The Miner's carnaval

Like you all have read, the life of a miner is anything but glamorous, but I can attest to the fact that they all know how to party. I guess when going to work everyday involves the distinct risk of death, when you get those precious one, two or three days for a town wide fiesta you make the absolute them.

Mike, Annabel, Gemma, and I decided that it would be a good idea to spend our last day in Potosi checking out this exact fiesta. The miners had two days when they did not have to work in the mines, Saturday and Sunday. Normally they hold a job that is 7 days a week. But not this weekend, the whole town stopped and partied just for them. Every mining corporation, of which there are 30 or so from what Ive been told, put together a band that has its own uniform, and the miners all dress up in wild and bright colors and dance down the streets in groups with bands following them. The miners, and bands, take a good deal of pride in these performances, and it seemed to me tried their hardest to be as drunk as possible when they set off from their starting point in the mine. Each group walked, marched, danced, or stumbled, depending how you looked at it from the mines all the way to the city center, and then it turned into a single raging mass of people drinking for the next day and a half. To go off topic or a moment, The native or traditional Bolivian dress for both men and women to quite bright. It is a combination of very bright blues, pinks, yellows, reds, green, etc... seeing these drunken male miners and their wives, in different groups, dancing down the street in neon pink and yellow shirts and equally ornate and colorful headdresses is certainly a sight. Back to the point, from what i was told, by a whole multitude of drunk Bolivians was that the point of this festival was to honor the miners and the Bolivian traditions. This festival has apparently changed very little over the past 100 years or so from what I was told. The second objective of the festival was to get blind drunk. Like i said, I do like the Bolivians.
I have to go at the moment, but when I write again ill add on the more less culturally valuable but certainly more amusing aspects of the festival: this involved water balloons, buckets of water, super soakers, projectile shaving cream, coca leaves, 96% alcohol, and at times the urge to kill someone when blindsided by a water balloon. Later it will come. By the way, I'm in La Paz right now and it is absolutely crazy.