Carnival

On the trip to Guaqui we saw a beautiful train, apparently for tourists. Note how green everything is now!!

I've been back in Bolivia for almost 3 weeks now, working frantically on the revisions for my AQ article, which was due yesterday. After handing it in I'm feeling a little bit of postpartum depression (empty-nest syndrome? I don't know which is more appropriate, but the article has definitely consumed the majority my time and inspired a suffocatingly intimate love-hate relationship since last summer), but I'm also happy to be able to move forward and do other projects.

After a few moments in reactionary Santa Cruz, I arrived in Cochabamba, city at about 9, 000 ft altitude (to ease into high-altitude living) The city was in plena carnaval, which in Bolivia lasts at least 3 weeks, well past lent, which seems to be universally ignored here. People wear very exciting costumes--there are a lot of devils especially, since Carnival is the holiday of the diablada--but they also have this tradition of throwing water balloons at people, especially girls and young women, as well as shooting water guns at them and squirting shaving cream in their faces. On the second day I thought I had at least figured out the gendered dimension of the water-fighting and was on-guard for boys in cars, on foot, etc., when a women about my age jumped out from a doorway and stuffed not one but two water balloons down my shirt, laughing extremely maniacally. And when I wasn't getting assaulted así, I was being accosted by acquisitive white Bolivians (note to self: stop engaging with people who introduce themselves as "gran admiradores del sistema capitalista"). I ended up spending most of the time in my hostel.

Being back in La Paz has been really wonderful. It's such a beautiful city, and carnaval is not nearly so violent. Silvia and I decorated the house with ribbon, confetti, and flower petals, then went to see her son-in-law Steve dancing for Carnaval in his community in Zona Sur. He was dancing as a Chuta, which is the Carnaval ladies-man type who is supposed to dance with two cholas, v. Pepinos, clowns who whisper in hight voices). Apparently there was a schism in the community, and there were two bands playing in the same square, with two different groups dancing. Steve's group was far inferior, taking 20-minute drinking breaks after every song while the other, far-more disciplined band played tirelessly, but he had promised this old Señor from the community that he would stay with that group, so all he and the rest of his group of dressed-up gringos could do (his british/argentine friends from Doctors Without Borders were also dancing) was look longingly over at the other, more energetic band in their neat rows.

Silvia arguing with a cop.

The following weekend Carnaval was still going on, despite lent having started, and I went with Silvia, Mechy, Eduardo, and this guy Marcelo who had just come back from 7 years in the U.S. (he got his ph.d. at Duke, and afterward I noticed that he was cited as very important to this Arturo Escobar article that I was citing copiously) to Guaqui, this medium-sized community on the lake. We went in the morning and Silvia filmed the people filing out of the church, and from there went on to the tiny community where Marcelo grew up. My camera battery ran out, but the community was incredibly beautiful, right on the lake with a colorful, old, very small church, and lots of animals. We watched the dancing for awhile, then showed up at Marcelo's house, which was one room, with a pit toilet outside and lots of animals running around. His 80 year-old father was incredibly happy to see him but had to go get a cow from the lake shore and was gone for two hours, so we chatted with his mother about the community and how it had changed--apparently they never used to hire bands for these events, and she and Silvia were talking about how now it's all about prestige and consumerism--the universal sellout narrative, but extremely interesting. His father finally came back with the cow and we drank wine and talked about magic (rayos striking things, making the land dry up, etc.). Then we finally left, and had to go back to Guaqui because Silvia had left her videocamera battery to charge in the home of this guy in Guaqui who was apparently in local government. The fiesta had then transformed from a beautiful and dignified event into something completely insane, with beautifully dressed Cholas brawling in the streets and people freely performing every kind of bodily function you can (or at least I could) imagine. In the middle of this we had to find the very drunk, very rich man and convince him to take us back to the house and get the battery. Silvia tried very hard to reason with him, to no avail, then finally Mechy just grabbed his arm and said "vamos" and he obediently went. On the way to the house he kept boasting that he was the "dueño del pueblo."

The last interesting thing about carnaval is the Alasitas (alasitas actually has nothing to do with wings but means literally in Aymara, at least according to Mechy: "buy from me") feria, which technically begins in January but which ends at the end of carnaval. It's a huge market that sells miniatures of everything--houses, cars, animal figurines, newspapers, cookies, tools, many many more things--to bring people those things in the coming year. It struck me as refreshingly honest: straight to the consumerism, without even the pretense of religious or patriotic ritual. I went with Mechy and bought cookies (for big cookies in the coming year?), bracelets, doll clothes, and very small fried fish to eat.

Next time: the amazing feminist collective I am now working with, developments in the house, assorted other things.

We interviewed this guy and asked him what inspired the horns, and he said, "Thor. In carnaval, anything goes."