La Paz

We were lucky enough to arrive in La Paz on June 8th 1995, a couple of days before the annual Festividad del Señor de Gran Poder took place, and were able to find an hotel along the route of the parade. This parade was enormous with the head of it passing the hotel at around 10:00 with the tail disappearing into the distance at around 23:00 that night ... and I was worried we'd miss it! The pictures below are of parts of the parade in the vicinity of our hotel which, incidentally, appeared to be a good place for the participants to stop for a breather.

This parade consisted of 51 sections containing anything from 20 to over 100 people and included a band with people supporting the group's banner, closely followed by dancers, jugglers and/or acrobats.



The pictures on the left, from top to bottom, show:

  • Camposinas in their hand-made traditional costumes. As they walk along they bang on the drums in time to the music and dance. I was full of admiration for these ladies; the physical effort required to keep this up for so long must have been enormous.
  • Time for a rest so the costumes were removed and parked on the pavement for half an hour. It must have been really hot inside the costumes and I doubt they were that light either.
  • Red smoke added to the fantastic atmosphere of this event.

Finally, the picture below shows another group, this time a little more acrobatic.

There were 52 individual teams involved in this spectacle. They came from the 'barrios' in La Paz and villages near and far. There was a 53rd team which had to be seen to be believed. It was the street cleaning squad of around 10 people, mostly women, behind a truck following the procession. As they passed, all the rubbish left by the crowds of onlookers vanished; the road was swept and when they disappeared into the distance, it was hard to believe that only minutes earlier, the largest procession in Bolivia had passed by.

In fact the procession had lasted around 12 hours from head to tail - spectacular.