Weekend Adventures, or Ethics and Indigeneity, part II

Over the weekend, I (somewhat ironically, given the previous post*) participated in a coca-leaf-reading/offering-burning ceremony; accompanied Silvia's research collective plus these amazing but occasionally overly aggressive Mexican/Bolivian photojournalist to this beautiful ceremony and party with them in a small community called Caiquiaviri where we examined murals of hell in the church, interviewed a priest and various dancers/celebrants; then the next day, visited these incredible Incan ruins, again with the research collective and the aggressive photojournalists.

The ceremony was a coca leaf reading for Helena, a Colombian art restorer who is also staying with Silvia--in fact, now Silvia is gone, so it's just her, Nico, and me--followed by a pre-travel offering for Silvia. Marco, a student from the research collective, and I also participated. I was hanging out and talking with them when it began, and I didn't want to be rude by leaving. I also wanted to see what would happen, of course.

The Coca leaf reading was performed by two shamans, one man and one woman. They did it together. The man, Roberto, played the savant role, setting up some of the leaves in different patterns depending on the question, then tossing more leaves on top of them and making a few cryptic comments. The woman (whose name I can't remember, sadly because she was really lovely and funny) would interpret what he said and ask questions about Helena's life. Much of the reading process consists of identifying impediments to whatever goals the subject of the reading is interested in reaching, and then figuring out what kind of ceremony to do to overcome the impediment. Helena's impediment is her ex-husband, and so they are going to do a ceremony to rid her of him.

Next we made an offering for Silvia's travels, which was an extremely drawn-out process during which we were supposed to drink, smoke cigarettes, and/or chew coca leaves (Mom and Dad: if I did any of those things, it was only very moderately, for the sake of the ritual.) The whole ceremony, as Silvia explained, is supposed to be about enjoying luxuries and offering them to the gods. Roberto slowly constructed the offering, beginning with a paste of coca leaves, then he added raw llama breast, then we each had to solemnly add candies and cigarettes to the mix, then tinsel on top of everything, then they soaked it in alcohol, then we burned the whole thing on a pyre in the backyard. We had to circle the fire, blow on the woman's hands three times, and then hug and bless each other at the end. All in all, a very beautiful ceremony, although the sacrificial-llama aspect was not pretty.

That was Friday night, then Saturday morning Silvia left and we went to Caiquiaviri. The research collective rented a van, but it ended up just being Mercedes (my new friend, a very wonderful, warm, organized, brilliant single mother of two who is writing her dissertation on the museum commemorating the 1952 revolution); Marco (very interesting, a filmmaker who is documenting everything, supposedly Silvia's favorite in the collective); Eduardo (also very warm and brilliant, a photographer); Helena, me, and Alvaro, the driver, who hung out with us the whole time. Then Ximena (Silvia's friend, a famous Bolivian photojournalist), Rosa (Ximena's partner, a Mexican journalist who's been working in Bolivia for 4 years), and Lilliam (their friend, a Chicana photographer who lives in San Diego) drove in their own car, beating the rickety bus by about an hour. For us it was a 3 hour drive over a pretty nightmarish dirt road, during which we drove through at least two rivers and saw many sheep, cows, llamas, and beautiful farms.

When we got there the mass was happening in the church, so we went in and tried to film, but they told us not to and Marco politely desisted. The photojournalists, however, continued to film and take pictures, saying, "it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission," which upset Marco a little because the idea behind making films is to establish a relationship with the people. Anyway, we were all able to take pictures later, and the images of hell were incredibly gruesome, lots of eating and regurgitating, certainly put there to scare the indigenous people into submission. The collective is trying to figure out how the indigenous people in the community actually related to these scary, gruesome, Christian images, so that was the subject of our interview. Mercedes took the lead in the interviews; she is a great talker, excellent at approaching people. When we interviewed the priest, Ximena came in late and began questioning him extremely aggressively--in the way of a journalist, I guess--about how Christianity subdued the indigenous people. It was complicated: of course she is angry about all the horrible things the church has done, but the group was trying to ask for permission from the priest and the community to photograph and possibly restore the paintings in order to think about indigenous subversive interpretations of them, and I think she set us back a little.

I almost forgot to say: the ceremony was great: they had a little figurine of Jesus, and fireworks, and marching bands, and they marched around the square in their beautiful fancy outfits to the perennial marching-band favorite, Simon and Garfunkel's " The Sound of Silence," saying prayers at every corner (station?) with one person running in front to set off fireworks when they finished the prayers and had to keep marching/dancing again .

The next day we traveled to Tihuanaku, Incan ruins by the lake which are much closer due to the paved roads. We were joined by Gaby, another member of the collective who apparently has done a lot of successful research already. She dresses slightly punk/goth and had us take pictures of her in the crucifixion pose wherever we encountered crosses. The day was a little more frustrating because the photojournalists were with us and they kept making us stop for specific foods so that we missed the priest in Tihuanaku and could not go into the church, and we also missed the museum next to the ruins. We did see the ruins, which were spectacular; pyramids, monoliths, and everything aligned with the sun.

I should get more pictures of the group soon; I was shy about taking pictures of people, which is why mine are mostly just scenery (full disclosure: the beautiful pictures of the church and the festival-goers below are actually Helena's). But I am so excited to have friends, and I really love it here . Last night and today I have also been working for the collective for the first time, interpreting meetings between Eduardo and these two European guys (one German, one British) who have this idea about transporting the murals to Spain to use in some kind of performance piece by, for, and, about Latin American domestic workers there. I will explain more about that, and my frustrating archival visits, in the next post.

*I mean , I participated very earnestly, but it's ironic that I participated.