Every year in Aymaran culture, the winter solstice marks a celebration of the Sun, and the days becoming longer and longer. This morning at sunrise, I stood on the top of a mountain surrounded by Bolivianos of Incan descent, with our palms outstretched, greeting the first rays of light as they poured over a distant mountain and chanting, "quallalla, Vive Bolivia!" The experience was moving and incredibly beautiful. And then two llamas were slaughtered right in front of me. That experience moved me in different ways than the sunrise.
The night before, a brave group of 13 students from the Institute hopped on board a bus for an hour ride to Sipe Sipe , a "suburb" of Cochabamba. Like most bus rides in Latin America, it was bumpy and at one point we even pulled over because we thought we maybe hit an animal, or worse, but it was just a piece of the bus that fell off. No big deal. When we arrived in Sipe Sipe, we witnessed a local group performing an ancient Incan dance, and at midnight, we left the town square and started our three-hour trek into the mountains. Before we departed, our guide, Mario, a Boliviano of Quechuan descent, said a traditional Quechuan prayer and doled out handfuls of cocoa leaves for us to chew along the way. These are the same cocoa leaves that are manufactured as tea, as a herbal remedy for various ailments, and processed to make coacine.
This was my first really arduous hike, and it was definitely one to remember. The three hours seemed to go pretty quickly, although at times I felt like we climbed for 10 minutes, and rested for twenty. It was dark, and steep, and I was sweaty and out of breath and loving every minute of it. Amazingly, there was a stone path of pseudo-steps most of the way up the mountain, put in place hundreds of years ago by Native Americans. Don't let that fool you- although it helped, it didn't make the climb any less steep.
We arrived at the top of the mountain at 3am, tired but unscathed. The group settled in for a few hours of singing with local Cochabambinos and some drinking. I tried to nestle next to our fire and catch a few minutes of sleep, but with a few hundred people on the mountaintop, dozens of fires, and lots of celebratory drinking, falling asleep in the dirt was a little difficult.
Around 6am, we gathered up our things and headed to a specific location to welcome the sun, and witness the sacrifical llamas. The area with the llamas was gated off. I get the impression Mario, our guide, is a sweet-talker. He was chatting it up with different locals all the way along our hike and throughout the night. He got all 13 of us into the fenced-off area. He could have told the police we were all missionaries, for all I know. In any case, I was front and center with the camera crews, and four feet from the llamas. The llamas were being fed cocoa leaves, and a woman was taking handfuls and brushing leaves through their hair. They were tranquil, but they looked worried. After sunrise, a group of four or five people (it was hard to tell with all the commotion) seemed to tackle the llamas to the ground, slit their throats, and then proceed to fully decapitate them. I was expecting this. What I was not expecting, however, were bowls and bowls of blood, captured from arteries spewing from neck, to be thrown up into the and to land on the crowd of cameramen, police, and me.
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