The streets of La Paz, picturesque at all times, are particularly so on Sunday, especially on Children’s Sunday. In 1909, that event came on January 24th, when we had been in La Paz nearly a week.
The fair held on that day was unusually interesting. From early morning until the middle of the afternoon, the plazas and streets were thronged with thousands of gaudily dressed Aymarás, bent on enjoying themselves, and purchasing toys and other trinkets of the hundreds of peddlers who displayed their wares in every inch of available space on the three principal plazas and the streets connecting them. While the characteristic feature of this fair is the number of toys that are offered for sale, and the miniature models of everything the Indians use and wear, the chance to sell all kinds of articles that appeal to Aymará taste is not lost sight of. Spread out on ponchos on the edge of the sidewalk and in the middle of the streets was pottery, large and small, useful and ornamental; tinware, woodenware, and crockery; dresses for women, girls, and dolls; ponchos of every grade and description, from the expensive vicuña, worth forty dollars, to the cheapest kind of llama, worth only two or three; musical instruments: little guitars with bodies made of the hard shell armor of the Bolivian armadillo,[2] Aymará flutes and flageolets of bamboo, drums and horns made in Germany; and dolls made in France; in fact, everything that one can think of that would appeal to the Indian and at the same time be within the possibilities of his pocket-book.
The proper thing to do, and the one that seemed to appeal most to the half-tipsy Aymará porter that had saved up a few pesos from the rewards of his labor, was to purchase a fat little doll eight or ten inches high, made in the form of a humpbacked clown, buy gaudy clothes for it, and then load it down with tiny models of brandy bottles, coca wallets, and chicha jugs, in short everything it might be supposed to desire. The result was not unlike a heavily laden Santa Claus, although the face of the manikin, instead of being like our genial old saint, was that of a hideous, debauched vagabond.
The most interesting things that were offered for sale were little plaster models of Aymará types; a carrier or porter with a red knitted cap and a bit of rope in his hand, on the run to get his load; a woman seated on the ground before a miniature loom on which she had begun to make a bright-colored poncho; a chola with her white straw hat, yellow fringed shawl, jewelled neck, close-fitting bodice, gaudy petticoats, and high-heeled French boots. Besides there were rudely made little rag and wooden dolls, clad in characteristic native costumes; clay models of llamas, cows, birds, and mythical animals; little balsas fifteen inches long but resembling in every particular the craft of Lake Titicaca; small packages of coca leaves done up in burlap exactly like the bundles that the burros bring across the Andes from the warm valleys to the eastward; little copper kettles from Coracora; tiny clay models of cooking utensils, water-jugs, and little rawhide sandals scarcely more than an inch in length, faithful imitations of the clumsy Aymará footwear.
One of the smaller plazas was given over almost entirely to games of chance. The favorite variety consisted of a form of dice. Instead of being marked with the usual aces and deuces, the dice were covered with grotesque figures. Each outfit had a different set, but nearly always one face bore the representation of a drunken man, another that of a devil with forked tail and horns, and a third the effigy of the sun. The others frequently carried pictures of wild animals such as lions, tigers, or jaguars. As three dice were cast at a time, it was possible to win three for one, provided all came up the same way, and you had staked your money on the lucky figure. The gambling booths were well thronged. Most of the betting was done with reals, a nickel coin worth about four cents. On the pavement in the middle of this plaza a number of games of lotto were going on, a game which I used to play in my childhood when anything connected with gambling was strictly forbidden. The La Paz game was played as usual with discs and cards. Instead of numbers as in our game, each disc had a gaudily painted picture on it, and each card several pictures and lines. The discs were drawn from a greasy calico bag by an Indian boy, who called out the name of the figure in a droning voice, and the corresponding grotesque picture on the cards was then covered. The player who first covered all the pictures on his card won the pool, less the bank’s percentage. I should have liked to join the game, but as it was conducted entirely in Aymará, I found it a little too difficult to learn the names of the different men and animals that figured on the cards.
Another game of chance that attracted a dense crowd consisted in selling ten numbers at a real apiece. If your number was drawn, you won five reals and the bank got the other five. The only novel feature of the game was the way in which the drawing was made. At the top of a little pole, five feet high, were ten wooden arms radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel. From the end of each hung a little clay figure of an animal, lions, llamas, dogs, and cows. These had numbers pasted to them. By means of a spring, a wooden monkey was made to climb the pole, carrying a stick in his hand with a hook on the end of it. In the meantime, the wheel of numbered animals was rapidly revolved until the monkey manikin made a jab with his hook and pulled off one of the clay animals. This decided the winning number. To see how it worked, I bought two numbers for two reals. The other numbers were soon sold in the crowd; the monkey clambered painfully up his stick, and owing to some defect of the mechanism, pulled off two clay figures instead of one. It happened that both of them bore the numbers which I held in my hand, but as I was a foreigner, and as the monkey had not played the game squarely, the figures were re-arranged, the spring again set, and my luck changed, much to the delight of the Aymarás.
The home of Bolivia’s millionaires, and the centre of Bolivian capital, is in Sucre, nevertheless there are nine banks of issue in La Paz, including several small ones that have no agencies in southern Bolivia and whose bills have only local circulation. While we were here, the banks put into operation a new rule to the effect that bills torn in two, after the favorite custom in Bolivia for making change, would be no longer accepted at the bank at their face value. It seemed natural and proper enough to us, but greatly disturbed the small tradesmen, and seemed likely to cause considerable inconvenience owing to the scarcity of subsidiary coinage.
During my entire visit I was treated most courteously by the government officials and I regret to feel any necessity of offering serious criticism of anything in La Paz. Nevertheless I cannot pass by the barbarous state of affairs which we found in the city prison, an institution which is entirely inadequate for a city of this size and a disgrace to any modern capital. The prisoners are herded together without regard as to whether they are detained on suspicion of misdemeanor or convicted of murder.
Not all of the prisoners are treated so humanely. For our satisfaction, the jailer unlocked the door of one cell, six feet high, three feet wide, and eighteen inches deep. As the door opened, the occupant of the cell tumbled out onto the floor. He was a police officer in full uniform who for some delinquency had been imprisoned for twenty-four hours in this torture chamber where he could neither stand up nor lie down. I shall offer no further criticism because I am conscious of the fact that travellers in nearly every country are prone to find fault with the methods of punishment employed there. Coming from a different atmosphere, things seem dreadful to the stranger that attract no attention from local observers, and which are really not as hard on native prisoners as they would be on foreigners. Furthermore, the distinguished Bolivian statesman who had politely but regretfully yielded to our request to see the prison, told us he was very sorry we had seen it and that it “would be improved before long.”
The traveller in search of new itineraries or out-of-the-way routes will have plenty of suggestions made to him by the hospitable English and American colony in La Paz, and if he is at all uncertain in his mind as to just what he wants to do, he is likely to become bewildered by the number of attractive trips which he can make from La Paz as a base. La Paz contains the principal offices of a number of mining and exploration companies. The general manager of one of those that is engaged in gold-mining in the valley of the Beni, very nearly persuaded me to abandon my proposed trip overland from La Paz to Lima, and go across the mountains to the Beni, thence to the Amazon, and so home. Had it not required more time than I had at my disposal, and been a somewhat uncertain venture at this time of the year, I should have accepted his invitation. For the benefit of any who would like to plan a journey across South America by one of the new trade-routes which few travellers have yet seen, I give the itinerary as it was given me. It makes no allowances for missing connections:—