Sunday mornings in Bolivia mean mass and markets. Jenn and Carrie head to Tarabuco, where they prefer to worship the almighty dollar.
Tortuga Travels: Week Four: Sucre, Bolivia
Sucre, Bolivia
Sunday mornings in Bolivia mean mass and markets. I was kind of curious about the former, but Carrie tells me that once you spend some time being Catholic you get that out of your system so we headed instead to Tarabuco, where they prefer to worship the almighty dollar. Or rather, the almighty Boliviano. Technically the not-so-mighty Boliviano. But I digress.
Our bus of Europeans dressed in painfully obvious tourist garb pulled up to Tarabuco’s central plaza at 9 a.m. The square and its adjacent side streets were lined with vendors displaying weavings, clothing, fruit, kitchenware and the large multicolored cloths that serve as skirt/ backpack/ childcarrier. The spattering of foreigners quickly dissipated into the crowd of campesinos who walk or bus for miles each weekend to sell their goods and purchase the things that aren’t available in smaller pueblos.
South American sun bakes the dirt roads and clay walls of a town like Tarabuco so that by 11a.m. we sought out the shade of the plaza. There we were discovered by Paulito, a high school boy who had met us both the week before in Sucre’s plaza. Paulito carries weavings from local pueblos in a wrap on his back and sells them wherever he finds customers. The most common item is the Llijlla, a large stiff rectangle of black, grey, or deep red hand-woven wool with a stripe of bright geometric pattern down the center. The llijlla is traditionally worn like a shawl over the shoulders and folded up to form a bundle. But you cant help realizing it would also make a great tablecloth. Paulito was a very convincing salesman, “This is so cheap, you could give one to your sister!” When Carrie explained that we had no space in our packs Paulito rolled a llijlla into a tiny ball, and the sale was made.
Luckily for our shopping day the Sucre roadblocks didn’t start until Monday morning. We emerged from our hotel to find crowds of people in place of the usual recklessly careening traffic. Unrelated to the northern blockades, those in Sucre are a protest to corruption in the national university here. Sympathetic buses park across intersections leading into town; the city center overflows with workers who would otherwise head home for siesta.
We hiked past the commotion for the relative calm of la Recoletta, a beautiful bright white church on a hillside overlooking the city. Carrie drew peacefully while I fended of an entire class of middle schoolers visiting from Santa Cruz. They asked simple Spanish
questions like, “Where are you from? What do you do? What do you think of the bombing in Afghanistan?”
There the excitement of my week waned, as by Tuesday I had been hit with my first dose of inexplicable travel illness. Carrie brought me wet towels as I feverishly hallucinated about tree roots growing around my limbs. Carrie has a mortal fear of vomiting (and, incidentally, of sugar rations) so she took this opportunity to see all the attractions we had been “saving.” By Friday my fierce jealousy was sufficient to propel me from bed to the textile museum.
Developed by Antropologos del Surandino (ASUR) – a project to sustainably revitalize traditional cultures through textiles – the museum displays hundreds of samples illustrating the techniques, materials, historical development and defining characteristics of various regional textiles. When ASUR’s “renaissance project” began in the 1980s, many of the traditional weaving methods were being abandoned in favor of machine-made cloth. By opening a textile shop next to the Sucre museum and facilitating intergenerational weaving workshops in indigenous communities, ASUR revived the demand for high quality weavings as works of art and provided new sources of income for people underserved by the Bolivian economy (applied anthropology! I knew that minor would serve some purpose…). Carrie left with two pastels of weavers (“I’m faster!” she teased the women, who complete 3 cm on their looms each day) and I left with a heavy bag of textiles.
Our acquisitions were solemnly packed as we prepared to leave Sucre at last. It would be a sad departure from perfect weather, comfy beds, the mango lady, HBO… made only slightly easier by our recently broken, endlessly running sink, and by the mysterious nesting material that fell into our shower each night from the ceiling vent.
To our surprise a farewell party arrived at our hotel on Saturday night and whisked us off for an extravaganza of karaoke (where my dreams of singing Natalie Imbruglia to a crowd of Bolivians were left sadly unrealized) and disco hopping – where we learned that even a dedicated group of radical circle-dancers can not stand up to the double line hegemony represented by uncomprehending Bolivian men. And, furthermore, that the particular man in the circle-busting brigade with the greatest desire to spin his partner would undoubtedly stand across from me.
Ciao Sucre…