Last weekend was a great time to be a newcomer to Bolivia. It was the anniversary of Cochabamba, and there were tons of celebrations all over the city. In general, Bolivians take a lot of pride in their culture and history, and they do a lot to preserve it. Lots of people still dress like people have been dressing for hundreds of years, for example, and every student takes Quecha (the language spoken by the Incans and still spoken by many Bolivians today) as one of their school subjects. This past weekend, though, was especially culture-filled, and I got the chance to see a lot of uniquely Bolivian things.
On Friday, the school that most of the girls at my orphanage attend had a huge cultural celebration. All of the students dressed up in traditional clothes - big colorful skirts and lacy white shirts for the girls; dark pants, vests or ponchos, and bowler hats for the boys. They blocked of a section of the road, and the students filled it by replicating a tradition among the Aramaya people (one of the biggest indigenous groups here), in which farmers would get together and trade crops, so that everyone in the community could have a little bit of everything to eat for the season.
Each class brought a different kind of traditional Bolivian food to share. Some spread out blankets and filled them with different kinds of potatoes, fruits, and vegetables; some had tables where they were dishing out cooked dishes like sopa de maní (peanut soup) and salchipapa (fried potatoes topped with slices of hot dogs and ketchup and vegetables - that's what's in the picture on the right). The kids all ran around, carrying and sharing and trading things like papayas, paper bags of lentils, cobs of corn with kernels as big as mini marshmallows, old Coca Cola bottles filled with a gray drink made out of boiled ground corn, and lots and lots of potatoes. All of the teachers and adults got little clay bowls filled with a hard-boiled egg, a salty fresh cheese, and two tiny potatoes, along with some hot sauce to put on them.
The whole time, we listened to a cd with about five songs that played on repeat. A few of the kids did some traditional dances to them, mostly tapping their feet and waving handkerchiefs. For the most part, though, the focus was on the food and running around playing with classmates.
On Saturday morning, another American girl and I went to see a parade downtown. It was the grimmest parade I've ever seen. No one - from the government officials who started it off to the high school baton twirlers - was smiling. By and large, they looked like teenagers being nagged about chores. It didn't seem too popular among the observers, either. There were tons of bleachers set up where people were supposed to pay to sit and watch, but almost everyone stood in back or to the side, saying they were just going to see their grandson or sister or someone pass by, and then they were leaving.
More cheerful - and much more crowded - was a free concert in Cochabamba's soccer stadium that night. It went on for hours, with something like seven different bands playing sets. Some of them played traditional music, accompanied by people doing the dances for them. Some of them were a mix of traditional rhythms and instruments like electric guitars. There was one guy who played a little of what seemed like folk music, but spent most of his time joking about the differences between dating when he was growing up in the 70's and what it's like now. The whole stadium was packed - apparently Cochabambinos aren't too particular about having aisles or exits being open, if it means an extra 100 people can fit in each section. A little claustrophobic, but a great event overall.
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