"Time and space are the modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live" - Albert Einstein
This past week two major events took place in Bolivia: Gran Poder and the Aymara New Year. Gran Poder is a big festival celebration to honor the protectors of El Alto that took place on Saturday, June 18th. To celebrate Gran Poder, over sixty groups of dancers perform traditional dances from El Alto way down into La Paz, a distance of almost ten miles. We went to downtown early in order to get good seats and to escape the multitudes of drunk crowds that emerge in the city by the evening. We got seats under the big red Paceña sign (a brand of Bolivian beer) and waited for the show to begin. The first groups of dancers began to come by us around nine-ish in the morning. Those groups were pretty small and generally not as good as later groups. To make them stay and perform for us, we had to clap really loud. The dance groups came with their own bands and wore really expensive and probably heavy consumes. One group, which performed the herder's dance, even had people dressed as cows. Let's just say that walking ten miles dressed as a cow is not my idea of a good time. As the day progressed and the sun graced us with its welcome presence, more and more people began to fill up the empty seats. The vendors came out and maneuvered between dance groups as they shouted their wares for sale. The most popular good was beer (surprise, surprise) but many other things were for sale, including pillows to make the plastic chairs more comfortable. Since we sat in the front row and were obviously foreign, we got interviewed by television reporters several times. Unfortunately, the reporters were not the worst of my attention-hiding woes. During one of the dances (that told the story of the archangel Michael), a demon that looked like a fluffy polar bear dragged me out into the street to dance. Fun times. After seeing three hours of dancing, drinking, and merriment, we went back home; the celebration of Gran Poder, however, continued until the next day.
On Tuesday, June 21, we went to Tiwanaku to celebrate the Ayamara New Year (which is on the day of the winter solstice in South America). We woke up at 3:00 a.m. in order to reach Tiwanaku (a sight of an important ancient indigenous temple) before sunrise. Since I was warned that Tiwanaku is much, much colder than La Paz, I wore three sweaters and two pairs of pants. When we got to the town of Tiwanaku, I also bought an alpaca hat for a dollar to keep my ears warm. We got our tickets to enter the ruins (about ten dollars for foreigners, one dollar for Bolivians) and bought some hot beverages (tea on tea) to keep warm. I also tried a piece of a cow's heart in order to attempt to be an adventurous eater. It really wasn't as disgusting as I thought it would be. We stayed in a long line to enter the ruins; finally, we passed the guards and climbed a steep hill to wait for sunrise to come. As the sky began to lighten, the temperature dropped sharply. We waited for the sun to come up over the mountain range and hit the Sun Door (a part of the ancient temple); my fingers and toes lost all feeling. When the sun finally cleared the last part of the mountain and shone through the clouds, everyone cheered loudly. The Bolivians raised their hands to greet the sun; I followed the suit. The sensation of the warmth of the sun on my frozen hands was incredible - I could feel the energy flow through me. The whole place had a sense of mystique and power - although it is quite possible I was simply really cold and sleep deprived. After the sun came up and the ritual was complete, we watched the departure of Evo Morales, the Bolivian president. He left Tiwanaku on a helicopter, disturbing the quiet dawn around the ancient ruins. As he left and the sun rose higher in the sky, I was visited by a strange thought - how does the concept of two New Years work in Bolivia? I asked a friend next to me if the Bolivians celebrated a New Year every six months because for some reason the concept did not make sense to me, the child of the Western Civilization. He answered that I must remember that Bolivia is a product of two great cultures and explained that the two New Years in Bolivia are in separate dimensions of time and space. Time runs in two different worlds, one a world of the past and one a world of the present. The concept is very interesting to me, even though the idea is hard to wrap my head around. We stayed in Tiwanaku for a few more hours and then took a bus back home to La Paz, returning to the time of the present.
