Video: The caravan leaves for salt: the folk craft of the inhabitants of Bolivia
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
It's hard to imagine life without … salt. The attitude to this product has always been ambiguous: in the ancient world, it served as a symbol of curse, in the Bible - purity and holiness, and among the Slavs - life and wealth. In each culture, salt is worshiped in different ways, using it in ritual activities. Just remember our traditional custom of presenting "bread and salt" to new settlers, newlyweds or travelers. From time immemorial, salt was traded, laying salt roads in different parts of the world! Amazingly, in Bolivia today salt traders travel hundreds of kilometers, carrying their valuable goods on the backs of llamas.
Llamas are iconic animals for the inhabitants of Bolivia, for centuries they have been used to transport goods across the Andes. Of course, in the 21st century, cars are increasingly used for transportation, but there are still a few families who honor traditions and maintain whole caravans, with which they annually travel a long way for salt. Amazingly, all the hardships of the path of a lama patiently overcome: they can live a week without water, carry up to 30% of their own weight, moving along rocky or rough terrain.
Salt mining is also a very laborious process: workers have to endure exhausting heat and great physical exertion. Chopping off pieces of salt with an ax, they wrap each bar in dry grass and tie it with a rope, each bar weighing about 11 kg.
Local "Chumaks" begin to prepare for a difficult campaign in winter, stocking up on warm clothes and blankets, as well as ropes and cables woven from the wool of these animals. Bolivians take only males to the caravan, while females remain in the pastures at this time to gain strength. Before leaving, the locals perform an obligatory ritual: the wife presents the husband with a glass of cane vodka, which he splashes on the ground as a "sacrifice" to Pachamama, the goddess of fertility, revered in the Andes.
Salt trade is not the only endangered folk craft, not so long ago on the site Kultorologiya.ru we already wrote about honey hunters from Nepal, as well as about the last cowboys from Montana!
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