NOTAS BE BOLIVIA- good friday, La Paz

-Good Friday: I am walking down the center of the largest boulevard in La Paz. The rain just stopped and the sun is intense. Passing cars are sprinkling muddy water from the brimming gutters. Suddenly there is a bolivian guy next to me, in his mid twenties. He is wearing wraparound sunglasses and a Sf 49ers hat. There is white crust in the corners of his mouth. "Give me some money." he says in english, "Give me money, for something to drink."
"No." I say
"You don't have some money?"
"No." I lie, obviously.
"Fuck you you mother fucker. Bitch tight mother fucker wont give me no fucking money fuck you!" He keeps ranting as stalks off and starts to cross the road.
"Hey," I call after him, "How much did you pay for that hat? How much for the glasses?" He is also wearing a new vinyl coat and new jeans.
"Fuck you..." he keeps babbling and stalking manically up the other side of the street.
But we are heading in the same direction, so at a corner two blocks later he walks right by me again, brandishing a bright length of cloth which startles me at first. He curses at me again as he passes, so I say "Hey do you want to talk? I am willing to talk with you."
I mean it, but it comes out sounding like a threat, more like "I am willing to fuck with you."
I want to tell him that they are tons of little kids and old women all over the streets who want money from me, too. There are people with physical deformities and mental handicaps, dirty and desheviled. I hardly ever even give money to these people. Why would I ever give money to obvious junkie like him? A full-grown able-bodied young man who wants money for a "drink". If it's bottle he's after it's probably a bottle of glue.
He just turns back and says "I'll see you in the Jungle tonight."

Two hours later, at an outdoor market halfway across the city and high above where I first saw him, unbelievably, I see him again. He is walking by and makes a kissing noise at me. This time he is sans hat and glasses.
"Como Onda, Amigo?" I say.
He just holds up a 5 bolivian coin as he walks by.
"Que suerte por usted." I say.

-Good Friday: graphitti: Jesus = Hippie

-Good Friday: Found two flyers for satanic death metal shows next week in La Paz.

-Good friday: procession. Pushing through the throngs of people jamming the sidewalks of the narrow streets to catch up with the virgin. She is flanked by regimens of Bolivian soldiers in German WWI uniforms- swords and polished spiked helmets; riding on an ornate coffin hefted by pallbearers in black Klu Klu Klan robes and hoods. Ahead, the military brass band plays a funereal dirge somewhere between the John Williams "Death Star theme" and "The Fool" by Neutral Milk Hotel. Ahead of that, I know, is Jesus himself, bearing his cross and surrounded by midevil executioners straight from Hagar the Horrible. A woman aside me keeps telling me how to say "Como estas" in Quechuan and I keep forgetting. I am trying to get ahead of the virgin to see her face. All I can see from behind is her black velvet cloak a feint halo from her christmas-light crown.
From the tone of everything else, I think she must be terrible- a horrible shriveled mummy of a real woman, or a mass of snakes with eyes that bleed. Maybe this is a Haitian voodoo parade. But I cant get ahead of her, it's like a dream. Children and old men keep walking very slowly in front of me, and I can't jostle them, they are here out of more than morbid curiosity. Or are they? Slight altitude sickness and slight fever brought on by the plummeting temperature and the horrid bus ride the night before are giving it all a surreal sheen. Hessians with sabers? Faceless black pallbearers?
A girl told me she saw the president, Evo Morales, in the procession today. She said he was wearing a red leather jacket and looked like a Columbian cowboy. Evo is Bolivia's first indiginous president. The tormented Jesus up ahead of me, though, is sure to be just the latest in a long line of Quechuan Jesuses. Eventually I see the virgin- snow white porcelin doll, 3 feet tall. The whole thing to me is an elaborate irony- a deliborate inversion of the myth. In this version, the faceless hordes of the military are there to PROTECT Jesus and the holiness of the virgin Mary. Mary, of course is inanimate, blind, a symbol or empty vessel of a woman borne on by real women with their faces covered and transformed into parodies of grief or evil. Here, the government is a freind to Jesus, not his enemy and murderer. The only villians are the thuggish executioners (the jews?) who ensure that Jesus will keep dragging his cross around, wearing make-up, every year forever. Pontius Pilate is a Christian Quechuan Cowboy waving to the crowd. The band bleats on in mournful resignation of the whole affair.

-Good Friday: graphitti- "El Che y el evo son la mismo: Padres Iresponibles" (The Che and the Evo are the same- irresponible fathers." credited to- "Mujeres creandos" (creative women) with an anarchy symbol that extends down into the female symbol.