Free Wisdom Online: Potosi: Road Blocks

December 30, 2005

Road Blocks

While having lunch in Potosi we heard on the news that "normalistas" (students studying to be teachers) have blocked the road from Oruro to La Paz. We've heard about road blocks in Bolivia before, and in fact were under impression that someone is always blocking some road in Bolivia, but the road from Oruro to La Paz was the only way to get from the part of Bolivia where we were to La Paz, northern Bolivia and then Peru, so it was getting personal. As we talked to more people, we heard stories about tourists trying to walk around road blocks and getting stones thrown at them. Most annoying was that we were about to get on a 7 hour bus to go to remote Uyuni, from which we originally planning to go to La Paz by bus (10-12 hours). If the road from Oruro was to be blocked, we would face three unpleasant options: wait in tiny Uyuni, wait in Oruro, take a bus back from Uyuni to Sucre (10-12 hours) and fly from there, or take a bus to Oruro (7 hours), then to Cochabamba (probably another 4), then fly to La Paz. Either way, we would end up losing a few days.

We ended up deciding to just to to Uyuni and hope that the situation would resolve itself before we get to Oruro. It did - the police cleared the blockade the next day.

Filed under: Bolivia and Peru in 2005 , Potosi

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Please leave your comments. The comments are moderated against link spam and may not appear on the site immediately. Comentários em português são bem-vindos. Puede escribir en castellano también, pero puedo responder solamente en Portuñol. Mozhno po-russki, no v nastoyaschii moment tol'ko v translite. You can also email me at yuri{at}freewisdom.org.

December 30, 2005

Tinku

The following is not something we either experienced or even considered on our visit to Potosi, but the description from Lonely Planet seemed so bizarre that I thought I would include a quote:

Tinku - The Art of Ritual Mayhem

Native to the northern part of Potosí department, tinku fighting ranks as one of the few Bolivian traditions that has yet to be commercialized. This bizarre practice lies deeply rooted in indigenous tradition and is thus often misunderstood by outsiders, who can make little sense of the violent and often grisly spectacle.

Tinku may be best interpreted as a means for campesinos to forget the hardships of daily life. Festivities begin with singing and dancing but participants eventually drink themselves into a stupor. As a result, celebrations may well erupt into drunken mayhem and sometimes violence.

...

This excessive imbibing inevitably results in social disorder, and by the second day the drunk participants tend to grow increasingly aggressive. As they roam the streets, they encounter people from other communities with whom they may have some quarrel, either real or imagined. Common complaints include anything from land disputes to extramarital affairs tot he theft of farm animals and may well result in a challenge to a fight.

The situation rapidly progresses past yelling and cursing to pushing and shoving, before it turns into a rather mystical - almost choreographed - warfare. Seemingly rhythmically, men strike each other's heads and upper bodies with extended arms... To augment the hand-to-hand combat, the fighters may also throw rocks at their opponents, occasionally causing serious injury or death. Any fatalities, however, are resignedly considered blood offering to Pachamama in lieu of a llama sacrifice for the same purpose.

As you would imagine, few foreigners aspire to witness this private and often violent tradition and many people who have attended insist that they'd never do it again.

I was wondering whether this really exists of whether the Lonely Planet writers just had too much puro on their trip to Potosi. It appears that there are a number of articles on the Internet discussing tinku, including a Wikipedia article. The Wikipedia article, however, is drier than the Lonely Planet description above, and as a result doesn't communicate the same sense of bizarreness.

Filed under: Bolivia and Peru in 2005 , Potosi

Comments

Quoth Paulino (El Norteamericano), on March 29, 2007 at 1:15 p.m.:

I've seen Tinku dancing and fighting in Potosi during La Fiesta de San Bartolome (aka: Chutillos). The members of the comparsa dance through the streets of Potosi (fueled by chicha and cerveza) and, at a signal, begin street-fighting with each other. Many dancers get knocked down. They get back up, wipe off the blood, and continue dancing until the next signal to fight.
A jolly good time is had by all!
Paulino

Quoth Mauricio aim:squirnkey56, on March 31, 2007 at 10:51 p.m.:

I dance tinku. We dont fight, but its based off the fight. It was originally done as an offering to the Pachamama (mother earth) so the crops could grow. The blood from the fighting is supposed to fertilize the land.

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December 29, 2005

Potosi

After finding a hotel (US$10 for room with an iffy bathroom) and getting lunch (Bs.10 for a set menu, which included a decent soup and three options for the second - an excellent suckling pig, and two mediocre chicken dishes), we proceeded to one of Potosi's main sites - the royal mint (Casa de Moneda).

Potosi's main claim to fame was the silver that was mined in the nearby Cerro Rico. The scale of production was such that Potosi at some point had larger population than any of the European cities and millions of African slaves were brought into Potosi, most of whom died within months. (There are is hardly any African descendants in Bolivia today.) Over the centuries, Cerro Rico has yielded, some say, over 70,000 metric tons of silver - enough, some again say, to build a silver bridge from Bolivia to Spain. With so much silver produced, having a local mint is hardly surprising. Potosi's Casa de Moneda occupies the whole block and shows a variety of coins minted in Potosi and the equipment to use those coins. At the end of the trip you can mint yourself a coin from lead or silver blanks that you can buy in the museum.

[slideshow] [complete album]

Apart from the coin related exhibits, Casa de Moneda had a collection of art in "mestizo" style that fused together European and Andean elements (a similar style is called "cusceño" in Peru). The highlight was the XVIII century "Virgen del Cerro", which explicitly unites the Virgin and a mountain in a single image, which I found interesting since most of the other paintings of the Virgin from "mestizo" painters of that century merge the two more implicitly, giving the Virgin's dress a mountain shape. The mint also serves as storage for a variety of random objects, including complete altars from some of the Potosi's churches (which, we were told, now house schools).

Potosi is also full of beautiful colonial architecture, constructed in flowery, hyper-baroque "mestizo" style. While we didn't have an opportunity to go inside many churches, we did visit the inside, the catacombs and the roof of Convento de San Francisco which provided a nice view of the city.

[slideshow] [album 1] [album 2] [album 3]

We ended up skipping, however, on what is perhaps Potosi's single biggest tourist attraction - the still functioning mines. We had a long road ahead of us and needed to move on to Uyuni. Also, going into hot mines full of noxious gases to see people who are desperate enough to work in such inhumane conditions and who, our book said, tend to die of silicosis pneumonia within 10-15 years, just didn't feel like our kind of fun.

Filed under: Bolivia and Peru in 2005 , Potosi

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December 29, 2005

The Road to Potosi

On Day 8, we took a taxi to Potosi. It takes 2-3 hours to get there, but just like with Samaipata you could take a special taxi there for Bs.120 (for everyone). We ended up splitting the taxi with two fellow-gringos who we met earlier on the dino-truck.

[slideshow] [complete album]

The last photo shows Potosi's Cerro Rico ("Rich Hill") where Potosi's mine was (and still is) mined.

Sucre is at 2,700 m elevation, which rarely causes problems for anyone. Potosi, however, is at 4,100, which is already serious altitude (with atmospheric density at 2/3 the sea level), where "mal de altura" is a serious possibility. We've been warned in Santa Cruz to take altitude sickness (aka "mal de altura" or "sorojchi") seriously and told that it's not the same thing as just feeling short on breadth when going up the hill: you can get sick with headache, vomiting, and a bunch of other unpleasant symptoms and that prior exposure to altitude is no guarantee - some people get sick for the first time on their second or third visit to La Paz. In our cases, spending a full day at a half-way point in Sucre would improve our chances quite a bit, but we decided to get some Bolivian "sorojchi pills" just to be sure. We took some before flying to Sucre and then again on the road to Potosi. For this reason or others, we didn't have any problems, until La Paz where I felt short on breadth during the first night.

Filed under: Bolivia and Peru in 2005 , Potosi

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