All Saints Day

Today is All Saints Day in Bolivia. It goes hand in hand with the origins of Halloween, and because it fell on a Monday, the celebration is now on it’s third day. Sandra and I walked into Sipe Sipe after lunch; you would have thought they were having a parade. There was a constant flow of people walking together, arms laden with flowers and baskets of food, balancing buckets filled with juice or checha (the popular home brewed alcohol). We followed the flow of people and through the streets that were now lined with booths selling more flowers and sweets, ice cream, fried meats of all kinds, toys, etc. The flow led us straight into the cemetery.

It was the first Bolivian cemetery I have been in and it was hard to walk down the path because of the crowd! The path was lined with tall shrubs and walkways branched off to small areas of mausoleums. These areas were also filled with people “visiting” their relatives. Further back, was the “poorer” area, as Sandra explained. Here, the graves were all in the ground. It was just as full of people as the front and even had a live band playing on one side. The graves were laid haphazardly wherever there was space. As we followed a trail that looped around one side, we stepped from mound to mound. I felt bad at first, coming from a culture that looks down upon stepping or standing on someone’s grave, but the culture here clearly speaks differently about this. All of the graves had flowers and piles of sweet breads, some had blankets and candles. The more elaborate had every square inch covered in foods and flowers, heaping high so that no dirt showed.

As we left the cemetery and made our way back home, I asked Sandra about the beliefs surrounding these practices. Family members bring the favorite foods of the deceased to their grave to share with their spirit. As more people come to visit, they ask each person to pray for the soul of the deceased, and then share the food that they have brought. This is especially important the first year after someone has died as, on this night, the other souls in the cemetery will “punish” and beat the new souls. The prayers provide them with protection to ease their suffering. At night, the people are supposed to dress in black so that these angry souls can not see them. As Sandra shared with me the words of her own grandmother about these beliefs, I commented about how terrible they must believe it is to die and how I found it interesting that all of the souls were mean. I thought a little more about this later and realized that their belief is really very light, only receiving a beating one night a year assuming their family does not provide adequate protection. The reality of hell that faces these who are lost is in reality significantly worse.

The holiday is, apparently, beneficial for many children. Sandra explained that many children, the poor and homeless, will travel through the cemeteries during this season offering to pray for souls and accepting the food that is given to them for these prayers. Many children collect enough food to last them the entire next week. Some of our boys at the BLC used to do this.