If it's not marching, it's dancing

05.21.2005

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Bolivia's a poor country, racked w/ near-constant protests over the past several months caused, in great measure, by a struggling economy. The most heavily mobilized epicenter of this confrontation between syndicalist groups & political institutions is El Alto, a slum city w/ poor economic conditions & massive unemployment built along the heights around La Paz.

This weekend is El Alto's Gran Poder festival, a quasi-religious festival that this year cost residents more than $20 million to host, 10 months to prepare for, w/ the average member of a folkloric dance fraternity spending $300 for their costume. The celebration features university dance fraternities (who spend months rehearsing) & mass public drunkenness. Oh, it's also known that the festival has virtually no impact on the tourism industry.

For some perspective on the cost of the Gran Poder festival: the festival cost El Alto residents about one fourth of the US economic assistance to the country.

So, to recap: Residents of the poorest city of one of the poorest countries in Latin America, who've complained for months that the government doesn't do enough to alleviate their economic problems, are nevertheless able to spend incredible amounts of money & months of man-hours to shut down the city for three days of dancing, after the city's been shut down regularly for the past months. Yeah, that almost makes sense.

Still, I guess Gran Poder is about as interesting to look at as Oruro's carnival (which is to say, quite interesting). Here's some recent public pictures on Flickr tagged GranPoder. Also, there's a growing number of Flickr photos tagged Bolivia.

Posted by Miguel at 11:52 PM