Goodbye Bolivia

It’s our last day in Bolivia and I’m super sad to go. The second I stopped being homesick and started enjoying it and speaking better Spanish it’s time to leave. However, I’m looking forward to more atmosphere, fewer roosters and access to the ocean.

For our last day in Bolivia we visited Chacaltaya, the world's highest developed ski resort, pictured here. At 5400m the 1km hike was exhausting, but it made it was an incredible end to the trip. From the summit we could see the Andes stretching out around us, Illimani to the South, Illamupu to the North, La Paz and Lake Titicaca to the West and Huyani Potosi to the East. In some ways it seems so simmilar to Seattle, with Rainer to the South, Baker to the North, the Cascades to the West and the Olympics to the East.

So that's all for Allyabroad the Bolivia edition. Stay tuned for Allyabroad in the Peace Corps, coming 2010.

The Other Great Andean Empire

Today we visited Tiahuanaco (or Tiwanaku), an archaeological site about an hour outside of La Paz. Tiahuanaco is, in many ways, the cradle of Andean civilization. It's still the spiritual center of the Aymara world. On the Winter Solstice (in June south of the equator), which is the Aymara New Year, thousands of Yatiris and other Aymara gather to perform elaborate rituals, akin to those I experienced at Alasitas and in the Mercado de Hechiceria in La Paz.

Little is known about Tiahuanaco society, given that the site was abandoned by the time Europeans reached it, and no written or clear oral record survives. It was established around 1000 BC, and by 100 BC it was a complex, highly organized empire. By 700 AD the society controlled much of Bolivia, Southern Peru, Northern Argentina and Chile. Both the Aymara and the Quechua (aka the Inca) claim to be descendants of the Tiahuanacos, while the former's claim is somewhat stronger than the latter's.

The success of this society is remarkable, given that it was based on potato and quinoa cultivation and llama herding. Once, the Titicaca basin fed over 100,000 people. Today, some 7000 people barely eke out an existence. The Tiauanaco society was so successful because they adapted to the environment, building huge agricultural beds called sukakullos. The beds we saw were about three feet high and twice the size of a football field. They are filled with layers of gravel, they clay, then sand, then topsoil, tilled into rows with deep depressions in between. The rocks salinization from slightly salty Lago Titicaca, while the raised beds kept the plants warmer, extending the growing season, and the depressions prevented flooding in the wet season and provided more even irrigation in the dry season. It's been estimated that yields were up to 1000 times higher, so Altiplano farmers today are actually experimenting with reviving the sukakullo. Awesome, huh? Yes, I am a huge agricultural dork.

From about 1000 AD on, Tiahuanaco was in decline. The glacial record suggests a that there was prolonged drought, possibly in combination with an invasion and/or earthquake. It's a great example of the theories in Jared Diamond's Collapse: A society grows beyond it's ecological carrying capacity, in part because of empire building and conspicuous consumption/monument building. It's unable to produce enough to feed everyone, nor to trade for necessary goods found only in other ecological zones, and it can't survive environmental upsets. Unfortunately, we know so little about Tiahuanaco society because it was looted by Spanish conquistadors, looking for gold. Then some of the ruins were dynamited for rocks for railroad construction. And of course, social scientists from our supposedly advanced society have stolen some of the most valuable artifacts for our museums.

Today they're doing a somewhat more professional job preserving what's left. Experts believe most of the society is still buried. We saw all the trappings of a traditionally archaeological dig, including a human and llama burial being excavated with hand brushes. A few really cool monuments remain, including two portals, elaboratley adorned with creation gods, pumas, condors and snakes, aligned so that the sun shows through one on the summer and winter solstices and through the other on the spring and autumn equinoxes, as well as a number of monoliths and a subterranean temple, filled with faces like the one pictured above, which were believed to be representations of conquered cultures.

Isla del Sol, Birthplace of the Sun

Today we hired a boat and guide to take us on a tour of the Islas del Sol and de la Luna. Stately ruins and pretty little sedate farming villages are scattered along the island. They're so picturesque and the sun shines so bright and warm compared to the rest of Western Bolivia it seems absolutely magical.

The Isla del Sol, or Island of the Sun, is supposedly the birthplace of the sun itself as well as the Inca god-king Viracocha and their Adam and Eve, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo. It's at the center of the Tiahuanaco creation story, and in turn, the Aymara and Quechua (Inca) creation stories.

The biggest ruin complex is the Santuario, an elaborate temple surrounding the Huellas del Sol, or footprints of the sun, where the sun was believed to have been born. It was once the primary Inca pilgrimage site, attracting thousands of worshippers each year, most of whom weren't even allowed on the island, let alone near or into the temple. My favorite of the ruins were the Escalera del Inca, a steep stone staircase down a natural amplitheater and through impressive agricultural terracing, along which a freshwater culvert runs. The three feeder springs represent the three Inca maxims: Don't steal, don't lie, don't be lazy.

Northwest of the Isla del Sol is the smaller Isla de la Luna, or Island of the Moon. It was also called Coati Island, or Queen Island, as it was associated with women. The temple on is island was used for offerings to the moon, but is often called the Temple of Virgins, as it was staffed exclusively by young women. Ironically, the island was also used as a clandestine detention center for political prisoners in throughout 20th century. Because every country's gotta have a little Gitmo.

Northeast of the Isla del Sol you can barely see a submerged stone column. The underwater area nearby was excavated, revealing a massive stone temple and precious gold, silver and stone artifacts, Bolivia's own Atlantis.

Copacabana, As Close As Bolivia Comes to the Sea

Yesterday we traveled from Lago Poopó to Lago Titcaca. Awesome, I know. I've been waiting all trip to say that. But all silliness aside, Titcaca is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It's a vast, sapphire-blue lake, speckled with islands along the shore. You would swear you were in the Mediterranean, save the Andes rising abruptly and icily in the background.

The city at the south of the lake is called Copacabana. While it's not Brazil's playa pilgrimage site, it is the site of serious religious pilgrimages. They have a beautiful black wood virgin, housed in an impressive white cathedral, adorned with elaborate blue tilework and almost Moorish domes. Cars and trucks are often blessed in the plaza outside, in colorful cha'lla rituals those I saw at Alastitas and in the Mercado de Hechiceria. And while the liquor, coca, streamers, firecrackers and trinkets probably aren't as effective as safe driving and auto insurance, they are a hell of a lot more fun.

Above the city looms Cerro Calvario, a hallowed hill. The twelve has the twelve stations of the cross, but in a distinctly pre-Colombian tradition many indigenous people carry stones to the top of the hill, creating Apachetas like those I saw trekking Takesi and on the World's Most Dangerous Road. For me the most sacred thing was sitting on top, watching the sunset over Lago Titcaca and Peru in the distance, burning orange to blood red before engulfing us in total blackness.

It was also wonderful just to be on the water. Growing up in Seattle, I didn't realize how large the Sound looms in my world. Being landlocked is hard on me emotionally. It bothers many Bolivians as well, who had their coastline annexed by Chile in the 19th century and consider access to the ocean a point of pride. We went sailing out a less-than-seaworthy little boat, stranded, and rowing back for a scrumptious trout lasagna dinner, which was a great sea fix.

Salty! In a good way.

On the final leg of the southwest circuit we crossed the Salars Chiguana, Uyuni and Coipasa. The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat on earth, twenty-five times bigger than those in Utah, and by far the most surreal place on the planet.

Between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago Lago Minchin covered the southern altiplano. After it evaporated the area lay dry for 14,000 years, until the emergence of Lago Tauca. Tauca dried up some 12,000 years ago, leaving Lagos Poopó and Uru Uru and the Salars. The Salars were the lowest points in the lake, where, without an outlet to the sea, minerals leached from the mountains collected, forming the salt flats.

An indigenous account holds that Yana Pollera, one of the nearby peaks, fell in love with Thunupa and Q’osqo, two neighboring volcanoes. When she gave birth to a child the two mountains fought over who was the father. Concerned for her child’s safety, she sent it to the south and flooded the plain between them with breast milk so it could feed. Eventually the milk turned to salt and the Salar was formed.

When there’s water on the Salar it reflects the sky, the horizon disappears and the heavens seem infinite. When the Salar is dry it’s an endless expanse of white ground and blue sky, eerily empty. In some areas minerals like lithium have separated the Salar into perfectly shaped hexagonal tiles.

We felt as if were gliding across the Salar, like the surface of another planet. That was, until the jeep got a flat tire, our fourth of the trip, at 100kph. All of a sudden the steering went a kilter, and we started sliding sideways. In the five seconds it took to slow to a stop the tire wall had melted away, exposing the rim and bending the retaining ring at a 45° angle. Thank goodness we had an extra tire and a mechanically talented guide, because I don’t think AAA makes calls there.

The vast expanse is broken up by a few bizarre islands. As last testament to the Salar’s lacustrine origins the islands are coral, now covered in centuries old giant cacti. They’re incredibly inhospitable and harsh, but the one we visited, Isla del Pescado, was actually inhabited by persecuted Inca during the colonial period.

Communities of indigenous people continue to make their living on the Salar today, harvesting salt, borax and other minerals. They scrape the salt into the perfect little mounds pictured here, shovel them into trucks, iodize them and export them to Chile and Argentina. Many people also make their homes, stores and hotels, including the one we stayed in, out of salt. It’s surprisingly warm, since nights on the Salar can reach -50°F. On the margins of the Salar super-hardy people sill herd llamas and grow quinoa.

Again, a picture is worth a thousand words. Or in this case 12,106 sq.km and 10 billion tons of salt.

The Southwest Circuit

We left Tupiza and headed southwest towards the Chilean and Argentinean borders and the Reserva de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa, into some of the most isolated and desolate scenery on earth.

The second morning our first stop was San Antonio, a ghost town once famed for gold mining. Our guide explained the local legend, that the townspeople grew so rich gold mining than they became wasteful, building houses out of gold, burning wheat for fuel and killing babies. In retribution, an old woman went from house to house sweeping, brining plague and pestilence with her. While the story is certainly charming, I think the actual sequence of events, environmental collapse as a society on the margins of survivability grew too large, might be even more interesting. Among the ruins there were these crazy creatures called viscachas, which look like crosses between squirrels and bunnies, but even cuter. We also saw ostriches just outside of San Antonio, absurdly out of place in the Andean highlands.

The figurative and literal highlight of the second day was Laguna Verde, a day-glo green lake. It’s stained such a startling color by lead, sulfur, arsenic and calcium. An icy wind blows constantly, churning the lake into green and white froth. Volcan Licancabur rises imposingly above lake, straddling the border between Bolivia and Chile.

We also visited the Mañana del Sol Gysers, a field of furiously bubbling mud pools and steaming fumaroles. We were warned to approach carefully, as the ground has given way underfoot, scalding imprudent tourists to death. It was nearing dusk, and the temperatures dropping, so a soak didn’t seem like such a bad idea to me.

On the third day we visited Laguna Colorada, a rusty red lake ringed with brilliant white sodium, magnesium, borax and gypsum sediments and bright green grasses. It appears apocalyptic, except for the flamingo population, eating algae and plankton from the florid waters. They were the first of many flamingoes we saw, thriving at highs of 4300m and lows of 0°F.

We also drove through the Desierto de Dali on the second day and Desierto de Siloli on the third, high-altitude wastelands of volcanic ash and red rock. Over the centuries the relentless wind has sandblasted the boulders into surreal shapes, creating perfect climbing rocks. There was not a sign of life in sight, except vicuñas, like llamas, but smaller, softer and super hardy.

Again, I can only say so much before Mira has to take over for me.

Kid, the Next Time I Say Let’s Go Someplace Like Bolivia, Let’s Go Someplace Like Bolivia!

Last night we travelled to Tupiza, a tiny, dusty, somewhat deserted mining town. While the minerals have all but been exhausted, the lower altitude, warmer climate, slower pace and dramatic desert scenery are turning Tupiza into a tourist destination. Blue and green mountains give way to weirdly eroded red rock formations and canyons, which give way to sandy dry washes, or quebradas, studded with cacti. The spires, pinnacles, and arches make you feel as if you’re in another world, but at the same time, it seems like the Southwestern United States.

Tupiza was also the last stomping grounds of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. At the turn of the 19th century, as Wild West banditry was being reined in by the federal government and the Pinkertons in pursuit, Butch and Sundance fled to South America to start a new life on the straight and narrow. However, old habits die hard, and shortly thereafter they were linked to bank robberies in Argentina and Chile and forced to flee to Bolivia. Again, they sought honest work, but after a while, returned to their old ways.

In Tupiza a large military presence deterred bank robbery, but Butch and Sundance learned of a poorly guarded Aramayo mining company payroll to be transported across the mountains by mule. The outlaws intercepted the convoy at Huaca Huañusca, dead cow in Quechua, finding $90,000, instead of the $480,000 they had been expecting. Pursued by the military and angry miners, whose pay had been stolen, they fled north, stopping the night in San Vicente.

Unbeknownst to them, a military patrol was also posted there. After nightfall a shoot out ensued and in the morning the bandits’ bodies were found, Butch having shot the wounded Sundance before turning the gun on himself. They were buried in an unmarked grave, giving rise to rumours that the Butch and Sundance survived, even returning to the United States.

We rented horses and rode though the badlands, playing bandits and stopping for a tamale picnic in a particularly picturesque canyon. However, we’re going to need more practice as Wild West gunslingers, what with the sunburns, super sore butts and squeamishness about violence.

I am Rich Potosí, Treasure of the World, King of the Mountains, Envy of Kings

In the late 15th century Potosi was one of the largest cities on earth, larger than New York, Paris or London. Today, it’s a city of crumbling colonial houses and churches and desperate poverty, a desolate shell of its former glory. Above the city looms Cerro Rico, stained red with centuries of miner’s blood and minerals, pockmarked with dynamite like the faces of the people, the source of all that wealth and poverty.

An estimated eight million men have died in Cerro Rico extracting over 50,000 tons of pure silver for the Spanish crown alone.

The Inca never extracted silver from Cerro Rico. Legend has it that a booming voice warned them that the minerals were meant for others who would come from afar. In 1545 a llama herder was camping on Cerro Rico and lit a fire he lit to keep warm. The fire melted the ore and molten silver flowed out of the fire. The Spanish crown quickly caught wind of the discovery and began exploring the area.

To extract the minerals the colonists instituted the mita system, requiring all indigenous Bolivian men to serve six months in the mines. When that proved insufficient, they began importing African slaves. The men died laboring in the mines, pushing the mills that process the minerals like mules and from mercury poisoning, stomping the silver amalgam with their bare feet, killed by overseers, their diseases, or opting for suicide instead of the misery of life in the mines.

After Independence, control of the mines quickly passed to three major mining families, the Aramayos, the Hothschilds and the Patiños. The silver barons, and tin barons after them, controlled the Bolivian government for the next century and a half. While conditions within the mines improved, the quality of ore declined and the dependence on a single export devastated the economy with each boom and bust cycle.

As mines were privatized and people laid-off in the 1930s and again in the 1980s miners began to demand the opportunity to extract the minerals for themselves. Since most of the mines were stripped centuries earlier and the profit margins on the remaining minerals are slim the government gave the rights back to the miners.

In the afternoon we went to visit a collective mine. Outfitted in rubber boots and raincoats, old fashioned headlamps and bandanas for facemasks we got a little taste of life below.

The conditions in the collective mines are little better than they were centuries ago. The lower levels are reached with rickety ladders, leading to tunnels so low you have to crawl or slide on your stomach. Sulphur, arsenic and other noxious gasses fill the air, leaving you gasping for breath. The temperatures can climb above 100°. There’s standing water and unmarked holes below, falling rock above. At 4500m, walking, let alone wielding a pick axe or towing a trolley of ore, is exhausting.

We spent an hour and a half in the mines, and I feel as if it shaved years off of my life. Miners will work ten to twenty-four hour day, often without food or drink, only stopping to chew coca. Once they start work, the can expect to live about fifteen years before succumbing to silicosis, if they manage to avoid accidents.

Despite this, many of the miners are children as young as ten or twelve. They’re often forced to support their families, their fathers having died in the mines or the victims of black lung disease, coughing up blood and tissue. One of young miners’ jobs is lighting the dynamite that older miners have laid, since they can crawl out of the shafts more quickly.

It’s no wonder that when the Spanish colonists described heaven and the hell indigenous slaves decided that the mines must be hell and the devil himself the owner of the minerals. Outside of the mines the men are Christians, but inside each mine, just beyond the last rays of light, there’s a statue of this devil, el Tio, or uncle. With twisted horns and tail, leering smile and erect phallus, I found the Tio a little terrifying. The miners have a more collaborative relationship with El Tio, making offerings, asking for his minerals and his protection from accidents. Every Friday the miners chew coca, smoke cigarettes and drink Ceibo with their Tio. They also make llama offerings in hopes of satisfying el Tio’s bloodlust, leaving the men alive.

While offerings to el Tio aren’t quite as effective as OSHA, they are a lot more fun. But all flipness aside, I think we came as close to hell on earth as we ever will today. For look at Cerro Rico and the children who work there check out The Devil’s Miner, a fantastic documentary.

Eating Human Hearts and Drinking Grain Gin

Today we visited Tarabuco, a small village Southeast of Sucre for the town festival, Phujllay, which means play in Quechua.

Phujllay has its roots in pre-Hispanic Pukhara fertility festival, akin to our Thanksgiving. The festival begins with a Quechua mass, followed by a chicha and ceibo fuelled parade of folkloric dances, and finally the Pukhara, an altar decorated with flowers, fruits and vegetables, bread and bottles of alcohol and the election of a virgin princess.

Today Phujllay also commemorates the Tarabuceños’ triumph over twice as many Spanish troops in the Battle of Jumbate on March 12, 1816. Stories, and the statue in the town square, have it that the victorious warriors cut open the chests of the Spaniards, ripped out their steaming hearts and ate them in ritual retribution for their abuses.

The ferocity of Tarabuceño culture is apparent insofar as they been able to retain their distinct indigenous identity. Phujllay presents an amazing array of colourful costumes and traditional song and dance. Young men and women from communities across the surrounding countryside come to dance. They are the pride of their pueblos, who will scrimp and save the entire year for the brightest costumes and best instruments.

The Tarabuceño men wear elaborate white shawls embroidered with mirrors, helmets adorned metallic flowers, thick wood sandals with copper spurs that clank as they dance. They jump from one foot to the other, waving a pink silk scarf in one hand. The stomping is raucous and cacophonous, yet strangely harmonious, accompanied by percussion and panpipes.

The women wear wide brimmed hats, blood red, with green and yellow ribbons waving from the edges and coins sewn around the crown. The girls stay in the center of the circle, where they wave white wiphalas. They would often hide their faces behind the flags, as if afraid of the outsiders.

The most fantastic are monteros, leather helmets modeled after and mocking the Spanish soldiers’ costumes. They are adorned with a flowers, pompoms and feathers, like fountains of color. The monteros play huge horns and flutes, up to three meters long, stooping under their weight, then triumphantly throwing their heads skyward.

I can’t do the dancers justice describing them, but hopefully the pictures convey some of the beauty and pride.

Torotoro, The Land Before Time

Yesterday was my last day in Cochabamba. While I was sad to go, we left in a chartered six-seater Cesna, flying over the lush green countryside and the flooded fields of Cochabamba and into the red canyons and rugged rock formations of Torotoro, a fitting exit.

Visiting Torotoro is like time travelling in so many senses.

The town is absolutely tiny, with small adobe houses and sagging tiled roofs, mud tracks that can hardly be called roads, a few stores and only one working phone. When I arranged the flight, the pilot assured me that he would have the townspeople clear the animals and tall grass off the pista before we arrived. When we landed on the dirt airstrip, we were greeted by a gaggle of village children, who had run up to see the plane. As we walked through town everyone would greet us from their front stoops, sitting, spinning, chatting in Quechua, mending tools and watching naked toddlers play in the mud.

The town is the center of Parque Nacional Torotoro, sparsely populated, arid scrubland and Andean foothills, broken up by deep red ravines and slabs of grey stone turned skyward as the Andes pushed upwards. Torotoro takes its name from the Quechua TuruTuru Pampa, which translates to mud-mud-valley. All that mud created an idea environment for preserving a huge number of dinosaur footprints.

Unfortunately, Torotoro’s remote location and Bolivia’s lacking scientific community leaves little reliable information about the palaeontology. For instance, many townspeople believe that the footprints were left in hot lava by dinosaurs fleeing a volcanic eruption. One guide even told us that the red rocks were the result of the lava. We can be sure that the tracks were made in the cretaceous period, from 145 to 65 million years ago. Ankylosaurus, velociraptor, and sauropod tracks, the family that includes the Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, have been identified.

The bizarre geological formations, including immense canyons and rushing rivers, sheer cliffs, limestone caves, and natural stone bridges add an antediluvian ambiance. Prehistoric looking plants with giant thorns stud the stony ground, making it seems like the land before time. There were also fossilized seashells, shark teeth and trilobites from drier epochs which I found particularly ironic, in a landlocked country at 2600m. We even met an elderly man who collected meteorites from the earliest epochs, among other geological oddities. Torotoro’s pre-Inca peoples also left rock paintings, a reminder that we are only the most recent residents.

The immensity of geologic time and the tectonic force left me feeling very small, yet at the same time, like an Allosaurus!

Accidentally Advocating Extrajudicial Justice

My work in Cochabamba is quickly drawing to a close. I had a funny experience a few days ago that made me feel like my time here has come full circle, from being mistaken for an angry opposition member to being mistaken for an angry MASista.

In the lull between Carnaval and Easter people are back to protesting. While the difficulties over the Constitutional Assembly, land reform and the Santa Cruz autonomy movement continue, the current protests are focused on the recession and falling real wages. In recent weeks the price of a piece of bread has risen from 30 centavos to 50 centavos, or from about 4¢ to 6¢. While this may still seem like a steal to you and me, it’s a huge issue for ordinary Bolivians, two-thirds of whom live on less than a dollar a day. A lot of families are hurting, their children going hungry.

Perhaps most pathetic, the Bolivian recession is, in part, the result of the Bush administration’s economic mismanagement and insufficient oversight of the mortgage industry. The economic downturn stateside affects Bolivia so severely because most savings accounts and investments here are in US dollars, because Bolivia has some preferential trade deals with the US in return for their cooperation in the War on Drugs and because Bolivia imports most of their food and manufactured goods from neighboring countries, which are also affected. So Bolivians, without savings, without a social safety net, are already feeling it far more than we ever will in States.

Every day this week there has been a different march to raise the minimum wage. A large group of students is camped out in the central plaza, hunger striking for educational funding. On Wednesday there was an all-purpose blockade, bringing together a bunch of different issues. I got stuck behind the blockade, so instead of sitting in traffic in my taxi, I went to see what was happening.

Having learned my lesson with the angry alteños, I introduced myself and asked permission to take this picture. I explained my support for Evo and my solidarity with indigenous Bolivians. While the blockaders were very interested in what I had to say, so was a reporter who overheard me. Reporters seem to be especially interested in what I have to say. I’ve been interviewed for radio three times and on television twice now.

Just before the reporter started his camera rolling one of the blockaders handed me a police baton. Instead of asking why he had given me the stick and handing it back, I held onto it. The reporter, for his part, asked me all sorts of leading questions. Plus, since my Spanish isn’t my first language and I was on the spot, my answers weren’t as nuanced as I would have liked. Instead of saying that I thought the perpetrators of Enero Negro should be brought to justice within the confines of the court system or legally sanctioned community justice forum, I just said they should be brought to justice.

So I was on the news, standing in front of a blockade of burning tires, appearing to advocate lynching, punctuating my points with a police baton. Here’s hoping they let me back in the States. However, I am searching for a copy, since it would be the coolest souvenir imaginable.

Dealing with Death as Bolivians Do

In the last year I’ve lost a lot of wonderful people way too early. Recently, malaria meds have been forcing me to face these deaths, turning my dreams into sometimes funny, sometimes frightening montages of my departed friends. It’s as if Pedro Almodóvar is camped out in my mind. Volver meets Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, with a little bit of Guillermo del Toro thrown in for good measure.

Since such macabre subjects have been on my mind, I though I’d give another little anthropology lesson about a different death ritual, Ñatitas. It’s is an Aymara tradition, rooted on the altiplano and in La Paz, celebrated in conjunction with the Day of the Dead.

Every year, on November 8th hundreds of people flock to the cemetery, carrying human skulls. They are crowned with flowers and offered cigarettes and coca leaves. Sometimes they sport sunglasses, other times sombreros. People serenade them and light candles and at the end of the day a priest says a mass over the skulls.

People take their skulls home and put them in places of honor for the rest of the year. Aymara believe that each person has seven souls, and that one of these souls stays with the skull. Thus, they must be treated well. When they are respected ñatitas will bring luck, protecting people from harm and their houses from thieves. Mistreated, a ñatita can bring misfortune to a family.

Personally, I’m more inclined to believe that having a human head in your house scares off most would-be burglars. I also find it funny that while most ñatitas are family members, others are bought in the black market, or unearthed from abandoned graves. People will make up names for their ñatitias, making them a part of the family.

Thanks to Martin for this photo of a ñatita, which means pug-nosed in Spanish.