Photo: Iván Rodriguez Petkovic

Las Mentes Ociosas and their brand of musical comedy

The Palacio de Comunicaciones in La Paz is not as imposing as a theatre can be. Imagine your high school auditorium with improved seating and a sound booth. When Los Mentes Ociosas took the stage, however, they transformed the space into a highly professional venue. It didn’t seem like this short performance would be as outlandish as their social media presence would have one believe, but within minutes, robots were carried onto the stage and Los Mentes Ociosas took form. The brevity of the act didn’t detract from the hilarity of the group. As the show came to a close, one of the characters, like a madman, screamed to the object of his affection:

‘You know that I want you, and you know that I need you. I want it bad, your bad romance!’

To put these remarks into context, the group was performing Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, which gave way to Miguel savagely screaming the verses. In their performance, they transformed a tale of loving someone who is bad for you to that of a psychotic man’s obsession with an unknowing individual. Ending the show was the chaos of the quartet’s lingering harmonies, Miguel’s  psychotic laughter, and the audience’s guffawing.

‘Los Mentes Ociosas’ are unlike any people I’ve ever seen, let alone any musical group. They are wonderfully and unequivocally weird. The members, Pamela, Miguel, Carlos, and Mauricio, are undoubtedly talented musicians, but what makes there act so unique is their unabashed sense of humor.

When talking with Pamela and Miguel about their act, it becomes clear that skits of this nature are a core component of their performance. They perform popular songs by western artists and twist the story into something completely different. They often take it even further and use the original lyrics and melodies of the songs, but transform their meaning by modifying the context. They tell a love story between Batman and Robin with songs by the Mexican trio Pandora, or that of Mr. and Mrs. Claus with tunes by the Argentine duo Pimpinela.

Their performances are silly, but serious. ‘Music is so rigid,’ Pamela says. ‘We like to be rigid, but play with it. You can’t joke about music: A major has to sound A major, but, what we do is we joke around it. We are silly, so our performance is silly.’

Beyond the self-deprecating fat-jokes that Los Mentes Ociosas revel in during the act, the quality of their performance comes through in the near-perfect harmonies and in the message behind their humor. When Pamela performs Beyoncé as an aria, she not only levels opera with pop music, but she also performing a rather brilliant adapted piece of music.

This is all tied into what the group calls ‘Responsible Comedy’. Their performances often address contentious aspects of society, namely gender, identity, and politics, without attacking or disrespecting specific individuals. One of the groups most dynamic performances is ‘Disney Halloween’, the tale of a serial killer who hunts women, told through Disney showstoppers. One character asks: ‘Where will I hide the body?’ and the rest of the group responds with a chorus of, ‘Under the sea, under the sea.’ In the show’s grand finale, the heroine, originally depicted as weak and intellectually inept, kills the man and saves the day. The goal of this kind of performance is to create discussion amongst the audience regarding things like gender and the socio-political landscape of La Paz.

Music with such a level of consciousness is rare in popular culture. It is clear that Los Mentes Ociosas take pride in their brand of lyric-dependent music, hoping to remind people that music isn’t just for dancing. In many ways, they achieve this. They get the audience to question the fixed norms of society whilst being entertainers, not teachers.

Photo: Eleanor Henderson

Proving the park’s unmatched biodiversity

The journey from La Paz to the San José de Uchupiamonas community, in the heart of Madidi National Park, reinforces its ecological importance. I flew from El Alto at 7:30 in the morning and the terror of boarding a plane that could fit in my living room was alleviated the moment the Amazon began to sprawl beneath us. It was an experience in and of itself. Soon I would be on a boat making my way down those same rivers and estuaries.

As you take the boat from the town of Rurrenabaque into the jungle’s heart, macaws fly above, and the sound of the rainforest is draining. Madidi bridges the tropical Andes and the Amazon Basin, and has an altitudinal span of nearly 6000m. The sheer biodiversity of the park is undeniable and, for me, it’s become clear that it deserves the recognition and cultural significance that Identidad Madidi will bring it.

Identidad Madidi is a two year scientific expedition in the Madidi National Park that has focused on collecting data on its population of vertebrates and butterflies.The project branches across several institutions in Bolivia, including the Wildlife Conservation Society, Instituto de Ecología, Dirección General de Biodiversidad y Áreas Protegidas, Servicio Nacional de Áreas Protegidas, Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, and numerous others.

The most unprecedented findings are ten species of vertebrates that are new to science.

The expedition began in June 2015 and has already collected data at eleven sites, with plans to cover five more. The primary objective is to prove the previously suspected fact that Madidi is the world’s most biologically diverse protected area. This terminology is stressed by expedition leader, Robert Wallace, who notes that they are ‘not trying to prove that it is the most biologically diverse place in the world’, as that would require determining biodiversity by square meter or kilometre. The champion by that count is most likely somewhere in Ecuador or Colombia. Instead, what they are seeking to prove is that Madidi, as a singular national park, protects more species than any other on Earth. The hypothesis is becoming more definite as the expedition goes on, since the project has already doubled the expected number of new vertebrate species recorded on the exhibition, from 100 to 200. According to Wallace, ‘The altitudinal gradient is crucial. It is the reason for Madidi’s outstanding biodiversity.’

Madidi has been known by ornithologists for decades. Before the Identidad Madidi expedition began, there were already 1001 bird species recorded in the park, roughly 90 percent of the species they expected to be found there. In contrast, the existing data records only 25 percent of the butterflies that are expected to live in the park. In less than two years, the expedition has logged 372 butterfly species for the first time in Madidi, bringing the total number of records in 2015 to 1080 butterfly varieties, more than can be found in all of North America. Wallace says a conservative estimate for the final tally is around 1600.

Although the influx of different species is exceeding original expectations, the most unprecedented findings of the expedition are the six new species of vertebrates registered by 2015. These are not just ‘new’ to Bolivia or Madidi, but ‘new’ to science. This has clearly drawn attention  to Identidad Madidi. Last year, the local and international press extensively covered the discovery of a new rubber frog, the Oreobates sp. nov.

What’s even more incredible is the extensive potential for new discoveries that remains in the park. This is explicit when considering the lack of data Identidad has collected on moths as opposed to butterflies, which are the only invertebrates the study has focused on. It has focused on butterflies for two main reasons: they are more charismatic, and far more ‘manageable’ in terms of the number of species. Wallace says they could find between 10,000 and 15,000 different species of moths in the park. ‘At one point,’ he recounted, from a previous excursion into the park, ‘the entomologist estimated there was something like 300 to 400 species of moths on one bed sheet with a light at one time.’

The need for more research and attention is true for the majority of the most ecologically diverse areas in the world. It is difficult to show that Madidi is the most biologically diverse protected area in the world because that level of data is not yet available for other protected areas. Before beginning the expedition, the Wildlife Conservation Society used the data on the Manu park in Peru as the closest comparison for Madidi. Manu, however, doesn’t contain tropical grasslands and only covers an altitudinal gradient of around 4000m. By the end of Identidad Madidi, Wallace expects they’ll be able to say that Madidi has more vertebrates and butterflies than any other national park in the world.  

For Wallace, the need to communicate the importance of Madidi to the all of Bolivia is at the heart of the project. ‘Whether it turns out that Madidi is 1st, 2nd or 3rd in the world for biodiversity doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘The data we are collecting is crucial.’

Today, the project is being taken to schools across the country and has reached more than 18,300 students in approximately 149 institutions, encouraging and exciting young people in Bolivia. For many conservationists, a primary goal of their work is to expand people’s knowledge of the areas they study in order to encourage their protection. The reach of Identidad Madidi in Bolivia is extraordinary. By 2017, the project hopes to reach an additional 150 schools, totalling 40% of all educational institutes in La Paz and El Alto.

Photo: Jet de Kort

Code-switching between Aymara and Spanish

In the blazing sun, about 150 inhabitants of Wichi Wichi, a village on the banks of Lake Titicaca, gather at the local plaza. Every Saturday the townsfolk come here to discuss local issues. ‘¡Pido la palabra, pido la palabra!’ (I want to speak, I want to speak!) calls a resident. He raises his voice, demanding attention to express his opinion on the topics discussed in this week's meeting. When it is finally his turn, he stands up and starts his dialogue in Spanish: ‘Compañeros y compañeras de nuestra comunidad, es tan importante que…’ (Ladies and gentlemen of our community, it is important that…). I miss the rest, because he continues in Aymara, an indigenous language spoken by over two million people in Bolivia.

This phenomena is called code-switching, and it occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages. Some of the attendees of the municipality are bilingual speakers, and they sometimes use elements of both Spanish and Aymara when talking. Rosalia Mamani, 51 years old, is fluent in both languages, and splits her time between Wichi Wichi and El Alto. She mainly resides in the city, but has a passion for the countryside and its people because of her campo roots. As a result, she alternates between the two places every weekend and, consequently, between Aymara and Spanish. ‘In El Alto I speak Spanish more often, because not everyone speaks Aymara, and in the countryside it is the other way around – there the majority speaks Aymara,’ Rosalia explains. ‘But sometimes I unconsciously mix between the two languages when conversing.’ 

I observe the people at the plaza in Wichi Wichi and listen to the conversations of Rosalia and her friends. I try to detect when she switches between Aymara and Spanish. With older people, she mainly speaks in Aymara. I don’t understand much of their conversations, but occasionally she drops some Spanish – mostly numbers and linking words. ‘I don’t know exactly why, even though we also have these types of words in Aymara. It is just easier to express them in Spanish,’ she says. Rosalia turns to her younger cousin and suddenly switches to Spanish. I ask myself, Is this a matter of age?

Juan de Dios Yapita, a professor in Andean linguistics, studies the language patterns of Rosalia and her neighbours. ‘In Bolivia, multilingualism is well-represented. There are a lot of people who speak another indigenous language besides Spanish,’ Yapita says. In general, the Bolivian society is ‘Spanishised’, but in rural places such as Wichi Wichi, indigenous languages are still widely spoken, especially among the older generation.

Maruja Mamani was born and raised in Wichi Wichi. Her generation is much more accustomed to speaking Spanish. ‘Initially I only spoke Aymara, because of my parents,’ Maruja says. ‘When I was of age to go to school, I learned how to speak and write in Spanish.’ When she texts her friends, she always writes in Spanish, ‘simply because I never learned how to write in Aymara,’ she explains. Still, Maruja often uses Aymara because her grandparents never went to school and only know basic Spanish. In order to communicate with her family members, she must speak Aymara. Occasionally, however, her knowledge of the language is inadequate; instead she uses a Spanish word.

A pure language doesn't exist, and every language has adopted words from other languages. Yapita explains this as the metamorphosis of language. ‘Words have a lifecycle; they are born, live, and die,’ he says. ‘Languages are in contact with each other, which influences their vocabularies.’ This also applies to the following example given by Yapita; words like cable car and cell phone didn’t exist in some indigenous languages. Therefore the Spanish words teleférico and celular are transformed into their Aymaran counterparts: teleferico – without accent – and celulara.

This is an example of differences in phonology. ‘Aymara doesn’t have accents, therefore the movement of the tongue is different; in Aymara it goes down, while it in Spanish goes up,’ Yapita explains. As a result, sounds in Aymara are more monotone because there is no stress on any particular syllable. In Spanish, accents are essential; words can lose the definition when not pronouncing them properly. ‘For example, when demanding someone to sit down, one would say siéntate!’ Yapita says. ‘Speakers of Aymara often don’t pronounce the accents when speaking Spanish, because they are not accustomed to its added value.’

‘Sometimes I unconsciously mix between the two languages when conversing, this goes spontaneously.’
- Rosalia Mamani

Another common mistake made by Aymara speakers in Spanish is the use of the wrong article. ‘They can’t help it, because Aymara doesn’t distinguish between masculine and feminine words,’ Yapita says. Additionally, word order is different; Aymara sentences start with the subject, followed by complements, and finishing with verbs. ‘These differences in grammar often cause confusion, especially for bilingual children in primary school,’ Yapita says. ‘They are just learning how to read and write, and don’t identify the differences in grammar between the two languages.’

Yapita also encountered cases in which speakers of Aymara literally translated their words into Spanish. ‘They say: estoy en aqui (I’m in here), which is incorrect Spanish, it should be: estoy aqui (I’m here). But it makes sense in Aymara, because the Aymaran equivalent could be translated this way,’ he explains.

In Wichi Wichi, I try to recognize the examples given by Yapita. My knowledge of Aymara doesn’t reach beyond the basics I picked up during my stay in Bolivia, so I find it hard to tell when the languages are in contact. I’m not a linguist, but I detect some language borrowing. An older cholita stares at me, and chuckles to her neighbor. They speak in Aymara, but one word I do understand: gringuita. Their curiosity cannot withhold them from talking to me. While having apthapi, one of them says: ‘Amiga, tomate estito!’ (Friend, take this!) I take a chuño from the mound of potatoes laid out on an aguayo, and analyse the words she uses to invite me in the sharing of food. Shouldn’t it be Amiga, toma esto? Almost unrecognizably, she transformed one short sentence into an Aymara-inflected Spanish one. This linguistic metamorphosis, although far from orthodox Spanish, was easily understood to my ears.