In many parts of rural Bolivia, whether people have come together to hold a community meeting or to celebrate a milestone or holiday, there are many occasions for an apthapi, or communal meal. Most of my experiences with these events have been in areas populated by potato and quinoa farmers and llama herders. In these areas, women gather in a nice shady spot and empty their aguayos of their contents: boiled potatoes, chuño, corn, cheese. . . whatever they can bring from their small farms. At an apthapi, everyone contributes food to share, which is laid out in a long line on the ground, mountains of local foods cooked separately but brought together into one heaping mound.
Once everyone sits around the spread, the real purpose of the gathering begins. After a short greeting and message of thanks from community leaders, everyone leans in and takes their first sampling. Their bare hands search for the perfect potato and tear off a small piece of cheese to accompany it. Their fingers begin to peel the red and brown skins, dropping the casing in the ground to reveal the potatoes’ white, starchy flesh. Everyone digs in, laughing and chatting all the way.
I once described an apthapi as ‘a potluck on the Altiplano’, but the truth is it is more than that. It is an old tradition with unspoken yet set rules: where people sit, who eats first, how to give thanks. The event happens with a surprising amount of order if you look closely. But many of these rules are in place to set expectations, to make sure things go smoothly. With a communal understanding of what is taking place, you can focus on what is important: spending time with the people around you. You can talk business, ask others about their families, trade jokes. It is usually held outside, and the entire community is present. With communal food as the binding factor, it is a gathering not to be missed if given the opportunity to attend.
In this issue of Bolivian Express, we looked at all forms of gatherings, and how opportunities to come together with others make for great experiences. We visited a fine-dress motorcycle rally that brought dapper motorists together for a good cause in Cochabamba. We visited mosques in La Paz and saw how this community prays together to practice their faith. We rocked out with heavy metal fans and watched young women skateboard together, both groups collectively defying community expectations to find a home amongst their like-minded friends. And we learned what it means to be a citizen in a large city, the permanent gatherings many of us navigate every day.
With every issue of this magazine, we try to bring everyone together to share our Bolivian experiences. Our writers tell their stories and adventures in this great country, and we amplify the voices of the people who make Bolivia a fascinating place. While not everyone may be lucky enough to experience a Bolivian apthapi, hopefully this magazine allows people to connect with Bolivia in the same deep way. And hopefully you will enjoy the stories we experience together as we explore the people and places around us.
Download
Illustration: Hugo L. Cuellar
A Festival of Ritualized Violence
Even in Bolivia, a country well known for its many folkloric dances, the Tinku stands out. It is a dance that immediately catches your eye with its energetic style, mesmerising fighting moves and the majestic attire of those who perform it. However, Tinku – a word that means ‘encounter’ in Quechua – is more than simply a dance. Tinku is ritualized combat that the members of the ayllu partake in, sometimes with fatal consequences. These members of the ayllu are divided into up and down – aransaya and majasaya – to grow different crops across various topological zones, and every year the two sides come together and fight each other, a practice that has deep roots that can be traced back to pre-Incan times.
For some, the tale of Tinku begins with a great nation of warriors, the Qara-Qara, who had great prestige for their fighting techniques and war-making abilities. The Qara-Qara would demonstrate their martial prowess in ceremonies in Macha, their nation’s capital, located in the north of the present-day Potosí department. Their skills were so good that when the Inca colonised the Qara-Qara, the Sapa Inca’s bodyguards were recruited from their ranks through organised battles of the conquered population. The best Qara-Qara warriors would compete and the winners would serve the emperor.
In time, a religious content merged with these fighting demonstrations. In the Andean cosmovision, ‘balance’ is one of the central metaphysical principles. It gains even more weight when considered alongside humanity’s relationship to Pachamama, the source of all life and fertility. Those killed during the Tinku are considered offerings to Pachamama during this early May celebration.
Intimately linked to the agrarian cycle, this celebration involves feasting, drinking, music, and wijlla, a special ritual in which llamas and sheep are sacrificed, their blood offered as sustenance to Pachamama, who in return provides a good harvest. And of course, this celebration also included the famous inter-communal Tinku fights.
After the Spanish conquest, indigenous communities were forcibly stripped of their traditional idols, which were often replaced with depictions of Catholic saints. However, the roots of local culture were too strong to merely disappear, and a type of syncretism appeared. In the case of Tinku the original meaning of the Andean Cross celebration was adjusted to fit Catholic festivals: the Feast of the Cross (Fiesta de la Cruz) and sometimes the Lord of the Exaltation (Señor de la Exaltación), among others. This intricate weaving together of different cultures underlying Tinku means that today it is celebrated with a mix of customs: the demonstrative fight; rituals to Pachamama; and components of the Catholic faith. This richness has kept on growing, especially since the music accompanying the feast played by charangos and Jula-Julas took off. Today, the fighting moves and magnificent clothes of Tinku have become integrated into mainstream Bolivian identity, and the dance itself is now a celebrated feature of Bolivia’s main carnival celebration held in Oruro every February.
One of the clearest illustrations of Tinku’s gathering strength is the massive rows of migrants that come back to their communities year after year to join in on the celebrations. The young people who have emigrated to neighbouring countries for employment frequently travel back to their ancestral communities for the celebration, and, having been exposed to other cultures, bring new elements to festival. Now one can see drones, mp3 players, jeans, and football T-shirts alongside the more traditional elements of Tinku. And instead of only traditional chicha and guarapo drinks being available, beer is also now consumed massively.
Despite the image of nonsensical violence that outsiders might perceive from the dance, the reality in these communities expressed by an elder from Aymaya, a village in northern Potosí where the Tinku is practiced: ‘Tinku is the complementary encounter of the people from up and down: aransaya and majasaya.’ This is reflected in fighters’ cordial, grudge-free attitude to each other before and after combat. Tinku, rather than being about power and dominance, is at its heart about ‘balancing’ the two halves of the ayllu.
The Tinku remains at the heart of the culture in northern Potosí, where it originates, and continues to act as a bridge for the indigenous people who have left their communities in recent years. It continues to provide the Andean notion of ‘balance’ in the ever-changing indigenous communities of this rural area of Bolivia.
Photo: Courtesy of Revolución Jigote
Tackling the Challenges of Urban Life in La Paz and Santa Cruz
We've all struggled in the chaos of the cities of Bolivia. We’ve seen garbage in the streets, old buses belching smoke, cars ignoring red lights and honking for seemingly no reason. It seems an impossible task to change things for the better here, but some people have hope.
Revolución Jigote is a citizen-training program aiming to promote more organized street planning, public education, and protection for the environment. It’s the brainchild of CEDURE, a Santa Cruz–based nonprofit specializing in urban and human development. In Bolivia, jigote is a dish of stewed meat, but this movement doesn’t focus on food: it’s a set of values and attitudes that its authors hope will improve Bolivia’s often chaotic cities.
José Antonio Prado, Revolución Jigote’s director, says the program ‘analyzes how social marketing can combine with Santa Cruz´s idiosyncrasies to make civic education a theory that works locally.’ In other words, Revolución Jigote is trying to leverage today’s media to inform Bolivians, making them a better, more civic-minded populace. The group comprises about a thousand registered volunteers in total, plus a staff of 20.
‘Santa Cruz severely punishes those who do things right,’ José Antonio says. ‘For example, if you respect one traffic signal or the markings on the street, you feel like a burro for following rules. Therefore, doing the right thing becomes a heroic act. And this makes people feel they are doing things wrong when they are not.’
The philosophy of Revolución Jigote is espoused in the project’s manual: ‘Everyone has a mojigote [negative civil behaviour] inside, which manifests itself when we are not alert, and it acts when we stop thinking about others. The challenge is to control our mojigote from inside, little by little, until it disappears.’ The manual lists 200 types of socially unacceptable behaviours in 60 categories, including environment and health, urban mobility, space and public property, and democracy and governance.
José Antonio says Revolución Jigote is intended to nudge people into making positive change from the inside out. And he thinks the program is helping many people in Santa Cruz – professionals, retired ladies, and students alike – be more friendly, hospitable, and kind, both in relation to one another and to the environment.
The principles that Revolución Jigote promotes are applicable to any field and any location, but José Antonio believes they have created a movement specific to the cruceño context. ‘We created the idea, but the authorities have to continue our work,’ he says. ‘Sometimes there is a very big disparity between political and civil institutions.’
Meanwhile in La Paz, Aire Limpio [Clean Air], a project by the private foundation Swisscontact with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, presented its Bolivian street design manual at the city’s annual book fair in September. The manual is colorful, graphic, and technical, a detailed study of the state of the streets and avenues of different cities in Bolivia, with a particular focus on La Paz. The stated mission of the book is to improve Bolivians’ health by reducing air pollution caused by motor vehicles and improving urban mobility.
‘You don’t always need giant structures or to be complicated. Sometimes you just need to optimize and simplify.’
– Peter Hotz, expert on urban mobility, Swisscontact
Peter Hotz, an expert on urban mobility who has worked on transportation matters throughout Bolivia, says that it is possible to make radical changes in the streets and avenues of the city. For example, alternative transport methods, such as cycling, can help improve the environment. There are also design solutions too: ‘You don’t always need giant structures or to be complicated,’ Holt explains. ‘Sometimes you just need to optimize and simplify. For example, pasarelas are not the best solutions to reduce the number of [people getting hit by cars]. They usually cost a lot of money, and the investment is often not justified because they are not used often. Instead, you can use simply use speed bumps. . . [and vehicle speed] is reduced.’
The Aire Limpio manual lists various areas in which Bolivian cities can improve – for example, narrow sidewalks can be widened and repaired, infrastructure can be built for cycling or for bus lanes, more parking spaces can be provided – and the project also holds training sessions, in which participants discuss the benefits of mass transportation in curbing air pollution. Real-world evidence is given, so that every citizen, no matter how they move around a city – by car, by bus, by foot – can do so in a way that will improve the city for everyone.
Bolivia, with its unique geography and population distribution, won’t find a one-size-fits-all solution to the growing pains it is experiencing. Its two megalopolises, La Paz–El Alto and Santa Cruz, are growing quickly, gathering more and more people in their urban dynamism. But the future looks promising, especially with help from far-sighted planners who are looking to improve the lives of all Bolivians.
Photos: Jet De Kort
Commuters Line Up to Go to the City
It’s 6:30 am when the cabins start moving at the teleférico station in Ciudad Satélite, a neighborhood in El Alto. People line up in the dew, waiting to commute down to La Paz. Since the opening of the three gondola lines in 2014, every morning the stations become hubs of congregating paceños and alteños. Some are rushed, others are still gnawing on their breakfast. Most of them are waiting alone in the queue, which is a great moment to chat and see what has brought them here.
Ronald
‘I’m working as a security guard at the teléferico stations in El Alto. My job is to create a safe environment and to protect our users. I like my work, especially the people. I’m a social person and with this work I meet many different individuals. Before I got this job, I took classes for a year in order to learn how to talk to people and how to deal with conflicts. Sometimes, our users argue with me. Someone tried to enter the teléferico cabin with a dog once, which isn’t allowed. He got very angry, but it didn’t upset me. I calmly explained the rules and then he walked off.’
Karen
‘I’m using the teléferico to go down to work in Sopocachi. I’m an independent consultant in the field of development. For me, the teléferico is a great example of how development should be approached. Tomorrow there will be a roadblock, which limits people’s ability to go to work. The teléferico provides an easy alternative way of public transportation. When I’m riding, I always listen to music, mostly classical. Many people of my age don’t listen to this type of music, but I don’t like contemporary music as much. It has very little content, which I don’t find interesting.’
Lucía
‘I’m cooking food. My specialty is masaco, which is fried chicken with ahogado. I have six children who like my food a lot. They don’t eat at agachaditos, because it isn't fresh and for some people the food on the streets causes a lot of stomach problems. I normally wake up at 6:00 am and start cooking rice and fideos in my house. When I finish with that, I wrap it up and go to the streets where I sell my food. When I’m done, I pack up my stuff again and leave.’
Juanma and José Alejandro
‘We are going to a hospital in the city with the teléferico because down there, the specialists can help my son. He is only one-year-and-nine-months old, but he has problems with his heart. The doctors are going to operate him today. Luckily the operation is not too risky, but they will open his chest during surgery. In general, he doesn’t have too many problems with his health. Complications with his heart can occur only when it’s cold. Lately, I have been preoccupied with his well being. Hopefully this operation will improve his situation. The doctors promised the surgery will make him better.’
