Every Thursday and Sunday, countless shoppers flood the Feria 16 de Julio in El Alto. It can appear that every resident of both El Alto and La Paz come to this single neighborhood, where just about anything under the sun is available for the right price. One can easily be overwhelmed by the mass movements of people, the ebb and flow of shoppers washing the streets with the kinetic energy of commerce.
On a recent trip to this market, I was easily taken over by this flood, bumping shoulders with merchants and shoppers alike as we squeezed down the neighborhood’s narrowest streets. The movement seemed chaotic and more than a little claustrophobic, and in short time I sought respite from the clutter among the ridge above the autopista, the ribbon of road that delivers cars, cabs and minibuses from La Paz up to El Alto.
Below me spread central La Paz. To my right the bright sun ascended towards its zenith, casting a blanket of golden warmth across the city. From this distance, the city seemed calm, serene. Despite the many cracks and crags wrinkling and pocking the face of this metropolis, and the traffic jams and roadblocks I knew were occurring below, it all seemed almost organized.
Bolivia is a complex place, with a diverse collection of environments, from the urban clutter of high-altitude La Paz and El Alto to the most remote and wild lowlands of the Amazon Basin. But what does this diversity mean for individual people in Bolivia? What does this place mean for the backpacker in La Paz lugging her heavy rucksack to her hostel after descending from the bus terminal? For a city resident looking for a rural escape from the urban grind? For the new lovers looking to a plaza for a moment of ‘privacy’? For the llama herder on La Cumbre, who collects the last of his flock and looks upward at the blanket of stars shining above him?
In this issue of Bolivian Express, we set out to explore not so much different ‘places’ in Bolivia, but to dig deeper and to view Bolivia through ‘spaces’. That is, to highlight the diversity of place here, we wanted to go deeper than the descriptive. We set out to take a look at the environments in which Bolivians (and foreigners) navigate their work, their play, their day-to-day life, and how they create and interact with those spaces, consciously and subconsciously. Beyond explanatory descriptions of locations and scenarios, we set out to highlight the relationships between people and the places in which they exist.
In our explorations, we discovered spaces here beyond the physical. We realized that the places around us contain spaces for the cultural, the political, the spiritual, the metaphysical – sometimes all at once.
As I stood at the edge of crowded market day in El Alto and stared down at the irregular patchwork of La Paz’s streets, I gained a sense of the complexity of space here. Each one of the millions of people here are tasked with navigating their way through the places around them – to engage with their environment, to respond to it, to make it their own.
These are the stories we set out to tell.
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Making Bolivian Culture More Accessible
The Centro Cultural Torino, located on the upper balcony of Hotel Torino on Socabaya Street, is a small salon with a series of vintage patterned armchairs. The balcony overlooks the central patio, which is surrounded by cascading arches and covered by tables and chairs set out for guests to use at their leisure. I am here to take Silvia Paz Soliz’s class for tourists on Bolivian culture and traditions.
Paz started teaching classes to tourists out of a desire to open their eyes to what is happening around them in Bolivia; however, she has also taught Bolivians and given seminars to schoolchildren as well as policemen. She believes this space for her classes, where Bolivians learn about their own history and traditions in a clear and concise way, is important because the hectic nature of everyday life doesn’t always allow for time to reflect on one’s own traditions and their origination. Furthermore, she hopes that by offering classes to tourists, she gives them something intangible to take away from Bolivia.
Manuel Callizaya, the manager of the centre, says that activities include tango, waltz and cueca dance classes,civic-group meetings and musical performances. ‘The space doesn’t have lucrative benefits,’ he says. ‘Therefore, whatever activity that is carried out here in the centre is for the benefit of the artists – they show what they have produced and if sometimes there are civic groups who come to use the space for meetings, it is for the benefit of the city of La Paz.’
Soon, other artists will be able to find spaces such as Centro Cultural Torino to present their work more easily due to a new project being carried out between TelArtes, a national network of cultural organisations, and the Ministry of Cultures and Tourism. Called El Espaciario: chacras de cultivo cultural en Bolivia (The Spaces Archive: farmhouses of cultural cultivation), the project will map out different independent cultural spaces in Bolivia in order to generate a clearer vision of the depth and diversity of the ‘cultural ecosystem’ across the country. It will also encourage different reflections, proposals, and creations related to cultural promotion and development. Through this knowledge, the project aims to improve public policy and encourage private and public participation in the financing of cultural projects by gaining a greater idea of how each cultural space works economically, and the contacts and connections that it has with the culture. Through the project, TelArtes and the Ministry of Cultures and Tourism are working to develop a ‘Law of Cultural Spaces’ that will give greater economic and legal support to certain artistic venues.
The map will solve a primary issue in the cultural sector of Bolivia, namely, the lack of systemized information of the different cultural spaces and their resources. The Ministry of Cultures and Tourism will be in charge of documenting all public spaces, beginning the process in August, whilst TelArtes will register all private and independent spaces (which it has already started, in July in Cochabamba).
All private cultural spaces dedicated to the visual, dramatic, musical, audiovisual and literary arts, as well as heritage repositories, may be included in the TelArtes registry. To be included, all spaces must meet certain criteria: they must be independent spaces managed by the civil sector; they have to be at least three years old; they have to feature at least twelve cultural activities per year; and their primary aim must be cultural, not commercial.
The Centro Cultural Torino is a perfect example of such a space. Constructed in 1626, the building that houses the Hotel Torino itself reflects Bolivia’s social and cultural history, with its colonial-era patio and republican façade, as well as its continued modern service in the La Paz of today.
In 1980, 33 years after the opening of the hotel, the Centro Cultural Torino was founded. It is an open space, available to all types of artists as well as civic groups who have frequented the centre to make important decisions that have affected Bolivian society outside of its walls. There is no charge for artists to present their work in this space, and the artists are at liberty to charge a small sum for their work.
Cultural spaces such as the Centro Cultural Torino are important for the artists, the industry and Bolivian society itself. This sentiment is echoed by Lil Fredes, one of the researchers for the project, who believes that ‘cultural spaces are essential for cultural development because they allow for dialogue and different encounters between artistic and cultural proposals and citizens exercising their cultural rights. They are spaces of creation, innovation and management that create opportunities not only for the artists or curators but also for Bolivian society itself.’ She has noticed that, through the research already carried out, they have witnessed how these spaces have allowed for neighbourhoods and the sectors around them to be more secure because of the way people use them: ‘They fulfil the premise that security doesn’t depend on cameras or vigilance but on the life of the community of the city,’ she says.
If the Centro Cultural Torino were to become part of the El Espaciario program, it would be part of a book and online webpage, which will hopefully improve the artistic process where different cultural actors from industries as well as the artists themselves can find what they need more easily. The map will be available on the TelArtes website for private spaces, and for public spaces there will be a map on the Ministry of Cultures and Tourism’s website. For people like Manuel, who manages the Centro Cultural Torino, and for Paz, this project may, in the future, help them to form better connections with other cultural spaces and actors as well as receive different forms of support from the government and private institutions.
Manuel is enthusiastic about the project and believes it will allow for better promotion of cultural and civic activities as well as the ability to connect with other centres doing similar things. ‘If others can help with our cultural activities, and, if through the Centro Cultural Torino we can help other civic centres, other cultural activities, other centres that often have these types of musical performances—as well as them being able to be in contact more with this centre—it is, of course, very welcome.’
Recently, the Centro Cultural Torino hosted an event linked to the MERCOSUR Patrimonio Intangible/Inmaterial (Intangible Heritage) workshops, celebrating the tradition of the cholita through the catwalks of Promociones Rosario, a project aimed to promote and preserve the tradition of the cholita. Such events as these, as well as those of Silvia Paz, will be important in the preservation of culture as well as the creation of new forms and traditions. The project can only help in these processes and show the diversity and richness of culture throughout Bolivia.
You can find out more about El Espaciario on Facebook, Twitter (@TelArtes) and Instagram (TelArtes_Bolivia) or on the TelArtes website. You can recommend different spaces for the map through the following form: http://bit.ly/espaciarioform or you can e-mail espaciario@telartes.org.bo.
The Ins and Outs of a Bazaar Regulation
El Alto's Feria 16 de Julio is an open-air market of 10,000 stalls stuffed with tax-free goods. On market days, Thursdays and Sundays, it is so busy that every intersection feels like its epicenter.
The view is similar from almost anywhere. Tents meet the horizons in dotted lines and tens of thousands of people fill the spaces between them. You can choose any direction and walk straight, expecting to eventually hit the edge, but the market will keep rolling out ahead of you like a treadmill.
The commotion is constant throughout, but there is an obvious territorial division in the market. One part of the market, its largest portion, seeps through an 80-block grid of businesses and residences. Here, two-story buildings heighten the sense of congestion, many of them with shops that spill out into the market.
The other section is a lengthy, open-area stretch along Avenida Panorámica, slightly less disorientating for the occasional billboard as a point of reference. Though Avenida Panorámica feels more open than the grid, my stolen wallet would suggest the area is just as hectic.
Once lost in the maze, the only visual cues to suggest ones location are often the goods themselves. There are obvious landmarks like the adorable-yet-tragic live-animal section, but there are also sections filled purely with clothes, shoes, plants, cars, electronics or food. This deliberate segmentation is the first indication that, despite the sense of anarchy, there is a force governing the chaos.
In fact, there are two forces governing the chaos.
On off-market days, you can see stall boundaries stamped on the pavement. Spaces are regulated by vendor associations, trade groups that grow to as many as 1,500 vendors.
One such association is headed by Carmen Saenz, the manager of Musica Selecta, a booth hawking a wide selection of music CDs. She explains that associations help to give vendors a collective voice, manage vendor permits, act as intermediaries in vendor disputes, and work to keep neighboring residents happy.
In addition, every association has a book of statutes that members must observe. If members fail to attend meetings or show up on market days, they can incur fines or even lose their stalls.
The mayor's office provides the market with a second tier of regulation. It barricades the busy streets every Thursday and Sunday, issues vendor permits, and collects fees from vendors.
Although the mayor’s office makes the market possible, Saenz claims its actions are crippling commerce in certain areas, including the one in which Saenz sells music. Saenz and members of her association do business on the stairs that connect the market to the streets below. Like all street vendors, they are dependent upon foot traffic, and the newly built teleférico diverted that away from them.
Now the mayor's office of La Paz is purging street markets below El Alto. Over the years, the mayor’s office has gradually diminished street markets downtown by controlling the market for stalls. As Saenz puts it, ‘Before, having a stall was like having an inheritance, but the mayor's office prohibited [the sale of stalls]. They had to restrain it. There were more vendors than before, and they did not want all of the streets to be occupied.’ A decade ago, vendors bought and sold stalls, but now, she says, ‘you cannot do transactions. I can give a stall to my daughter or brother instead of selling it, but as you can see, all these occupied spaces are not properties. It is not our property, so we cannot do transactions.’
The government has found a pretext that allows them to downsize sections of the market. Saenz explains that, now, rather than going to the highest bidder, ‘the permits the mayor's office gives to us are for people in need.’ Associations can recommend people for stall permits, but the mayor's office makes the final decision and manages the overall number of permits in each area.
‘If I have a stall and I get old, when I leave the stall goes with me. That is how the mayor's office is eradicating the market down below. If they take our stalls . . . . That is how they will take them,’ Saenz says.
Although the mayor’s office of La Paz has been able to curtail street markets, Saenz does not believe the same is possible in El Alto. “In El Alto, the new mayor is already trying to find a way to coordinate [shrinking the market], but in El Alto the people are much rougher,’ she says. ‘They also have much more need . . . . They are all very united. So I think it is much more difficult.’
To swim in this ocean of commerce, just take the red teleférico up to its terminal station, disembark and walk a hundred meters. Alternatively, you can take the yellow teleférico up to its terminal station and take a 15-30 minute ride in a taxi or minibus.
Photos by Ivan Rodriguez Petkovic
All images captured via Instagram using iPhone 5
Every day on planet Earth, people travel to different places, see different things and have unique experiences. Though separate in our individual existence, we are all bound by the same sky. The places we go shape us as individuals, but the sky remains constant through it all. It journeys with all of us. It defines us collectively.
