mountain, taking up an inconceivably large proportion of the horizon; the sky-blue sky and the thousands of people walking up and down the city's arteries. This is not the the last scene he saw, though one he was all too familiar with, during the countless hours he spent sat on the cassette player on the kitchen table. In true feline fashion he would look down on the dots streaming up and down the Avenida 20 de Octubre, probably never registering he was looking at people and cars.

Why did he go? When I told my father the news, he told me that in Aymara culture pets are seen as people's spiritual guardians. When they leave us unexpectedly it means that the family they are a part of was in danger. ""When the animal senses this, they absorb the impact of that bad thing that would otherwise happen to one of the members of the family"". I don't know whether the thought of this now makes me happy or sad, but it makes me wish that he didn't die thinking it was in vain; makes me feel, in a melancholy way, that his death was at least as meaningful as his life.

I had seen him pussyfooting sheepishly onto that window ledge before; a few years ago. Someone had left the window open just wide enough for a cat's reptilian body to slip through. They don't say curiosity killed the cat for nothing. ’Kandinsky no!’ - the ledge was narrow and up 19 stories of glass and concrete. There was barely enough room on that ledge for a set of paws, let alone for a cat to turn around and climb back into the window. I managed to pull him in on that occasion and on another such occasion my mother managed to beckon him back somehow. This time he wasn't so lucky. It happened at night and no-one saw him climb out, let alone fall. I'm pretty certain he jumped. The way he landed, paws outstretched, whiskers now touching the pavement. He probably thought he could fly.

Kandinsky is survived by his mother, Gata, by his human family carers, and by his 78 Facebook friends.

As a newcomer to La Paz, Bolivia, my first tentative explorations of the city took me to the mercado de las brujas, or ‘witches market’, which is where I first encountered a strange phenomenon - llama foetuses. Without prior warning, I assumed that what I was seeing were a strange type of toy llama, or model. I was soon disabused of this notion by an enthusiastic stall holder, who explained the following to me.

Evolution has not been kind to pregnant llamas, it seems. Their bodies constantly abort foetuses throughout the gestation period, being naturally too fragile to handle a large litter. They can even become pregnant as soon as two weeks after a birth. This gives rise to a large supply of naturally aborted llama foetuses, known as sullus, which can be anywhere from a couple of weeks old, resembling tiny dead birds, or just before the birth, which are more or less identical to a newborn llama, fur and all. The foetus’s legs are tied together and it receives a blessing from a yatiri, ready to be sold.

These unfortunate stillborns are nevertheless considered incredibly lucky. They can be burnt as an offering to Pachamama, buried under the foundations of the house, or left by a front door, in the belief that they bring prosperity and health, and keep evil spirits away. I was assured by the shop owner that they would do exactly that, and that I shouldn’t leave without one.