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In the Mountains of Bolivia,

Encounters With Magic
A trek through Bolivias dramatic Cordillera de los Frailes reveals
the fantastical culture and art of the indigenous Jalqa people.
Explorer
By MICHAEL BENANAV

MARCH 23, 2016

With a face as creased as a walnut shell and a smile as gleeful as it was toothless,
98-year-old Augustina Lamagril welcomed us into the small shop inside her adobe
home. Rickety wooden shelves were stocked with sardines, cigarettes, beer, soda,
kitchen utensils, light bulbs and other household goods. Beneath posters of the
Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, two metal-framed beds were heaped with blankets.
From the ceiling rice sacks that had been stapled together the corpses of
hummingbirds dangled from strings, drying.
In addition to being one of the few storekeepers in the village of Chaunaca,
Augustina is one of the most highly regarded curanderas, or traditional healers, in
the Cordillera de los Frailes, a serrated sub-range of the Andes in south-central
Bolivia. Despite her remote location, the ill and the injured make their way to her
door, traveling for hours or even days to get there. The dead birds were part of her
natural pharmacy.
My girlfriend, Kelly; our 9-year-old son, Luke; and I, along with our guide and
translator, Rogelio Mamani, were invited to sit on low stools. As a black and white
cat padded around our feet, Augustina explained the uses of the plants and animal
parts that she kept around the house. Speaking in Quechua, she said aloe was good
for throat problems; rosemary could heal bones; rue was prescribed when the

wind makes you sick. She held out an enamel pot half-full with beige powder a
combination of black corn, barley, wild herbs, frog and owl parts and bat blood.
Three drops of bat blood, she said, can cure heart problems.
None of us required treatment, so we left the shop with bottles of water, a wool
hat knit by Augustina, and a sense that wed been very lucky to have had this
encounter with a master of the old ways.
Chaunaca is on a well-established trekking route through the Cordillera de los
Frailes, a jumbled geologic mass that rises just west of Sucre, Bolivias official
capital, best known for its whitewashed Spanish colonial neighborhoods and
universities. Though the edge of the mountains can be reached from the city in
about an hour, the villages within them feel worlds away.
The scenery would have been enough to draw me to the cordillera, with its
upthrust layers of multicolored sedimentary rock set around a crater thats
encircled by rugged river canyons. But I was equally intrigued by the indigenous
Jalqa people who live there and who are known for intricate weavings that
represent a fantastical underworld filled with spirits and mythical animals. In the
same way that a place like Varanasi exudes a distinctly Hindu aura, and Cairo is
palpably Islamic, I wondered how it would feel to be in a place where the culture is
strongly associated with strange, subterranean dreamscapes.
Though Ive trekked alone in remote regions around the world, I decided to go
into the cordillera with a guide. If I hoped to talk to local people, I would need help
from someone fluent in Quechua, the areas native language. Additionally, I had
heard that some Jalqa were extremely reluctant to be photographed (I met one
French couple who had stones thrown at them when they aimed their cameras at
people), and I figured I would have a better chance of shooting pictures without
upsetting anyone if I was accompanied by a guide who had local connections. It
also sounded as if walking the entire route with a backpack would be a daunting
prospect for a 9-year-old, so I wanted vehicle support.
When I asked around about trekking companies in Sucre, travelers and locals
alike pointed me in the same direction: Condor Trekkers. Their guides were
reputed to be top-notch, and the companys profits support projects in the
cordillera communities. To me, this meant that not only would my money be

helping the villagers, but that the guides were likely to have positive relationships
with them.
I found the Condor Trekkers office inside the Condor Cafe, a restaurant run by
the by the same nonprofit that is a magnet for travelers to Sucre, thanks to its
cheap and delicious vegetarian food. There, I met the director, Alan Flores. After he
described the standard two-, three- and four-day treks that Condor offers, we
decided that none of them were right for us. With typical days involving eight or
nine hours of strenuous hiking, Alan agreed that it would be no fun for my son.
Additionally, I wanted to add an extra day to the four-day itinerary, so we could
stay two nights in one place.
Alan said it would be no problem just a bit more expensive to be
accompanied by a vehicle, reducing our hiking to about three or four hours a day
and eliminating the need to carry our backpacks.
In early November, Rogelio met us at our hostel in Sucre, along with our
driver, Luis Ibarra, known as Lucho, who was behind the wheel of a green
Mitsubishi Montero. Rogelio was born in a village in the cordillera, and is Jalqa
himself. He was studying tourism, English and French in Sucre, and was Condors
most experienced guide, having been with the company since it started in 2008.
Before we hit the trail, we stopped at a roadside stand to pick up bags of coca
leaves. A mild natural stimulant thats normally chewed or brewed as tea, and from
which cocaine is derived, its considered to be a gift from the Inca sun god, Inti,
and is the essential social currency of the region. With coca, anything is possible,
Rogelio said.
We turned off the highway and followed a dirt road into the mountains,
through pungent groves of pine and eucalyptus, until we reached a place called
Chataquila, where a church sits atop the eastern ridge of the cordillera, at 11,800
feet above sea level. It was there, in 1781, that Tomas Katari, the leader of an
indigenous rebellion against Spanish rule, was executed, adding to the spiritual
and emotional potency of an important place of pilgrimage.
Local people flock there in August to make offerings of coca leaves, incense
and alcohol to Pachamama mother earth, in Andean religions in a shrine

dedicated to the Virgin Mary. We believe that if you feed Pachamama, she will
feed you, Rogelio explained.
From there, we began hiking into the heart of the cordillera, down the socalled Inca Trail, which is believed to have been built about 550 years ago (though
may be much older) and was used during pre-Hispanic times for communication
and trade. Paved with smooth stones, it descends some 2,300 feet, switchbacking
down rocky slopes speckled with cactuses and shrubby trees, into the Rio Ravelo
canyon. Skies were sunny, and temperatures were in the upper 70s.
In two hours, we reached Chaunaca. A patchwork of fields some blanketed
with purple potato flowers, others sprouting young corn stalks, and many barren
and brown, waiting to be planted terraced the hills and spread out on a plateau
that overlooked the river about 25 feet below. Most of the villagers were
campesinos, working small family plots, perhaps keeping goats and sheep along
with rabbits, guinea pigs and cows.
After lunch at a nearby waterfall and an exploration of the grounds of a
magnificently derelict adobe hacienda once owned by the 26th president of Bolivia,
Gregorio Pacheco, we checked on a new project that Condor Trekkers was funding.
Three men were trying to hoist one end of a black polyethylene pipe from the
riverbank up to the plateau. Their goal was to span the canyon with a drinking
water line that would run from the main village to households across the gorge.
The families over there haul their water from the river, and sometimes it makes
them sick, said Benigno Romero, one of the workers, who also happened to be
Chaunacas mayor.
Condor bought the materials and the village supplied volunteer labor; other
crews would dig a trench to the villages main well and lay the pipe to the homes
that needed water. Mr. Romero explained that being mayor was also an unpaid
position, and that he saw it as a privilege. Jalqa people, he said, work together for
the good of the whole, and would not expect payment for doing so. It was just part
of life.
We spent the night in a community-run tourist cabana, several of which have been
built in villages in the cordillera. All are variations on a theme: whitewashed stone
walls, ceilings of wood and bamboo, liberal amounts of dust and dirt, and

bathrooms with a variety of plumbing problems, but comfortable enough, and

equipped with simple kitchens. Rogelio proved to be an enthusiastic and talented
cook, improvising recipes around pasta, potatoes or quinoa.
The next day, a combination of hiking and driving brought us to the village of
Potolo, set in an undulating, Martian-red landscape at the base of a sharply hewed
massif. One of the largest towns in the cordillera, Potolo is well-known for the
weavings that women produce there.
Jalqa weavings, called axsus, are made from sheep wool dyed black and red.
In fact, the word Jalqa means two colors, in reference to this distinctive palette.
Few details are known about the evolution of Jalqa weaving over the ages, but its
clear that it was first used to decorate clothing before the idea of making tapestries
took hold in the 1990s, when a Sucre-based nonprofit called Anthropologists of the
Southern Andes (ASUR) began a program to revitalize Jalqa textile traditions,
which were on the verge of disappearing. Its also known that, over the last few
centuries, ancient geometric patterns were supplanted by representations of a
psychedelic spiritual underworld called Ukhu Pacha.
Swirling chaotically across the tapestries, animals with wildly exaggerated
features are shown alongside mythical creatures called khurus, which include
hunchback dragons and griffin-like bird-things. Within larger animals, smaller
animals called uas, or offspring are woven, but earthly laws of biology dont
apply: Condors can give birth to cats, monsters can give birth to men.
According to the anthropologist Veronica Cereceda, the founder of ASUR, the
Jalqa believe that Ukhu Pacha is the locus of the worlds primordial creative
energy, a space of constant gestation of life, which may stay in the underworld, or
emerge into the surface world (Kay Pacha) or the sky (Janaq Pacha).
The ruler of Ukhu Pacha, who is often woven into the axsus, is a powerful
spirit called Saxra or Supay. Often equated with the devil because of the location of
his realm, Saxra is not evil, though he does have demonic aspects, derived in part
from the fusion of Catholic ideas of hell with ancient Andean beliefs. If Saxra goes
unappeased, he may kidnap people and bring them down to the underworld or
cause mining accidents or other disasters. If the proper offerings are made
typically coca, liquor and cigarettes Saxra can show people where to find silver

and gold.
Though the underworld is a ubiquitous feature of the indigenous Andean
cosmovision, the Jalqa are the only people in Bolivia who depict it in their art. I
was curious to talk to some of the weavers, so Rogelio led us to the homes of a few,
including Juliana Choque, who looked to be about 30. She set her simple loom up
against the wall of her adobe courtyard and began weaving finely spun yarn
through the strands of the warp, adding to an axsu that was nearly finished. Ukha
Pacha was taking shape before our eyes, and the effect was magical.
Juliana said that she had been taught to weave when she was 9 by her mother,
who had learned her craft in workshops organized by ASUR in the early 1990s.
While the motifs she works with are traditional, each design is unique, a product of
her imagination.
Like other weavers I spoke with on the trip, Juliana said that, for her, weaving
is not a spiritual act, its a purely artistic, and economic, one. Theres little doubt
that the resurgence in Jalqa weaving in recent decades owes much to the money
that women earn from it.
If youre interested in buying any weavings, as we did from Juliana (paying
900 Bolivianos about $132 for a medium-size piece), visit shops in Sucre
before heading to the cordillera, to get a sense of what high-quality work and fair
prices look like. A nonprofit cooperative of indigenous weavers called Inca Pallay
runs a shop a block off Sucres main plaza, offering Jalqa axsus and other regional
textiles, as does the shop at ASURs excellent Museo de Arte Indigena.
After a night at Potolos tourist cabana, we set off for the village of Maragua,
driving, then walking, then driving again. We hiked past dinosaur footprints, laid
down some 65 million years ago by sharp-toed carnivores and round-soled
herbivores, and Luke thrust his hands into the tracks with wonder.
It wasnt hard to picture dinosaurs in the surrealistic setting that we were
trekking through, with its layers of purple and green rock and oddly shaped
boulders that seemed to have fallen from the sky. Even a khuru wouldnt have
seemed out of place, and the Jalqas say that they may be seen when one is alone in
a mountain mist, or in the crepuscular light of dusk or dawn.

To reach Maragua, a small farming community, we climbed to the top of a

ridge, then dropped down into a bowl-like crater formed by an unusual
combination of geologic uplift and erosion. Garnet-colored earth covers the floor of
the crater, which is ringed by pale chartreuse walls with arched tops that resemble
a series of massive flower petals imagine a giant greenish-yellow daisy with a
dark red center.
Since we had planned our extra day for Maragua, we had time to explore and
visit with locals, including a self-taught historian named Crispin Ventura. In the
modest museum that he runs in an adobe shed, he explained that since Maragua is
set inside a crater, its thought to have a special association with the underworld,
and he told tales of people whod had encounters with Saxra and the khurus. With
these legends fresh in my mind, it was easy to imagine that a nearby cave, the
Garganta del Diablo (Devils Throat), which looks like an open, toothy mouth,
might actually swallow anyone foolish enough to sleep there.
Rogelio also introduced us to the more earthly side of life in Maragua. We had
breakfast at the home of Victoria Cruz, who taught Luke how to make buuelos
Bolivian doughnuts over a fire in a soot-covered, chimney-less room.
Later, we helped a family plant its potato crop. Following a pair of bullocks
that pulled a wooden plow, a couple of the women dropped seed potatoes in the
furrows, which the rest of us covered with manure. Though they had never worked
their fields with foreign travelers, we quickly settled into a comfortable rapport
and, as soon as Rogelio told them that he would bring them prints of my pictures,
they were happy to be photographed.
We took several breaks to reload our cheeks with coca and to drink chicha,
sprinkling fermented corn alcohol over the ground as an offering to Pachamama. It
seemed as if our gifts had been received: A pregnant spider scurrying over a freshly
planted row was seen as a sign of fertility, and an omen of a good harvest.

IF YOU GO
The best time to visit the Cordillera de los Frailes is during the dry season,
from late April to mid-November.

Hiring a Guide
Condor Trekkers can be reached by email (condortrekkers@gmail.com,
condortrekkers.org); phone (591-728-91740); or in person at Condor Cafe, 102
Calle Calvo, in Sucre, Bolivia.
Standard two, three and four-day treks cost from 500 to 750 bolivianos ($70
to $113) per person, which includes food, guide, lodging and transportation. For
our customized five-day trek with vehicle support, we paid 1,400 bolivianos per
person.

Where to Stay
Staying in Sucre, we liked La Dolce Vita (dolcevitasucre.com), where room
rates range from 60 to 210 bolivianos.
Tourist cabanas, for visitors without a guide, are 60 bolivianos a night per
person.
Correction: March 24, 2016
An earlier version of this article repeatedly rendered the name of an indigenous people
incorrectly. As accompanying captions correctly noted, they are the Jalqa, not the
Jalqa.
Michael Benanav is the author of three books and founder of the nonprofit Traditional
Cultures Project.
A version of this article appears in print on March 27, 2016, on page TR1 of the New York edition with the
headline: Hiking in the Home of the Spirits.

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