A God of Small Things, Water Balloon Season, etc.

After a month in the states getting my fill of snow, oxygen, and flesh wounds, I got back down to La Paz in mid-January.

Things I missed:
•the El Alto feria
•the wicked lightning storms
•orange and grapefruit juice street vendors
•being able to last a week on $20
•Illimani

Things I didn’t miss:
•the crack-of-dawn propane tank trucks coming down our streets, whose horns, despite my prayers, continue to function properly
•having nowhere to go running and instead being relegated to going up and down the stairs in our 18-story building for exercise
•lots of old, rickety diesel buses slugging themselves up hills at 15° inclines

Things that are in season:
•pomegranates (at 12-25 cents each)
•roses
•choclo (big kernel corn, an ear is 25 cents with cheese). I was eating this the other weekend with a friend from Brazil, and we’re both saying how iconic corn on the cob in its various forms is in our respective countries. I remarked how for us it’s tied all things Middle America, and he goes, “Yeah, we always eat it on the beaches.”

Things that are out of season:
•tangerines/mandarin oranges
•mangoes
•calla lilies

La Paz is actually green and fresh right now, although winter is on its way. When I first got back, it felt like a totally different epoch, so much more different than the dry dustiness that usually covers everything. Sunrise is at about 5 am, though, with full sunlight at around 6:30 am, that, along with the propane tank trucks’ horns, wakes me up far earlier than I usually would like. Most days, though, it’ll be raining by the afternoon, which I’m loving: perfectly pensive cloudy afternoons, often with full-blown thunder and lightning storms by the evening, one of which lasted a full three hours a couple weeks ago. The thunder takes on an Armageddon-like intensity as it crashes between the city’s mountain walls, and if you get caught outside, within minutes you’re having to jump over the rivers coursing down the sides of the streets as the water pours down from streets higher up. (One tidbit I forgot to mention earlier on the subject of steep streets: when someone asks for a cross street here, they ask, “qué altura?” literally, “what altitude?”)

In the apartment, the best recent addition, clearly beating internet and the TV & DVD, has been a record player in the living room, complete with Bose speakers. So now Illimani-watching is complemented by, among others, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, the Supremes (on 45s), the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and a lot of samba and cumbia on 78s. Oh, and I picked up the New Kids on the Block record, “Hangin’ Tough,” re-titled in Spanish, “Haciéndose en Duro,” the other day, too, lest you begin to think the music collection too elitist.

Alasitas, the fabulous Bolivian festival lorded over by Ekeko, the Aymaran god of abundance. He’s an exuberant, mustached fellow with hordes of goods tied to him, arms and mouth open wide with a lit cigarette commonly placed in the latter, making him look like some overly-magnanimous, slightly mad uncle coming to visit you. (See the Readings, Vol. III entry directly below for a picture.) And every house must have an Ekeko statue, normally about eight inches high, although aficionados can get ones about 18 inches high, during the festival. We had to replace our original Ekeko, since the first one got knocked over and broke his leg, which led to a furtive trip to the Alasitas feria to find a healthier replacement. Ekeko forbid we not properly represent him.

During this month-long festival, you determine what good fortune will befall you or what things you’d like to receive in the coming year through the purchase of miniature replicas of the objects of your desire. Technically, for the wishes to come true, you have to be given the item as a gift, and an Aymaran priest must bless it, but that doesn’t stop people from manifesting any and every wish of theirs in a replete stock of dollhouse furnishings for themselves.

For those who want a new abode within the year, there are tiny balsa wood houses, about five inches high, complete with windows, grass, and fences. For the handier types who wish to build their own, there are 2 inch-long construction tools, saws, hammers, hoes, bags of cement, etc., and three-piece sink, toilet, bathtub sets for those who only need to a new bathroom. For the more domestic-minded, there are Lilliputian* kitchen sets (stoves, pots, pans) and slews of little replica boxes and cans of nearly every type of food (cereals, salt, quinoa, corn, coffee).

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(*Yes, I’m running out of synonyms for “small.”)

There are diplomas from just about every major for students, passports and visas for wannabe travelers, mini-minibuses and buses (an 18”-long one currently serves as our dining room table center piece) for bus drivers (and silly gringos, apparently), cameras, crates of beer bottles, telephones, shoes, and so on and so forth. And money is always big: stacks of little bills of bolivianos, dollars, and euros are quite popular, and often come stuffed in suitcases, for those more inclined to clandestine business transactions.

While most objects directly represent what you want in real life, roosters and chickens represent a husband and wife, respectively, and to give one to someone means you hope they get married within the next year. Who knows, maybe we’ve been underestimating ceramic fauna’s knowledge about love and matrimony all this time. There are also good luck figurines, usually involving gaudy, gilded frogs or elephants on top of piles of coins. One of my personal favorites, which I gifted to a couple friends, were inch-high rolls of toilet paper, funny since they cost me 50 centavos each, when the life-size rolls cost 1 bs.

One afternoon while strolling through the main Alasitas feria, a fairground with about ten 50-yard rows of stand after stand, I followed an amusing little girl, probably about 3-4 years old, who was walking through with her mom. Clearly, this looked like one of the first years where she was old enough to grasp what was going on, as shown by her rapt enthusiasm for just about every stand she and her mother passed, which was funny, seeing as each stand sells the same things five other stands around it are selling. Nevertheless, as she went by each one, her eyes would get big as she’d point and exclaim, “Mira la camita! Y la pollerita! Y la mesita!” or, “Look at the little bed! And the little skirt! And the little table!” I just wanted to tell her, “Honey, you are an ‘ita.’”

Carnaval, where the world supposedly flushes themselves of all things heathen before their saintly observation of Lent. According to Bolivians with whom I've talked, however, they don't really observe Lent (and if they do, it's only for a day), but they most certainly observe Carnaval. And Bolivia's got one of the biggest celebrations in Latin America outside of Rio de Janeiro. Think Rio, but in the dry, dusty city of Oruro, one of Bolivia’s largest, with water balloons, water guns, and spray foam in lieu of hot, sweaty beaches. It’s a must-see, and so up I went to Oruro with some friends to take it all in.

Immigration did their best to try and stop me, though. Right outside the city, Immigration officers came in to make a “routine” check of the passengers’ identity cards. (This is not a regular practice, simply something to do at Carnaval with so many people coming in to the city.) Everything was fine, until they got to me, and I showed them the copy of my passport and entry stamps, what I normally use without problem. The officials said they needed an “original document,” and that copies would not suffice. My other American friend who was with me got by with her Pennsylvania driver’s license, apparently because it’s laminated and has a hologram, she surmises. (Although they did ask her for the papers she got "at the border." Her response, "There's a border between La Paz and Oruro?") Regardless, they were determined not to accept the copies and made me get off the bus to go figure this out in their office. A friend came with me.

In the office, the basic conversation went like this:

“What are these?”
“Those are the copies of my passport.”
“Where is your passport itself?”
“In La Paz.”
“Why is it there?”
“Because that’s where I’m staying.” (I can’t say living or working since I’m officially just here as a tourist.)
“Why don’t you travel with it? You know you have to have an original document with you at all times.”
“I don’t travel with it because it’s dangerous to carry around a passport. And no one has ever told me I needed an original document; they’ve accepted the copies every time.”
“Well, miss, maybe in your country you do things differently, but here in Bolivia you need to have an original document.”
“No, I’m talking about traveling here in Bolivia. These copies have worked every time anyone’s needed identification here in Bolivia.”
“Miss, we have a job that we need to do, and we’re just doing our job.” I.e. we need to create a problem to make ourselves feel important.
“Then you need to let me go because I’m here perfectly legally.” (Perfectly true.)
“How do you expect to check into any lodging in Oruro without your documentation?”
“Because I’m staying at a friend’s house.” (True.)
“Who gave you these 90 days [of extended entry, from the 30 they usually give out upon entry into the country]?”
“The office of immigration.”
“Where?
“In La Paz.”
“Why were you in La Paz?”
“Because that’s where I’m staying.”

[Repeat entire conversation with each officer who successively comes in and joins.]

Finally, one official came in, looked at my passport, and goes, “Oh yeah, I was the one who gave her the 90 days.” Turns out he worked in the immigration office in La Paz. We left the office and got back on the bus. For as tricky as the situation could have been (although at the worst, they probably would have asked me for money, which I didn’t have), I wasn’t worried, just incredibly, incredibly annoyed. We got into Oruro, went to our friend’s parents’ house, and went to bed to be fully rested for the next day.

As they say in the movie, ¿Quién Mató a la Llamita Blanca?, Bolivians will readily celebrate for a chance to forget otherwise surrounding problems. And celebrate they do, with Oruro’s Carnaval being arguably their biggest display of the year. Bolivian festivals usually involve entradas, or parades of groups dancing traditional Bolivian dances. The Oruro Carnaval entrada starts at 7 am on Saturday and lasts until 5 am the next morning, with groups parading and bands playing throughout the entire night. There are a few dozen different dances, and different ones showcase at various entradas, usually based on the region.

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In Oruro, the Morenada, Diablada (pictured above), and Caporales are the three most represented dances, and you can watch blocks of these groups go by for easily an hour. Several hundred groups march the 3-hour parade route, many of the girls in 5-inch heels requisite of some of the outfits. Other big dances and the regions they’re from: Tinku (Potosí/Sucre), Tobas (Santa Cruz), Llamerada (i.e. the Llama Dance, La Paz), Suri Sucuris, and Antawaras (altiplano), among others. There's even the Doctorcitos group, in which, in stark contrast to the jumping Tobas and clanging, bell-laden Caporales, the "dancers" scoot along while hunched over canes. While watching part of the entrada with one of my academic directors from three years ago (they were in town with their latest group), he remarked how he couldn't figure out which dance this one group was representing, since the girls' costumes had horns (which might mean the Diablada), but also were wearing angel wings. "Oh come on," I said. "That's easy: they're women."

It must be said that entrada-watching in Oruro is hardly a spectator sport. All day long, people shoot water guns, throw water balloons, and spray foam at each other, the dancers, and anybody else who happens to look like a ripe target. You wear a poncho and sunglasses all day and still end up wet and foamed. And it’s Carnaval, so you aren’t allowed to protest when someone gets you. Everybody besides the elderly and pregnant women is fair game, and it’s pretty insane. In Santa Cruz, the big city in the east, they play with paint (real paint, the toxic kind) and other such corrosive liquids, so the girls there braid their hair and coat it with oil so the paint doesn’t dye their hair. People apparently walk around for a couple weeks afterward with paint stains on whatever part of their epidermis was showing during the games.

We stationed ourselves up on the back of a riser in the middle of the plaza during the entrada. Over the course of the day, we bought a few dozen water balloons as we waged our war upon some people up on a balcony on the other side of the street who were being very unsportsmanlike, spraying and throwing water balloons at the people directly below them. I’ll just say that there’s nothing like nailing a grown man in the chest with a water balloon from 25 yards away. My friend broke a window with one of hers. This Süper Clüb Queen got a kick out of the whole thing. You kind of forgot there’s a parade going on.

One of the highlights was, in the middle of all of this, I realize I’m getting a phone call. I look at the number, and, what do you know, it’s a 509 number. My lovely 87-year old grandmother was calling. I turned around and sat on the back of the riser to try and minimize what noise I could and picked up, “Hi Nana! How are you?” “I’m doing fine, honey, thanks. How are you? It sounds noisy there.” “Yes, I’m in the middle of Carnaval.” As we’re chatting, a little boy comes up to me, with a can of foam pointed at me and the most quintessential mischievous grin on his face. I try to shake my head no, motioning to the phone I’m holding to my ear. No matter. I opened my eyes to see nothing but pure foam that covered my sunglasses. “Just a second, Nana, let me wipe this foam off.”

We stayed in the plaza until about 4 pm after over seven hours of entrada-watching, and went back to the house to crash. We all slept for a couple hours (nothing like sun and water-balloon launching to drain you). Some people went back out to watch some more, and some of us just decided that we’d had our fill of the Morenada shuffle and foam and stayed in. The next day, I went home with other friends, whose whole car got waved by Immigration as they were press, and thus missed the whole spiel a second time.

The next weekend, I then headed to Cochabamba 1) to visit Lily, a friend with whom I studied abroad in 2003, and 2) to see their answer to Carnaval, el Corso. In general, I much preferred Corso as there was a better variety of dances since Cochabamba’s more centrally located in the country. In particular, there was a lot of Saya Afro-Boliviana (Yungas) and Chacarrera (Tarija), a gorgeous paired dance, with ties to dances in northern Argentina. We also watched from the 3rd story balcony of the office where Lily works, so we were pleasantly removed from the soaked festivities below. That night, though, as I was walking with a friend to the city center, I unfortunately walked under one balcony, and next thing I know, I’ve had a bucket of water dumped on my jean jacket and me. Annoying, yes, but again, it’s Carnaval, so I couldn’t complain really.

All in all, now that it’s all over, while it’s nice to not have to be afraid of getting nailed with a water balloon as you walk down the street, the general mayhem was a welcome reprise from normal life.

Ch’alla is also important this time of year, and I should explain it here, but I’m feeling a little verbose, and so will simply let you know it involves giving lots to drink to the Pachamama (Aymaran Mother Earth) in hopes she will bless you and whatever you’re ch’alla-ing, be it your house, bus, office, etc. More here.

Completely random, but fascinating fact I recently learned
Fully 80% of Bolivia’s economy is informal (street vending, bartering, etc.).

Fun with Spanish
pavo real n. peacock, lit. “royal turkey.” (On this note, “bat,” as in the animal, in French translates as “bald mouse.”)
esposas n. pl. 1. wives 2. handcuffs
flamante adj. brand-new
llama, en llamas n. 1. flame, in flames 2. llama, amid hordes of llamas (I’m supposing)

Cuídense.