Redefining the haircut experience in Bolivia

Beard trimming is not just a trend, it is an art. However, both beards and haircuts do follow the fashion of the times, which, as we know, come and go with the regularity of the tides. This is exactly why, last December, in La Paz’s Zona Sur – Calle Jaime Mendoza, San Miguel, to be precise – Rodrigo Álvarez unveiled ‘La Barbería La Paz’, a vintage barber shop that seems to breathe that Gatsby-esque New York atmosphere of the roaring twenties, providing a nostalgic and traditional service.

The original idea behind La Barbería – ‘a simple idea with a vintage style and quality service’, to quote its owner – wasn’t actually Rodrigo’s. In fact, he drew inspiration from the first time he visited a barbería in Santa Cruz, where he fell utterly in love with the treatment he received and the style of the shop. Then, after becoming a partner of La Barbería in Santa Cruz, he decided to open his own shop. This is a revolutionary development, considering that Bolivia has a limited barber-shop heritage, while hairdressers have long been a part of its everyday culture. For this reason, many barbers here are from foreign countries, most of them from Latin America, but at least one from Ukraine. While the traditional barber has always – according to stereotype – been male, nowadays it is becoming an occupation independent of gender. According to Rodrigo, the first female barber in Bolivia (from Venezuela) works in La Barbería in Santa Cruz.

Another innovative and unique selling point is the service La Barbería provides to its customers. Not only does it offer a haircut or beard trimming with sophisticated techniques, such as the toalla caliente (a hot towel softly placed on the face that helps dilate the pores and warm up the skin to guarantee a perfect beard cut), but also a complete and lasting experience enriched by the chance to drink local whiskeys or other liquors. Furthermore, customers who – perhaps surprisingly – vary between sixteen and sixty-five years old, can choose a range of haircuts represented on a little painting in the middle of the wall, or otherwise they can bring their own photos and ask for exactly what they want.

Moreover, the décor smacks of an old-school barber shop, a virtual relic nowadays, in which a barber wasn’t just a barber, but a personal counsellor too. The seats have been delicately refurbished to look as they did originally. On a small wooden sideboard sits an ancient radio dating back to 1930, which is still in perfect working condition. Around it stand a series of products prepared with natural essences (some of them homemade) for the treatment of beards and hair.

Rodrigo claims to have ‘changed the paradigm of barber shops, replacing a twenty-minute service with a relaxing and long experience.’ With kindness and good manners, he has turned La Barbería into a growing franchise. There are now two shops in Santa Cruz and one in La Paz. In Santa Cruz, Rodrigo and his business partner recently forged an alliance with Hotel Camino Real to create a luxury barbershop, called ‘Business Club’.

Due to its active social media presence, La Barbería has reached a substantial crowd with its unique ideas. It has almost 40,000 followers on four different pages on Facebook. Given La Barbería’s increasing popularity, it seems there is nothing to stop its potential success in other cities in Bolivia or South America.

Illustration: Hugo L. Cuellar

A pilgrimage to discover what lies within

Our quest to understand what the sixth sense means in Bolivia began with a series of visits to La Paz’s curanderos and yatiris, its (mis)fortune-tellers, identified by minuscule stools set beside them for passing customers to sit in. They are self-proclaimed windows into other worlds, conduits of a higher power. One yatiri proudly informed us, ‘I fell to Earth in a lightning bolt.’ These interpreters of cards or coca leaves profess to sense things that we, mere mortals, are unable to see or hear.

Our first encounter with these vessels of insight was underwhelming. Squeezed into a secluded nook off Sagarnaga, our curandero invited us to sit down either side of him. After expertly shuffling some battered Spanish baraja cards, he dealt them onto a mat, pointed sporadically, mumbled indiscernibly, and told us that all would be ‘bien, no más’.

With relief turning to cynicism, we walked away, convinced that the best – a feeling of contact with a higher power, an inexplicable insight from a complete stranger – was yet to come.

In total, we spoke to six yatiris. Fortunately, not all were as vague as the first. Unfortunately, though, we are currently coming to terms with the fact that we have been cursed, that mild illness is impending, that we have to watch our spending, and that the rest of our lives will be, at best, ‘fine’. But there are solutions: One yatiri helpfully pointed to a nearby ATM so that we could purchase a three-month cleanse (200 bolivianos) or, for just double the price, eternal purification.

The monetary incentive, in what is very much a business for these individuals, is irrefutable. At times, their readings came off as well-rehearsed sales pitches designed to make impressionable clients spend more money. There is certainly something to be said for these individuals as spiritual or emotional safety nets, however. Whether by reassuring customers that everything will be ‘fine’ or offering soul purifications, these yatiris generally granted visitors the opportunity to depart with a clear conscience.

‘I fell to Earth in a lightning bolt.’
— a yatiri

Admittedly, many of the readings did leave an impression, and were often eerily aligned with one another. Don Simón, in particular, reading coca leaves in his wooden shack set back from Sagarnaga, interpreted what he saw in ways that were, if not always correct, at least remarkable. The following day, a yatiri next to the cemetery produced a reading so similar that it it made us question our prejudgements.

In order to find out more, we attempted to visit a notorious love doctor in Sopocachi called Salvador. During seven-hour bonding rituals, he would invoke the powers of Tamara – a spookily well-preserved human skull – to intensify the love between his subjects. Four years ago, this self-proclaimed Cupid told Bolivian Express that he believes himself to be ‘a deeply spiritual person’, and that he ‘worked with the spirits in order to achieve union.’

Unfortunately, however, Salvador’s ability to channel his alleged sixth sense and communicate with the ethereal realm didn’t extend into the material world, as after our four separate and scheduled visits we eventually were met by rejection in the form of unanswered knocking on his door. Whether this was, in fact, Tamara warding away our journalistic demons remains unclear. We would suggest not.

Finally, mercifully, our journey took us to the Centro Zen, a Buddhist meditation centre on Calle Hermanos Manchego. We met with Juan Manuel Torrez, or Juma, as he is known. ‘I have always been following various spiritual currents in search of my home,’ Juma said. When he joined the centre, however, ‘something connected, I don’t know what, but I felt like I had done this before.’ Throughout our discussion, Juma had an aura of self-assured tranquility.

We were joined by two other companions, Alejandro and Marcela, who explained their perspectives on Zen meditation. ‘In Buddhism, there is no failure, there is simply abandonment,’ Alejandro said. Their congregation has ranged from politicians and scientists to students and artists, but many have fallen by the wayside. According to Alejandro, ‘It is difficult to maintain because human beings always aspire for something beyond, something different.’ Zen, all three explained, is not about looking outwards but about searching within yourself for inner peace.

They each adopt the posture of the Buddha, legs folded, backs arched, shoulders down, and chests puffed outwards like peacocking pigeons. Juma explains that, teamed with deep respiration, this pose allows them to engage both mind and body in order to ‘understand [themselves] on a far deeper level’, and to ‘overcome the difficult moments of life.’

Unfortunately, we have been cursed, mild illness is impending, we have to watch our spending, and the rest of our lives will be, at best, ‘fine’.

Our search for the sixth sense, perhaps, was the curse we were warned about. Whether or not this had anything to do with the alleged spell placed on one of us by a former lover, or because our subjects were particularly interested in cultivating that sense of aloofness, of mystery, that contributes to their aura of otherworldliness, we cannot be sure.

It wasn’t, arguably, the most sensible idea to task a pair of sceptics with this pilgrimage. The real curse, perhaps, was that we were looking in the wrong place all along. Our experience at the Centro Zen was far more illuminating than anything we actively sought out. Self-knowledge, Juma and his companions posit, is the path to better understanding others. Their sixth sense is not transcendent, not incandescent, but a sense of inner tranquility.

Photo: Nick Somers

Shining the spotlight on deaf children and Bolivia’s neglect of the disabled

‘There is a mountain of work still for us to do,’ Valeria Salinas tells me. Her initiative, Proyecto Sinestesia – a biweekly theatre workshop at the Huascar Cajías centre, in La Paz’s Miraflores neighbourhood, for deaf children – has been as much a learning curve for her team as it has for their subjects. Valeria and her directors hope that their acting workshops will help the children to express themselves more freely, and go some way towards ameliorating problems faced by those with disabilities in Bolivia.

Valeria has the perfect personality to lead this project. She’s emotive, and her gestures are energised and precise. She has an infectious enthusiasm that seems to have come straight from the playground, and she becomes increasingly animated as she runs me through the progress of her project.

It is about problem-solving, she explains: for herself, her staff, and the children. When I visit a rehearsal the following week, artistic directors Alejandro Zurita and Alejandra del Carpio recount how they had to go back to the drawing board after their initial encounters with the children. ‘We tried to do a survey asking what their perspectives of theatre were, and what they wanted to achieve from our project,’ Alejandra says. ‘They struggled initially to understand the question, and once they did, no one was able to communicate their answer.’

‘Imagine if they had to communicate something far more important about their lives, they couldn’t!’ Valeria posits, with wide-eyed exasperation. This idea really hit home with the directors, Alejandra explains, when one child noticed a large scar on her wrist and then pointed to a similar one on his own. She tried to press and find out its origin, but the child in question was unable to express how it had happened.

Working alongside interpreters, the crucial first task has been establishing a method of communication. Beginning with graphic images depicting well-known stories in order to establish a collection of universal signals, the group then gave each other hand signs for their names: Valeria’s, she shows me, is a right index finger swiped across the brow; mine, chosen by the children, is a right fist drawn downwards from the chin, as if mocking my genetic inability to grow a wispy beard.

With these basics established, the principal task was to coax the children out of their shells. Norah Maeve Limachi, who moved her daughter to the Huascar Cajías centre after she had struggled to integrate elsewhere, says, ‘There is often a psychological block for deaf people – they are afraid. Thanks to the project, they are learning to act, to disentangle reality.’

‘What has been interesting for us,’ Valeria elaborates, ‘is witnessing how the children begin to open up to us through the exercises.’ This is a metamorphosis I count myself extremely fortunate to witness. My presence on the sidelines of the rehearsal is met initially with puzzled expressions and timidity. However, once my sizeable frame is deemed an essential component of an imaginary ‘boys vs girls tug o’ war’, the class embraces me wholeheartedly – even despite a heavy imaginary defeat for the boys.

This exercise is typical of the early stages of the workshop. ‘We are teaching them to interpret actions, how they should behave when they are in love, when they are sad. How to control their bodies so that they can learn to communicate,’ Valeria explains.

‘Before, she was very shy, very timid. But, thanks to this project, she is more able to engage, to cope.’

– Norah Meave Limachi

Norah has noticed a tangible change in her daughter’s demeanour. ‘Before, she was very shy, very timid,’ she says. ‘But thanks to this project, she is more able to engage, to cope.’

Proyecto Sinestesia, however, is struggling to gather funds. Some financial support has come in from the Swiss embassy, but it is scrambling to prop itself up, let alone support these vulnerable children and their families.

‘The Bolivian people are not conscious of this struggle,’ Valeria laments. And the struggle is not simply at the institutional level. When I later ask Norah about life as a parent of a deaf daughter, she says that it can be isolating and financially precarious.

‘There is a total lack of support for people with disabilities in Bolivia,’ Norah says. ‘The government wants to help, but it lacks any concrete plan or vision. They are not conscious because they do not live the struggle on a personal level; they are unaware of what it entails. There is no financial aid for most parents of disabled children.’

Norah and Karla travel three hours every day to and from their home in the Río Seco area of El Alto. To Norah, the struggle is difficult, but ‘I have to look after my child,’ she says. ‘I can only be a parent, nothing else. This is the greatest difficulty that all us parents experience. It is our disability.’

On 23 and 24 June, the children of Proyecto Sinestesia will be performing a new piece of theatre, exhibiting what they have learnt at the Teatro Municipal de Cámara. Any donations to the project are hugely welcomed. Contact +59172086028 if you wish to contribute.