The country of Bolivia tells a story.
For those who wish to fly into the capital of La Paz and then skip
across the terrain quickly and efficiently, they will miss the whole
tale. But in order to soak it all in, the best way is slowly--on
marathon bus journeys through deserts and jungles and mountain
ranges, across white-knuckle roads that wind along cliff edges with
careless indifference towards plummeting death only a few inches away
on either side.
Bolivia stretches from the
mind-numbing expanse of the Chaco desert in the south and the depths
of the most impenetrable Amazonian rainforests in the east to the
very heavens itself. Most of of the country rests on the altiplano
(or high plains) above 10,000 feet of altitude. The borders with
Chile and Peru are flanked by the Andes mountains that stand like
frost-peaked sages on the distant horizon. Bolivia is often called
“the Tibet of the Americas”, a nickname which has as much to do
with its comparable geography as its physical and cultural isolation.
The country is officially titled the
Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia (the Plurinational State of
Bolivia) and for good reason. In pre-colonial times, due to the steep
and treacherous topography, almost every dip and valley in the
mountains played host to its own cultural traditions and unique
social groups. The Incan empire of the Peruvian highlands never
penetrated most of the country and therefore, such independent
cultures were able to persist until well after the Spanish conquest.
While there was undoubtedly much inter-communication and trade among
these myriad of cultures, especially between the altiplano and
the low-lying tropical areas (where the infamous Bolivian coca
plants are cultivated), it is cultural diversity which best defines
Bolivia.
In the latest census, there were still
35 different languages (other than Spanish) being spoken throughout
the country, most of those being preserved in far-flug and isolated
rural mountain villages. There are several dialects of Bolivian
Quechua and Bolivian Guarani, which differ greatly from the Quechua
and Guarani spoken in neighboring Peru and Paraguay, respectively.
When I tried to speak Guarani (the dialect of Guarani I have learned
over the course of 2 years living in Paraguay) with a campesino woman
from the Chaco lowlands, it was as if we were speaking two entirely
different languages. In reality we were. Some of the sounds,
specifically the nasal intonations and inflections, were the same,
but the vocabulary and the words couldn't have seemed more different.
International politics, especially as
of late, would paint Bolivia as a rouge leftist nation continually
butting heads with American economic imperialism. And perhaps on one
level, that is correct. But such things are the playing fields of
politicians and policy makers. On the ground, with the people in the
cities and towns, one gets a very different impression. Bolivians are
a proud and beautiful people whose traditional cultures have survived
while in many other places around the world such history has either
withered into obscurity or become unrecognizably commodified. Bolivia
is considered one of the most traditional countries in Latin America
and that is more than evident in the brightly-colored, Quechua filled
market places.
Many women of Bolivia still dress in
the iconic cholita style (although these styles differ greatly
in detail and name in different parts of the country). This style
often includes knee-length or longer plain skirts, often worn in
multiple layers to combat the cold mountain winds, as well as 19th
century English bowler hats. This specific “style” is not
traditional insofar as it is not indigenous in origin; instead this was
the mode of dress imposed on many Bolivians by the British bankers and opportunists who
unofficially filled the power-vacuum left by the defeated Spanish
colonial rulers following independence. Still, it is ironic that the
world's largest market for industrial-era European head-wear exists
today in the most isolated and culturally diverse country of Latin
America.
The last piece of the cholita
style (and my absolute favorite) is the hair-braiding. I am not sure
whether this is as well British in origin or whether perhaps this
aspect reaches deeper into Bolivian history than that, but
irregardless, it is gorgeous. For the traditional Bolivian women,
their silky black hair is grown out for almost their whole lives.
This is then fashioned into two elegant, long braids—one on each
side—that often stretch below their waist. As with many fashions,
there are communicative subtleties woven into the tradition that are
not decipherable to outsiders—the length of the braids is a mark of
experience and age, the exact angle and jaunt of the bowler hats
indicates marital status, among others.
So much more to say, but this should be good enough for now.
From
Bolivia,
little
hupo
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