Finally, here are some photos of the land in Yuni, which we attempted to prepare last tuesday to finally plant potatoes. Unfortunately, I was recovering from a stomach ailment (which is now gone due to the magic of antibiotics) and spent much of the time feeling dizzy and periodically resting while Silvia and Maestro worked (Nico was planning to go, but threw a tantrum at the last minute to get out of it, later that evening returning and, desperate for attention, breaking a window in the house. Since then he has felt bad and repented, and he helped a lot with todos santos). Anyway, we got through the entire day of clearing the land--somehow we didn't bring food, just water, juice, and beer, which didn't help my condition any--and were completely exhausted, when this guy comes up over the hill and explains to us that the land we've been working on actually belongs to the neighbor. At first we tried to protest, but he showed us the property lines and we eventually gave in. I've been sore for nearly a week, despite my lack of productivity that day, and we have to go again and clear more this week in order to actually plant the potatoes. It is no joke, working with a pickaxe in the hot sun all day. But the spot is incredibly beautiful, with many birds and farm-animals stopping by also (not necessarily a good thing in the long run, since there will be no one watching the plants). We have to go again and plant--I'll end up doing so much work, I almost feel like I need to stay through january in order to actually see and eat the potatoes. Although we may be in a drought.
More recently, we celebrated Todos Santos, which is a very beautiful and serious holiday here. People spend days cooking for the dead people (you have to have died within 3 years to be eligible), then construct a shrine and feed them (later you offer the food to the ground) and give them alcohol and pray for them. Lots of people came to our shrine last night and we ate and drank and talked a lot. We didn't really pray much, but we did a little--Mercedes prayed in quechua and later, Silvia's amazing friend Elvira, an artist whose work will be featured in the Reina Sofia and who also, despite being my age, has a flourishing singing career and speaks both Aymara and Quechua, led us in Aymara prayers. They were principally praying for Olivia, a British anthropologist who died of a mysterious ailment and who was a vegetarian, and Nico's friend, who also died mysteriously, on a solo mountaineering trip. Anyway, I tried to join in, and added my own prayers--thankfully, I wasn't really close to anyone who made the 3-year deadline, but I prayed for the writers and theorists I was missing (Grace Paley, Eve Sedgwick, etc.) and the victims of U.S. and Israeli attacks, which I hope was allowed.
Maybe this is my newfound quasi-spirituality talking, but it was kind of nice to talk and think about dead people for awhile, to make a space for them, I guess. And the bread that Silvia made is pretty amazing; of course it's made from coca flour, which I don't think is traditional but which tastes wonderful. I didn't help make the bread, partly because I didn't know the dead people--you're supposed to be thinking of the person as you knead the dough--and partly because Silvia and Nico were actually getting along and they wanted to have some bonding time--but I guess there are huge public ovens where you bake all day. Each dead person gets a bread-doll. The other tradition is that you eat this really delicious stewed-peas dish, which is about both the roundness of the peas (they represent skulls) and they way you have to use dried peas and reanimate them, as you're reanimating the dead.
Everyone was very disdainful of halloween and the way they're promoting it like crazy in Zona Sur, the creepy rich part of town. And I do have to say that Todos Santos is much more social, solemn, and beautiful. It was nice to sit and talk around the shrine with everyone. Tomorrow we will bring a whole bunch of bread and fruit to the cemetery, where I guess people pray all day. Tomorrow I also have to figure out my archive schedule and take my friend Mercedes and her kids out for lunch, so more photos will follow.
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