The persistence of ?atitas in La Paz is due to the Aymara people, the second largest of Bolivia’s indigenous groups. Discrimination against the Aymara was rampant for years. Until the late twentieth century, it was assumed that urban Aymaran women, known as cholitas, would be denied entry into certain government offices, restaurants, and buses. “I’ll just say it, Bolivia is not a safe country for women, period,” Andres said. “We’re the poorest country in South America. We have a special word, feminicidio, that means a homicide where a woman is targeted and killed for being a woman, usually by a partner.”
There has been tangible improvement over the last ten years. Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, is Aymaran, and equality for Bolivia’s many ethnicities was an important part of his platform. Cholitas are now reclaiming their identity, including their fashion—many-layered skirts, shawls, and tall bowler hats balanced precariously on their heads. They are also entering public life, not as servants but as journalists and government workers. At the end of Fiesta de las ?atitas, when the cemetery closes its gates, the cholitas perform folkloric dances through the streets on their way to different parties. “Last year, their outfits, so tied to this notion of subservience, were printed with military camouflage. The men were pissed,” laughed Andres, who photographed the dancers. “Folklore is not just historical in La Paz. It’s contemporary. It’s constantly innovating.”
Despite the increasing acceptance of the Aymara and the ?atitas, when Bolivians are asked if they keep a ?atita at home or believe in their powers, many will still say, “Oh, no no no, they frighten me!” They don’t wish to appear to be bad Catholics. There is still an underground aspect to the practice. Many more Bolivians (even the professional class, like chiropractors and bankers) keep ?atitas than would ever admit to it publicly.
“The owners are practicing Catholics, though,” Paul interjected. “I have never photographed a house with a ?atita that didn’t have a picture of Jesus or the Virgin Mary on the wall.”
“That’s part of why Bolivia is so weird, frankly,” Andres said. “I was discussing with a friend recently about how we are not a ‘blend’ of Catholicism and indigenous beliefs—they just got stuck together.” He put the backs of his hands together, creating an awkward, monstrous shape. “My sister’s office still has a yatiri [healer or witch doctor] who comes in to cleanse the space. My father was a geologist, and when I was young I used to visit the mines with him. On one of those trips I witnessed the sacrifice of a llama, because the miners demanded it. They wanted to keep El Tío, ruler of the underworld, happy. These strains of magic are still everywhere.”
THE MORNING OF November 8, Ximena set her Disney tote bag, which depicted Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck playing soccer, on the concrete entryway outside the church at the General Cemetery. One by one she pulled out her four ?atitas, setting them up on a wooden plank. I asked her to introduce them to me. Her oldest skull had belonged to Lucas, her uncle. I mentioned that the skulls are usually from strangers, but sometimes they can be members of the person’s family. “He protects my house from robbery,” she explained.
Each of Ximena’s ?atitas had its own woven beanie, crowned by a wreath of flowers. She has brought them to the Fiesta de las ?atitas for many years. “Do you bring them to thank them?” I asked.
“Well, to thank them, yes, but really this is their day. It’s their celebration,” she corrected me.
In the middle of our conversation, the front door of the church opened and the crowd rushed through with skulls in tow, jockeying to get as close to the altar as possible. The newer attendees held back, tentatively waiting in the pews, but the experienced older women pushed their way forward and helped their friends send their skulls crowdsurfing up to the front.
To the left of the altar, a life-sized Jesus sculpture lay in a glass box. He was bleeding copiously from his forehead and cheeks. His bloody feet protruded from underneath a purple sheet. A woman carrying a ?atita in a cardboard chocolate wafer box stopped at his heels and crossed herself, then pushed through the crowd toward the altar.
Despite the contentious relationship with the Catholic Church, the priest standing in front of the crowd today struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone. “When you have faith,” he said, “you don’t have to answer to anyone. Each of us has a different story. This is a birthday celebration, in a way. I am happy we are all together, this is a small piece of happiness.”
A young woman, crammed next to me in the crowd, explained the priest’s acceptance of the skulls this way: “This festival is so big now, even the Catholic Church had to bend.”
The skulls and their owners filed out from the two side doors of the church. At each door was a painter’s bucket filled with holy water. Plastic roses served as aspergilla, sprinkling holy water onto the ?atitas as they passed. Some ?atitas wore sunglasses, others crowns. Some ?atitas had elaborate altars built just for them; others came in cardboard boxes. One woman had a baby ?atita in a fabric lunchbox cooler. The ?atitas got their blessing.
BOLIVIA IS NOT the only place where skulls have connected believers to the divine. The irony behind the Church’s disdain for the practice is that European Catholics have used saintly relics and bones as intermediaries for more than a thousand years. The ?atitas were similar in purpose to other skulls I had met several years earlier, on a trip to Naples, Italy.
“You are English?” my Neapolitan taxi driver asked.
“Close.”
“Dutch?”
“American.”
“Ah, Americana! Where am I taking you?”
“The Cimitero delle Fontanelle . . .” Here I consulted my crumpled itinerary. “In Materdei, via Fontanelle.”
In the rearview mirror, I saw my taxi driver’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Catacombs? The cemetery? No no no, you don’t want to go there,” he insisted.
“I don’t?” I asked. “Are they not open today?”
“You are a pretty young lady. You are on holiday, no? You don’t want to go to the catacombs; that’s not for you. I’ll take you to the beach. Napoli has many beautiful beaches. Which beach I take you to?”
“I’m not really the beach type,” I explained.
“You are the catacomb type?” he shot back.
Now that he mentioned it, I was. That is, if the catacomb type could be anyone other than a dead person.
“Thanks, man, but let’s stick with the Fontanelle Cemetery.”
He shrugged his shoulders and off we sped through the winding, cobbled hills of Naples.
To call Fontanelle a cemetery is deceptive, as it is really more of a large white cave—a tuff quarry, to be exact. (Tuff is rock formed from volcanic ash.) For centuries, this tuff cave was used to bury Naples’s poor and anonymous dead, from the seventeenth-century victims of the plague to the cholera deaths of the mid-1800s.