Celebrating the Aymara New Year in La Paz

Photo: Isabel Ion

She lays out her coca leaves over page 10 of El Dia’s June issue seated by herself in La Paz’s entrance to Valle de La Luna. She’s donning a navy bonnet with a plum wool cardigan and a matching silk pollera to keep her snug from the 5 a.m. chill.

A Mario Bros. ringtone resonates from a Nokia 200 through Marta’s skirt pocket and cuts through the still silence of the barren valley. Her 18-year-old daughter is on the line.

‘I’ve been here since four o’clock’ in the morning preparing the coca, cinnamon and sugar for Pachamama,’ Marta tells her, laughing with excitement. As she smiles, the crow’s feet on her rustic tan skin become ever more prominent. She checks the time on her cell phone and concludes there is an hour-and-a-half left until sunrise.

Prompt and patient, Marta Diez is the first person to arrive at Valle de La Luna’s Aymara New Year festival. She is one of the 1.5 million Aymara people in Bolivia who celebrate the winter solstice on June  21st. Officially named the Nuevo Año Andino Amazónico y Chaco, the celebration became a national holiday in Bolivia in 2009. On this day the sun is at its farthest from the Earth, which marks the beginning of a new agricultural year. It is the shortest day and longest night of our solar cycle.

Born and raised in La Paz in an Aymara household, Marta is a part-time seamstress and part-time tienda owner in El Alto. Although she has celebrated the New Year in various places across Bolivia, including Potosí and the most famous site, Tiwanaku, for the past four years she has spent it at Valle De La Luna, her favourite location.  

‘Tiwanaku is too commodified and cold for my taste,’ she says, as she continues to lay out her coca leaves on sheets of newspaper. ‘This location is right down the street from my house. There’s a lot of thought put in from those organizing the ceremony.’ Marta has brought several bags of cinnamon, sugar and coca leaves to share with those attending the ceremony.

‘The sugar and cinnamon I have here are to bring good health and good luck for your job and family. Pachamama is watching out for us,’ she says, pointing to the star-filled sky.

These elements are placed on an apxata, a ritual table covered with white tabletas, where coca leaves and natural elements accompany a dark-coloured llama fetus that represents the earth and its fertilization. The offerings on the table make up a mesa dulce and include fruit, coloured sweets, flower petals and aromatic woods of koa and palo santo. The fetus is wrapped in heaps of strings made out of wool. The items burned over the ritual table vary from celebration to celebration, but they usually represent  a house, a car, health and money.

Swarming about the dusty valley, the staff of Mallasa’s community City Hall fervently pace the event, making sure locals and tourists enjoy their time prior to the ceremony.

‘We are receiving el nuevo año andino amazónico with a traditional gift (huajta) to Pachamama,’ says José Eduardo Camper, deputy mayor of the Mallasa District, where the valley is located. ‘We’ve organized musical groups and we await neighbours and other communal organizations to attend this event we’ve planned for the past month.’

The song ‘Aymara’ resonates throughout the valley. Walter Quispe, the yatiri of the evening, makes his way to the front of the ceremonial table. Pacing around the llama and its body enveloped by gifts brought on by Marta, he begins to lightly drizzle the concoction with his tiny flask of alcohol. He lights the table. A booming flame ignites from below.

Locals and tourists pour in gradually at the gates of the Valley. Eager children and their parents make way up to the viewpoint looking over the purple haze of the 5:30 a.m. sky.

Quispe, who has been a yatiri for the past ten years, continues to perform the ceremony. Engaged and taken by the blazing red flames of the table, a stream of tears begins to roll down his cheeks. Marta and the two cholita friends who joined her, hold hands in a clasp, resting their heads on each other’s shoulders.

‘This is the one time we get to wholly express our culture. For us there’s a melancholic beauty to it,’ says Quispe, in a voice so soft it could put a child to sleep.

The sun is rising. The llama has turned to ashes. Over the hill, a bright yellow sun makes its way shining over the valley. Palms are raised to the sky and a new year has been officially marked.

Photo: Abigail Alves

José Antonio Saavedra Keeps Murillo’s Torch Burning

‘You need a lot of strength to carry this torch.’

Pitch black hair greased over, a moustache sharper than a cutting knife and an enigmatic charisma comparable to Marlon Brando’s, José Antonio Saavedra turns heads as he walks dressed from head to toe as Pedro Domingo Murillo along La Paz’s El Prado.

‘Do not say it’s a costume, for it’s not a costume,’ Saavedra says. ‘Costumes are for carnivals. I, on the other hand, I interpret Pedro Domingo Murillo!’ he exclaims.

The making of the film Fuego de Libertad, back in 2009, which commemorated the 200th anniversary of Bolivia’s independence, ignited Saavedra’s interest in Bolivia’s historical political figure when he was cast to play the revolutionary hero and the film’s key protagonist who portended to the country’s democratic shift.  He became invested in his role, and has been playing the part ever since.  

‘[Murillo] gave his life to gain emancipation from the Spanish,’ Saveedra says as he sits on his paisley-print couch twirling the 10-pound torch he carries along El Prado all the way to Plaza San Francisco on El Dia de La Paz. ‘A person who fights for their ideals, I put them in high value.’

Saavedra is an entrepreneur who owns a car lot, Saavedra Motors, and is also an economist and a lawyer, yet manages to find space for his acting hobbies on the side. While a lot of actors have played the part of Murillo, most of them have let go and moved on. Yet Saavedra carries on, year after year.

‘I kept on going, fascinated by his character,’ Saavedra says. ‘I studied him, and even had the honour of being invited to his house by the government.’  

Tweaking and fixing his custom-made Murillo attire yearly, the part-time actor and multi-career Bolivian wakes up at 5 in the morning every July 16 to ready himself for his procession with the help of his wife, Maria Helena. But this day commemorating Murillo’s insurrection in 1889 is but one of many showings of Saavedra as the revolutionary hero. Starting July 1, Saavedra attends events and interviews leading up to El Dia de La Paz.

‘I identify myself with him because I respect his ideologies, and I’m a man of my word, like he is,’ Saavedra declares. ‘You need a lot of strength to carry this torch.’

The son of a military officer from Santa Cruz, Saveedra admired his father’s wardrobe as a young boy, but his father’s loyalty towards his beliefs always reminded him of Bolivia’s revolutionary. The way Murillo sacrificed his life for those of Bolivian peoples reminds Jose of his father’s selflessness.

Saveedra stands on a small stage located on the third floor of the Loteria Nacional building. There are 12 days left until El Dia de La Paz, but he is attending the ‘Pedro Domingo Murillo Loteria Nacional’ event on Avenida Santa Cruz. La Loteria Nacional celebrates the foundation of Murillo’s homage and is nominating the political figure for the next raffle that is happening this morning. The torch that was ignited in 1889 is a símbolo de la paceñidad.

‘It is fundamental here in La Paz, we are trying to reinforce the sentiment of liberty and revolution that our city and Murillo both have in common,’ says Rossillo Pimentel, executive director of La Loteria Nacional.

Saavedra struts on stage as his alter ego. He raises his right fist to the air and fervently looks through National Radio Bolivia’s camera, declaring, ‘¡No apagarán la tea que he encendido (They will not extinguish the torch that I have ignited)!’

He walks off stage with his lit torch. The exit door slams in such a way it resonates throughout the room. A gust of dry of Bolivian wind enters the room but Saavedra’s torch ceases to burn out.

How Jorge Luis Parra became a chef in the city

Jorge Luis Parra admits that he became a chef by accident. Although food and flavour are now at the centre of his life, they are a fairly recent devotion. ‘You can find this passion at any age,’ he says, ‘but in my experience, my passion was found spontaneously.’

Jorge believes that food and eating are paramount to our existence: we eat to live, work to buy food and come together around meals. ‘Food can change the world,’ he tells me quietly. This is a significant statement from someone who, now twenty-two years old, only began his culinary training three years ago. Before that, food was something to save up for, more of a necessity than a pleasure. It wasn’t central to his childhood at all.

At the young age of thirteen, Jorge became the breadwinner of his family, working menial jobs in La Paz such as selling electrical parts. Discipline has always been essential to the way he lives his life. It is what got him noticed as a security guard at Gustu, Claus Meyer’s internationally famous restaurant in the city. Jorge’s ability to thrive under stringent work conditions ultimately led to his enrolment at Manq’a, Gustu’s cooking school, which provides culinary training to locals who may struggle to afford it.

This is how his endless drive to put food on the table morphed into an ambition to revolutionise the food itself. When Jorge speaks about the future, his gaze flickers past me. He makes abstract statements of ambition along with more solid plans. The more he achieves, the more he wants to map out his future. Jorge wants to do a ‘stage of training’ in Copenhagen, he wants to travel everywhere, but his plans don’t have a specific timing. It’s not that he wants to travel in order to introduce Bolivian cuisine to the world. His plan is to learn everything before he can change anything. Although he originally thought people were crazy when they said they could change the world through food, he now says, ‘Anything is possible, no matter your background or experience.’

Despite his overseas hankerings, it is his  background and hometown that essentially drive Jorge’s ambition. ‘I want to grow as a professional and open a new restaurant for my people,’ he says. For someone in daily contact with internationally acclaimed gourmet creations, Jorge remains connected to the flavour of his city. His favourite dish couldn’t be more paceño: fish, fries and soup.