Week Ten: Fiesta de las Ñatitas

I thought that for this week’s post I would write about a tradition in La Paz that I just recently heard about. I’m sure many of you have heard of the holiday called Day of the Dead (which is called Día de los Muertos in Mexico and Todos Santos in Bolivia), which falls on the 1^st and 2^nd of November, but have you heard of the Fiesta de las Ñatitas? Probably not, so let me tell you about it.

While I was eating lunch in a restaurant with my host family last Saturday, unbeknownst to me at the time, thousands of Paceños (people from La Paz) were honouring the dead in the city’s main cemetery. Compared to Todos Santos, when Bolivian families stay in their house and make human-shaped bread, the Fiesta de las Ñatitas is a bit more involved. While I was working on masticating some fine Bolivian cuisine, I noticed that everyone in the restaurant was fixated on the television screen. Due to the poor quality television, it took me a while before I was able to make out the image on the screen. I didn’t believe it at first, but sure enough there it was: a skull wearing a tuque.

As far as I know, this ritual only occurs in La Paz and, until recently, it was only practiced in the privacy of people’s homes. Nowadays, people gather in the cemetery on November 8^th with decorated skulls to show their respect for the dead. The skulls, which are not necessarily from relatives or loved-one, are covered with flowers, tuques and candles and are even fed food, cigarettes, liquor and coca leaves. An anthropologist, named Milton Eyzaguirre, has written that the indigenous people in the Bolivian Andes believe that every human has seven souls and that one of the souls stays with the skull. It is believed that in return for this ceremony, the person’s soul with protect and look after the family.

With roots in pre-colonial religions, this ritual has now been incorporated into the practices of the Catholic Church, although not formally. In the morning of the 8^th, a priest gives a special mass for the deceased and those honouring them.

Although I don’t have my own photos of the Fiesta de las Ñatitas, I have included some that I found online and two video-links about the ritual. And by the way, if you want to see an enlarged version any of the photos on my blog, just click on the photo.

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=wvoPdWIfFdE

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=nBmuHn5poI8

***Interesting Fact: I just found out that the grandmother of my host family, who lives across the hall from me, has the skull of her mother in her apartment***