Bolivian and Indigenous

Can its Origin be Found in Bolivia?

Bolivians are as diverse as the landscape they live in. While one Paceño is lively and energetic like the dense Amazon, his neighbour may well be a quiet lamb who prefers the widespread altiplano. Even people that have the same temperament can hold distinctively different views. Each person has their own personal identity, unique in its kind.

The nature of unique personal identities that make us who we are is quite mysterious. Are we born with our identity or does it take shape as we progress in life? Do we keep hold of our identity our whole life? What about during our possible afterlife? It is in Bolivia that I go searching for answers to these complex questions.
Quechua
My first stop is Bolivia’s lowlands, home to the Quechuas, who form the largest indigenous group of Bolivia. Quechuas believe that it is the soul that defines a person’s identity. Every runa –human being– has body and spirit, with the latter consisting of the animu –breath– and soul.
According to the Quechua, the animu disappears when a person dies, but the identity that comes from the soul keeps on living. The soul departs 12 identities the body upon death, they believe, and remains on the earth for another eight days. During this period, the soul will do all those things the deceased did not manage to do; such as climbing Illimani. A good soul will go to God after the work is done, while a bad soul will turn into an animal or evil woman.
Aymara
I then ascend to higher ground and reach Bolivia’s altiplano, where the Ay- mara –the second biggest indigenous group in the country– can be found. The Aymara hold the belief that each person is born with three souls that together form a person’s identity: animu, ajayu, and alma. Throughout a person’s life, these three souls alternate in their level of influence over an individual’s identity, leading the person to change and develop.
The influence of the animu, which gives you strength and spirit, is weak until adulthood. At times this can result in periods in which the animu is absent, causing a person to have little appetite, interest or energy. According to the Aymara, though, a temporary loss of animu can not lead to serious illness and the chance of it occurring once adulthood has been reached is slim.
Losing your ajayu, however, which re- presents reasoning and consciousness, is a lot more serious for your body and identity, the Aymara say. It can lead to severe cognitive illnesses and, in the worst-case, it can even lead to a person’s death. But the attachment of the ajayu to your body is firm, which means that losing your ajayu can only be caused by an evil spirit.
A yatiri can help you recover your ajayu, but there is not one universal way to call back that part of your identity. Each soul has to be lured differently, depending on its specific preferences.

If the soul is thought to enjoy wine, then wine will be used to get the soul back to its rightful owner.
Your spirit, alma, can never be lost du- ring your life. Only upon death will the alma depart your body and live on. During Todos Santos, which takes place on November first and second, almas return to earth and will take vengeance if they are not treated correctly. Therefore, it is crucial for Aymara to provide the deceased with food and clothes, showing their humbleness towards the dead and honoring the departed for who they were.
Guaraní
In the South West corner of Bolivia, known as the Chaco region, I find yet another ethnic group that claims to have answers to the questions surroun- ding identity. Making up just 2% of the population, the Guaraní are hugely outnumbered by the Aymara and Quechua.
According to the Guaraní, a human’s identity is formed by two souls: acyiguá and ayvucué. Acyiguá is an animal soul that can be anything from a fly to an elephant. Temperament and instinct are formed by this soul – but it’s not all good. In fact, mischievous behaviour is said to come from acyiguá. To control acyiguá the gods gave humans ayvucué, a special human soul, that also gave us reason and speech. It is this soul that will be judged for the individual’s actions once it returns to the gods. Acyiguá will remain on earth, a wanderer plaguing the living.
Neuroscience
It is time to move away from reli- gious beliefs and look at identity from another angle; for the problem with religion is that there is no way of veri- fying it. A field that is dedicated to verifying how phenomena work is science. Many neuroscientists are focused on finding the location of identity in the brain. It’s a troubling subject, though, as scientists are experiencing serious difficulties with locating identity.
The problems start with defining iden- tity. There is a widely acknowledged definition for personal identity in the field of psychology and psychiatry, namely ‘the organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviours in various situations’. This definition, however, leaves a lot of room for subjective interpretation.
Secondly, it is very improbable that there is one focused location of identity in the brain. The brain is a complex network of neurons –brain cells– working together, making the research challenging. Scientists are now looking at broad areas in the brain that may hold our identity. However, the pro- blem with looking at broad segments of the brain is that these areas have many different functions.
It is thought that the right frontal hemisphere –our front right side of the brain– is responsible for our identity and sense of ‘I’. Evidence for this comes mainly from people whose identities have radically changed after suffering a severe brain injury. It is in this way that someone can lose their identity, possi- bly forever.
Surely, no Yatiri can repair a damaged brain, a scientist would say. However, the Yatiri may say in his defense that an accident of that nature can scare the soul away, which means that the soul can return to its origin. So who is right? Who has the answers to the questions on the origin of our identity? The Scientist, the Quechua, the Aymara, or the Guarani

Mention K-Pop to a non-obsessive and their knowledge of the genre will most likely extend to Park Jae-sang’s Gangnam Style and, if you’re lucky, its sequel Gentlemen — think Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel levels of disappointment. Say the name PSY to a real K-Pop fan, though, and they will laugh you off. Samantha Alejandra, a die- hard supporter of the genre, says his only redeeming quality has been ‘displacing Bieber for the most views on YouTube’. In Bolivia, however, for reasons that Alex Walker will curmudgeonly attempt to explain, K-Pop has become something of a religion.

In January this year, Kim Hyung-jun, former member of the appealingly named SS501 and Korea’s answer to Justin Bieber, became the first K-Pop star to perform in Bolivia. Promoting his solo album Sorry I’m Sorry –presumably a pre- emptive apology for the tuneless vocals that await– a YouTube video shows Kim being met by pandemonium at the airport. One fan, Maria Henecia U, perhaps under the deluded impression that Kim reads comments on cult videos of him, professed that ‘to touch your hand was the best thing that happened to me this year!!! I love you’.

The tour was a demonstration of just how popular K-Pop in Bolivia has become, causing traffic build-up on the roads and requiring a police presence to maintain order; some fans were even seen pitching their tents outside the concert venue several days prior to his performance. It is a genre that has yet to permeate Western culture, however, despite having strong Western flavours: notably, hip-hop verses, euro-pop choruses, rapping, and dubstep breaks; not to mention superficial heartbreak. The latter is no more obvious than in a video of a live performance of SS501’s Because I’m Stupid where Kim Hyung-Jun can be seen silently ‘weeping’ mid-song — presumably reminiscing on some past personal trauma or just peeved about his apparent stupidity. K-Pop is a genre, however, that far transcends the music. It is a cult.
K-Popping

I spent an afternoon compiling an all- too-extensive list of fan groups associated with Bolivian K-Pop and, by number462, lost the will to live. Kim Hyung-jun’s group calls itself Junus –dangerously close to Judas one feels– and there is a sense that he is steering Bolivians away from the righteous path of Christ towards the dark-side that is K-Pop. Given the chaos when Kim held a concert celebrating three years since his debut as a soloist, I can’t even begin to imagine the festivities once we reach 2014 years after his birth.
Aside from musical trend-setting, K-Pop has engendered a cult-following of ‘air- port fashion’; essentially shaped by the pre-flight clothing worn by the constellation of K-Pop stars on tour. Worldwide, these items fly off the shelves before the stars themselves have landed at their destination.
In Bolivia, though, fandom has escalated further. So-called K-Snacks are imported and sold at extortionate prices to a willing market and Denise Fernandez –K-Pop connoisseur from the radio group Melómanos– can think of three cases known to her where Bolivians have changed their official names to Korean ones. Far more disturbing, though, is the news that many young Bolivians are seeking gruesome plastic surgery, opening up the skin around their eyes, to ‘appear more Korean’.
Hallyu is the term Asians use to describe the tsunami of South Korean culture that began flooding their countries from the beginning of the noughties. K-Pop has become the most lucrative wave in this tsunami, contributing around US$2billion a year to the nation’s economy. It is an East-West mash-up that, unlike Western Chart-Toppers, doesn’t make reference to sex, drinking or clubbing. Indeed, the Korean Ministry of Gender Equality and Family endeavours to censor such topics: PSY’s first album PSY from the PSYcho World! was widely denounced for promoting this ‘inappropriate content’; his second album was banned from minors; he has been arrested for marijuana abuse and was condemned for ‘neglecting’ his mandatory military service duties. PSY, then, against all expectations, has come to symbolise a satirising ‘bad-boy’: Public Enemy No.1 of K-Pop’s cult.
Interestingly, K-Pop is a cult that has changed the semantics of fandom: you are not a fan but a K-Popper. Ironically, then, being a disciple of K-Pop –a movement with such rigid and antiquated attitudes towards sex and drugs– involves sharing a name with both snortable horse tranquiliser and sniffable sodomy facilitator.
‘Cultural Technology’As is the case with many an organised religion or cult, the reality beneath the surface of K-Pop is far more sinister than its cherubic self-projection. As John Seabrook exposes in his article ‘Factory Girls’, the pursuit for The K Factor begins disturbingly early, with children as young as seven recruited and raised in an idol-engineering system labelled by its first exponent –founder of S.M. Entertainment, Lee Soo-man– ‘cultural technology’.
Along with singing and dancing lessons, these budding stars must study foreign languages, receive media coaching and be prepared for the scrutiny that will haunt their adult lives; the final of these is so intense that, when a female duo called Girls Generation once attempted to disguise themselves in the streets of Seoul, their limbs alone gave the game away. Like members of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, it seems, K-Pop idols are force fed their movement’s propaganda until it becomes all that they know. Only one in ten trainees makes the leap up to début.
Inevitably, in such a ruthless industry, there has been backlash for these Machiavellian record labels. Numerous fallen stars have sued their idol-engineers over abusive treatment and alleged ‘slave contracts’. Indeed, three members of KARA, a hugely popular girl group with D.S.P. –one of the smaller agencies– filed a law- suit claiming that, despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars they brought in, the girls were only paid $140 per month. Restrictions imposed are not just financial, however, and another label –Alpha Entertainment– forbids its female trainees to have boyfriends while, even more disconcertingly, barring any food or water after 7pm, according to the Straits Times. Neil Jacobson, 35, an executive for Interscope Records ranks the qualities of an idol in order of importance: ‘First, beauty. Second, graciousness and humility. Third, dancing. And fourth, vocal. Also, brevity. Nothing lasts more than three and a half minutes’.
This list presents a worrying reflection of today’s fickle global music industry. K- Pop, though, is an extreme case. Indeed, Seabrook describes good looks as ‘a K- Pop artist’s stock-in-trade’. These ‘good looks’ –chiselled, sculpted faces tapering to a sharp point at the chin- differ concerningly from the flat, round faces of most Koreans. Granted, some will have been born with this unusual bone structure, but the majority can only look this way through cosmetic surgery.
Ironically, while in South Korea double- fold-eyelid surgery –a procedure making eyes appear more ‘Western’– is a popular reward for academically flourishing children, Bolivian K-Poppers are seeking the reverse operation.
Why, God, Why?The question that remains untouched must be tackled with trepidation. Mayán Sanchez, 19, explains, ‘I got bored of watching videos from the same US pop singers like Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. It’s always the same thing’. To migrate to what is arguably the most formulaic genre of all seems a queer decision — perhaps some Schoenberg would have served as a more effective musical cleanser, or a monastic silence.
It certainly isn’t a credible protest against the Western charts; rather, an Eastern spin-off. Denise Fernandez, though, takes a more cynical view: ‘it is simply an effectively-placed marketing strategy’, she tells me. She does, however, accept the sentimental appeal of the genre, explaining that Bolivian girls crave a grand amour, that the language of K-Pop represents a ‘revival of romanticism’ and that, for Bolivian girls, ‘sentimentality carries more weight than sex’.
Diamond GirlsIt is a Thursday. 4pm. I am sitting in a photography studio along Calle Guachalla, Waiting For Godot. After several millennia in the bathroom, primming and pruning each other, with the unmistakable sizzle of hair-straighteners interrupted by the occasional fit of giggles, four out of five Diamond Girls –a Bolivian K-Pop dance tribute group– emerge from their makeover chamber sporting pseudo-Korean performance outfits. The other, however, has forgotten her shoes.
The gaggle of girls are the archetypal K- Pop ensemble: affectionate, girlish, giggly, dainty. We soon inflict a major cultural offense when we present them with a banner for them to pose next to. It reads: ‘Te Amo! Kim Hyung-jun’. Unfortunately, after seeing the mortified expressions of the girls, we discover that the subject of our accompanying images is no other than his ex-bandmate and archrival Kim Hyun-joong. Uncertain that we will be able to overcome the shame of this cultural faux-pas and continue with the article –let alone the shoot–, stoicism prevails and we eventually decide to press on.
The girls tell me that K-Pop is the ‘perfect combination of dance and song’; that their ‘very depressing’ Bolivian existence means they turn to the genre as a way out; that the arrival to Bolivia of the former Kim reduced them to ‘tears of joy’; and, that they each got into K-Pop through the well-engineered channel of Ki-dramas. The girls embody the target market of K-Pop in Bolivia, speaking at length about the cult’s generic Christ-figure — a ‘good- looking boy, hardworking, organised, disciplined who doesn’t need to flaunt his body or sexual prowess because he is pure and perfect as he is’.
Despite the shamelessness of Diamond Girls, K-Pop still seems to be a taboo interest in Bolivia — ask someone if they are a fan and they will profusely shake their head, only to rush home to catch their favourite Ki-drama as they do each day.
K-Future
K-Pop started off as a peripheral epidemic in Bolivia but is fast-becoming part of its mainstream musical furniture. It produces, in Denise Fernandez, a sense of déjà-vu, taking her back over a decade to Eurodance: ‘it used to be a genre for the margins, now it is everywhere: Eurodance from 10 years ago is the K-Pop of today’.
Is this such a bad thing, though? K- Pop, for all its faults –and there are many, from musical to moral–, promotes a balanced and sensible lifestyle: K- Pop Fiestas in Bolivia begin as early as 8am and it is absolutely unheard of for alcohol to be consumed at one of these events — a staggering contrast to, say, the recent Glastonbury festival where, no doubt, stomach-pumping machines across Somerset will have been working overtime.
However, the emergence of K-Pop seems to be papering over the cracks in home-grown musical talent. While Denise Fernandez dismisses the claim that K-Pop’s popularity in Bolivia represents a rejection of Western music as a ‘common misconception’, she expresses concern that people are eschewing Bolivian culture: ‘musically K-Pop is not our roots, sociologically it is not our culture’.
Perhaps, though, subconsciously, as a result of Morales’ persistent deconolisation efforts, young Bolivians are migrating away from the traditional American blonde bimbos to a more tangible idol. Indeed, it is uplifting to see Diamond Girls wax lyrical about the ‘rounded lives’ of their favourite stars. However, while the girls insist on wearing their K-Pop blinkers, the rest of us should not forget that this perfection is only surface-deep. The reality behind ‘cultural technology’ is both a sinister and cynical one. For Bolivians, though, this influx of Korean culture offers a more pressing concern: if Diamond Girls get their way, Hallyu may well prove to shape Bolivian national identity in the same way that American cultural exports have.