Скачать или смотреть Ancient witches market selling amulets and "magic" powders

(23 Jul 2018) LEADIN:
A mystical market in Bolivia selling amulets, herbal remedies and "magic" powders is aiming to be recognised by UNESCO as a cultural heritage site.
The Witches Market in La Paz has become a must see for travellers due to its myriad of potions and concoctions claiming to cure illness and ward off evil spirits.
STORYLINE:
The air smells of incense and the mystic aura of worship to the ancient Andean gods permeates the air. This colourful market nestled in a neighbourhood appears stuck in time amid the urban chaos of La Paz - Bolivia's capital city.
This is the Witches' Market  - where llama foetuses - thought to be auspicious -  hang above stalls filled with herbs and offerings to the mother earth known as Pachamama.
Tourists and residents line up to buy medicinal plants to heal their bodies and ward off curses, while "yatiris", or indigenous healers offer to read their fortunes on coca leaves.
David Mendoza, a sociologist and member of the La Paz municipality patrimony directory, explains how there was once a conflict between modern and traditional culture expressed in the market.
But he says that in time these elements have blended together.
Before the Spanish colonisers arrived, this was a sacred ground where pre-Hispanic people officiated ceremonies.
These included offerings of blood to thank their gods for an abundant harvest.
Today animal sacrifices are no longer practiced at the market, which is located just a few blocks from the presidential palace.  But several other practices, which were once considered pagan, have survived efforts to uproot them - and the site has become a major tourist site.
''There had been a struggle, a conflict at the beginning (between the development of modern and traditional culture expressed in the market) but of all this, little by little, has been blended together. Actually there has been a growth of juxtaposing one (culture) against the other, some people will call it a hybridism, a syncretism between our ancestral heritage and all the new that has appeared. For instance there is the traditional medicine here, but we also know that it is not only in the Andean world. There is also traditional medicine from other countries.''
In this same place in 1549, the Franciscan order built a church. It was rebuilt some 200 years later by indigenous people who had converted to Catholicism.
In its baroque-styled facade, they carved in stone the head of a bull, a symbol of the colonisers, as well as Franciscan shields, and a bare-breasted goddess, who Mendoza says is Pachamama, a symbol of earth's fertility for Andean cultures.
Anthropologists say that the indigenous would camouflage their beliefs under Catholic ones.
That created a blend of Christian and ancestral rites best-known as religious syncretism.
It is recognised by Bolivia's constitution under the term "Andean cosmovision" and it is widely practiced by many in the mostly indigenous South American country.
"We have done a study of all these entire institutions, the Witches Market market, from all points of view, tourism, crafts, rituality, places where there are museums, people who sell herbs. We have studied all that knowledge and we have agreed with the social sectors involved to propose all these elements as a living cultural heritage of the city of La Paz," says Mendoza.
Llama foetuses remain one of the most popular and exotic offerings to Pachamama at the market.
Many natural medicines are also sold at the market.
Veronica Quispe is market stall owner and specialist in traditional remedies.

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...