Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Fiesta in Totora

We spent the past weekend in the beautiful colonial village of Totora. We got to Totora via a 3 1/2 hour ride in a Trufi Taxi, which is a collective taxi that runs a set route and packs in the passengers until it´s full. And they do mean full. Our taxi, a Toyota car of some sort, held eight people. The driver in his seat, Gary and me in the passenger bucket seat, and four adults and a baby in the back seat. Our backpacks were in the trunk, and everyone else´s luggage was strapped on top of the car using straps cut from old tires.

The driver let us get out to stretch when we stopped for gas and again when we stopped to look at an accident scene where an old pickup truck had gone off the road into a ravine. For the rest of the trip, I quizzed Gary on his Spanish vocabulary flash cards while our driver dodged huge potholes and avalanche residue. The Bolivians who can´t afford the US $2 for this taxi ride must ride on top of freight in the back of freight trucks, under a tarp if they are lucky.

The plaza in Totora is surrounded by beautiful arcades, and the streets are cobblestone. Unlike the sterile perfectly matched cobblestones of revitalized American downtowns, these cobblestone streets are rough, used, and pissed on for centuries (you can smell it).

We walked down one of the narrow streets and crossed the brown muddy river where a woman was washing clothes on a stone. From the bridge we watched the sun set over the hill, behind houses that reminded me of Toledo, Spain.

Back on the plaza, a band marched through playing carnaval music, and then the band and people entered the church for mass. Outside, a group of boys jumped up and down on an eight-foot heap of branches that was waiting to be burned in a bonfire. People walking past us on the plaza greeted us with a polite "good evening."

Totora is a Quechua speaking town, although most of the people seem to speak Spanish, too. Quechua was the language of the Incas, and in general the people who speak Quechua are from cultures that were at one time conquered by the Incas. Most of the women in Totora wear traditional clothes: a knee-length pleated velvet skirt, leggings, a white lace blouse, a sweater or shawl and a delicate straw hat. The older men tend to wear jeans or pants and sandals and a sweater, and a felt hat. Most of the kids and young adults wear typical western clothes (jeans and a sweat shirt or fleece) but a few young girls wear traditional clothes and some young boys wear the traditional sandals made of old tires.

When mass ended, the people built a bonfire about 15 feet in front of the church, on the cobblestone street. The fuel was some sort of evergreen branches, mostly supplied by little boys. A Mexican-style mariachi band played Mexican music, and Mexican-style folkloric dancers danced. The men were in chaps.

A man carrying a bucket served us a delicious chicha, or Andean home made beer. It had a fruity flavor. He served it from a gourd cut in half. In situations like this, it´s best not to think about how many people drank out of that gourd before us!

There were fireworks in front of the church. As soon as they exploded, the little fire-loving boys grabbed the spent cartons and played with them, or threw them into the fire. Nobody seemed concerned about safety.

The military band played, and then a local carnaval band played. A man served sandwiches to everybody, and more chicha of a different type. We left just before it started pouring rain.

We stayed at the municipal hotel, a beautiful old colonial building that was once a hospital. The hotel has two patios. As elsewhere in Bolivia, there is no heat, although I think Totora is well over 9,000 feet in altitude, and it rained all night. But our body heat warmed up the room fairly well. The military band was also staying at our hotel.

In the morning it was still raining, but we headed down to the plaza and sat under the arcades as mass was happening in the church. Through the open doors, we could hear that the band was playing Paul Simon´s Sounds of Silence. Simon and Garfunkel songs are popular here, maybe because Paul Simon made an Andean flute song, "El Condor Pasa" famous. It´s the one that says "I'd rather be a forest than a street, yes I would, if I only could, I surely would. I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet..." with beautiful Andean flutes playing. (Thanks to my mom for remembering these words and the name of the song!)

A man saw me journaling on the plaza and sat with us to strike up a conversation. His name is Osbaldo, and he lives in Totora. He is a farmer, growing corn and potatoes, and he has a cow. He spoke a mixture of Quechua and slurred Spanish, on account of the chicha that he had been drinking.

When mass ended the people had a procession around the rainy plaza, carrying a huge effigy of a virgin. The military band played, and also the local band. Kids lit fire crackers. Then the procession moved out of the plaza and down a side street, into a house. We were hesitant to enter, but a woman came out and told us to come in and eat some food.

The statue of the virgin was inside, surrounded by flowers and candles. People gave us seats, and we were served champagne, then lady fingers. Next were some white balls, slightly bigger than marbles on toothpicks. They turned out to be hard boiled eggs, probably from quail. Then came green olives and chunks of cheese on toothpicks, then cheesy empanadas.

There were about 200 people at the party, mostly on the house´s patio which was covered with a tarp on account of the rain. We sat next to a few peole from Cochabamba. Then our hosts passed out the beer, in the standard one-litre bottles that are used around here. We were given a crate of 9 one-litre bottles, for me and Gary and the guy sitting next to us. Then, we were served a bucket of chicha. A wooden drinking bowl made from a gourd floated in th the chicha, for everyone to share. The Mexican mariachi band played, and we danced.

Our hosts served lunch consisting of a huge plate of chicken, pork, choclo, potatoes, cooked vegetables and fried plantain. Gary and I shared one plate and still couldn´t finish it all. Then we danced some more. Every now and then, someone served us a mixed drink, and they would have refilled our chicha bucket but we never came close to emptying it. The mariachi band kept playing, and our hosts passed out party favors: small Mexican style hats and a few big sombreros, and tiny baskets and other party recuerdos.

A Tarija style band played next. Tarija is in southern Bolivia, close to the Argentina border, and this was an Argentinian style band. They had dancers, dressed as vaqueros with chaps and cowboy hats and boots. Their boots were really interesting looking, with accordion-style tops. Some of the dancers did stunts with two balls on the ends of ropes. I have heard that cowboys in Argentina us a device of balls on the end of a rope to rope cattle, rather than the lasso used in the U.S.

Someone presented a couple of American flags with dollars pinned to them, representing a gift of money that this community received from its members who are working in the U.S. The money will help this community during the upcoming year. The people living here no doubt imagine their relatives living in the U.S. with a lifestyle like the people they see on TV. They have no idea what it´s like to be an undocumented dishwasher in a restaurant or a sheepherder in Idaho.

The local band played, and I attempted to dance cueca, a dance done with handkerchiefs. We met lots of really nice people at this party, including a neurosurgeon who told me that we could eat the food without fear because it was all cooked. (And he was right!)

The party went on for about five funfilled hours, and then everyone went up the hill for the bullfight (corrida), still in the rain. The first bull was wearing the American flag, upside down and still with the American dollars pinned to it. I don´t know what that meant, but I am tired of being from a country that is such a bully in the world. The bull was scared, and ran back into the corral. The other bulls did the same thing, even though people tried to make them mad. I couldn´t stand to watch it anymore, and we turned in for the evening.

The next morning the fiesta was over, but we spent some time watching the weekly market. People set up booths to sell everything, from clothes to meat to vegetables.

On the way back to Cochabamba, we told the cab driver that we would pay for three seats, so we wouldn´t have to be so squished. That would mean that only three people would ride in the back seat. We started out that way, but a few miles down the road our driver saw a family of eight, an opportunity to make more money. He proceeded to move all of the luggage out of the hatch back and strapped it to the roof of the car. For the rest of our journey, five people rode in the hatch back, four (including us) in the back seat, and three, including the driver, in the front, for a total of twelve. Well, at least we didn´t have to pay for the extra seat.

At one point, one of our drunken co-passengers asked for a break. The driver pulled over and everyone poured out and peed on the side of the road. Women who wear pants rather than skirts are disadvantaged in this situation!

When we got home, we went to a play, "Alicia en el PaĆ­s de las Maravillas" (Alice in Wonderland). It was meant for kids, which was nice because it was easier to understand than the Camus play we saw in Chile. And yesterday we had a beautiful warm and sunny day, perfect for all the water fights that were taking place in Cochabamba!

While we were in Totora, our house mates went to Bolivia´s biggest carnaval celebration, in Oruro. And this coming weekend we will see all the same bands just two blocks from our house, at carnaval in Cochabamba. Meanwhile, I can´t walk from my front door to the Tienda Don Costo, a store half a block away, without being targeted by water balloon throwing kids!

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