God, Presidents and Art

I forgot to mention Jorge from yesterday. He sat next to me on the bus from San Pedro to La Paz. A 12 year-old kid (13 on the 26th of this month), he lives in the Bolivian country-side. Headed to La Paz, he talked about how much happier the life in the country is. No one robs you, no one lies (apparently); he likes it. He's a 7th Day Adventist as well, which sparked a rather grown-up conversation between the two of us. Evolution. Jorge doesn't believe it's possible that we descended from monkeys. He said it's a lie. The Bible says that God created man...yes, I conceded, but the Bible has been rewritten over and over throughout the years. The only one who knows for sure what happened is God, no? He concurred. We discussed women's rights and women in politics. From what he said Bolivia had a female president in the 80s (Lidia Gueiler Tejada, 1980...NICE, Jorge!). He also had the impression that the majority of US presidents were of the family Bush. Truth be told, I didn't even know what number we're on. I said it was only the 2 out of 44 (just looked it up, we're on number 43. Go 'head, Anne!).

Oh yeah! A little girl selling finger puppets at midnight in the Plaza de Armas in Cusco rattled off all the US presidents in chronological order. Quite a feat on its own, but to put her to the test, I callled out a year and she had to name the president. She got them all right, at least the ones I knew for sure were correct. I encouraged her to keep studying and to stop selling finger puppets. It's humbling and unbelievable. What is it with the US? Are we doing all we can to dominate the world? The woman who showed me to my hotel room yesterday wants to go the US to work but can't because she doesn't speak enough English. I feel like I live in the land of opportunities, yes, where anything is possible. And I guess I believe in the American dream myself, so maybe it's understandable that people from other places get a glimpse of it, too, and hope to live their dreams. It's just weird. I've never heard a school girl recite the British monarchs...

Today I needed some art. I've been looking at folk art mostly, handicrafts, weavings, knitting, and it's beautiful but today I needed something more tangible, like a movement, or a revolution or something, so I wandered into the Bolvian National Musuem of Art. It displays such an unusual mix of indigenous culture celebrating Pachamama (Mother Earth), Spanish colonization celebrating Catholicism and contemporary works celebrating anything and everything. The museum is set up with the ground floor exhibiting the early period linked to the blessings of the land, the next wrapped up in religion, and on the last, well, anything goes. What are seemingly such separate worlds, the people are able to blend, ancestral, indigenous beliefs, the Catholic religion and modern times. There were two items that moved me the most. One was art on feathers. Twenty spindles of feathers wrapped tightly together, the artist painted a picture on the spindles, the feathers the canvas. It was beautiful and like nothing I'd ever seen. The second piece of art glowed. Juan Risma, Fiesta Altiplanica, 1945. Luminary. Didn't pull an ¨Oh, no photos allowed? Whoops!¨ like I did with the David in Florence...