Mercado de las
Brujas
La Paz, Bolivia 1996
James Patton
Bolivia, like many Latin American countries, declares itself to be 95%
Christian, while practicing a syncretism that keeps alive old forms of
spiritual practice. In the Mercado de las Brujas, just a few blocks off
of the main square of St. Patrick’s in the capital, La Paz, one can
purchase innumerable fetishes, including dried whole llama fetuses, and
get a fortune read in the leaves of the coca bush (the much maligned source
of cocaine) by a coca-chewing, Aymara-speaking medicine man.
© 2002 The
Fletcher School, Tufts University