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El Alto is a city that lives up to its name, its meaning in Spanish translating as "The Heights." Located in Bolivia, El Alto is in fact located adjacent to La Paz, but set a good deal higher than its sprawling neighbor. Many travelers neglect to explore El Alto, but to do so is to miss out on a destination renowned for its exuberant architecture, unique culture, and the mystical practices of some its residents—the shamans. So, ready to take the high road?
Click through and explore the highest city in the world.
With an average elevation of 13,123 feet (4,000 m), El Alto is the highest urban center in the world.
El Alto sits above La Paz, Bolivia's de facto capital, and while La Paz is often the starting point from which to explore this landlocked nation, hemmed in as it is by the mighty Andes Mountains, canny travelers first take a detour to El Alto, which in Spanish means "The Heights," to appreciate the colorful Neo-Andean architecture and exuberant culture of Bolivia's second city.
El Alto is renowned for the many cholet homes, mansions, and dancehalls scattered across the city.
The flamboyant, Technicolor architecture is the work of the preeminent Aymara architect Freddy Mamani.
Mamani has transformed El Alto with his fantastic designs, created to highlight the values and symbols of the Tiwanaku and Inca cultures, which flourished in the Altiplano thousands of years ago. The Bolivian architect combines traditional motifs with modern elements of pop culture. The buildings also serve as a manifestation of the emerging Aymara economic power.
The Aymara are an Indigenous people in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America. Together with the Quechua people, they moved to El Alto from rural Bolivia starting in the 1950s. The city's population today is predominantly Aymaras.
The exuberant cholet dancehalls also double up as venues for the widely popular wrestling matches between Indigenous Aymaras female competitors known as cholitas.
Fighting cholitas wear braided hair, bowler hats, and multilayered skirts in the ring. Staged bouts take place in El Alto on Thursday and Sunday afternoons.
The all-female fighting force are part of a group called the Titans of the Ring, which includes male wrestlers. Aymara women started to wrestle over 20 years ago as a form of empowerment in a male-dominated society.
Fighting cholitas take their work seriously. Their training regimen includes climbing Huayna Potosí, a mountain near El Alto that summits at 19,973 feet (6,008 m).
El Alto's sprawling Mercado 16 de Julio is claimed by many to be Bolivia's largest open-air market. You can spend all day browsing the sea of colorful stalls selling anything from shoes, clothes, and CDs, to auto parts, musical instruments, and plenty of food and drink.
At most times of the year, El Altos is either singing or dancing, usually both. In September, the city hosts a national folk dance festival, where the kachenos, among other dance forms, is performed. This type of music and dance is practiced in the province of Nor Chinchas and celebrates Pachamama, the Inca goddess of the Earth.
El Alto's most impressive dance festival is Chacaltaya. Thousands of Bolivians participate in the dances, with music bands playing new songs written especially for the event.
The Millenarian Camelids Fair at La Ceja de El Alto attracts a different kind of festivalgoer—alpacas. Held every year in May, the fair promotes the camelids' stockbreeding, with the animals dressed in their best finery.
Celebrations honoring the Virgin of Carmen see fraternities wearing traditional clothes and masks and dancing in time-honored style every July 16.
El Alto's soundtrack is composed of melodies marked by the sound of the zampoña (pan flute), the charango (small 10-stringed guitar with high notes, particularly typical of the Potosi region but spread throughout the Andes), and the kena (Andean recorder).
A common sight in El Alto and La Paz is the cholas and cholitas, female residents who appear permanently attired in Bolivia's national costume. Typical of the traditional dress is the long decorative skirt known as pollera. And then there's the bowler hat that always seems too small for the owner and can be perched on top of the head tilted to one side or set straight (apparently this is to signify if the wearer is married or unmarried).
And how about this for dental decoration? An Indigenous Aymara woman smiles through her tooth brace of hearts and clubs.
Many of the walls and facades of El Alto serve as expressive canvases, promoting the visual impact of Aymaran culture. The Aymara are agriculturalists and herders by tradition, and this is reflected in many of the murals found overlooking the city's streets.
Anyone browsing El Alto's many shops and stores will likely come across talismans and offerings displayed for sale. The Aymara maintain their beliefs in a multispirit world, and have many categories of magicians, diviners, medicine men, and witches. Aymara shamans use coca leaf reading, an ancestral Andean tradition, to predict the fate of individuals. And there's one district of El Alto notorious for its resident spiritual practitioners.
They live on the edge of society, quite literally, housed in shanty homes topped with colorful corrugated metal roofs of blues, oranges, reds, and greens, but set dangerously close to a precipitous cliff edge.
Despite the danger, the resident shamans refuse to leave, even though erosion is slowly eating away at the very foundations of each property.
Instead, the Aymara shamans are putting their faith in Pachamama, the aforementioned "Earth Mother."
The shamans, also known as yatiris, make offerings to the Pachamama in the hope that their rickety homes won't drop down into the rocky escarpment below.
But climate change is worsening the erosion. City officials fear the worse, the landscape becoming more treacherous as weather patterns become more extreme.
It is this threat of climate change that has led the authorities to create a network of cable cars that connect El Alto with La Paz.
In fact, the Mi Teleférico cable cars are the longest aerial cable car system worldwide, with three lines currently operating between the cities.
Over and above the dilemma of climate change, Mi Teleférico was planned in order to address a number of problems, including a precarious public transit system that could not cope with growing user demands, the high cost in time and money of traveling between La Paz and El Alto, and finding a solution to increasing noise and air pollution.
Of immeasurable value is the fact that the cable car system feeds into El Alto International Airport to connect the metropolitan center of La Paz, located, 9 miles (15 km) away and 1,381 feet (421 m) lower.
And to enjoy an outstanding panorama of both metropolitan areas, scramble up to the scenic rock formation and viewpoint known as Muela del Diablo, or the "Devil's Tooth," and admire the roof of the world.
Sources: (Reuters) (The Weather Network) (The Guardian) (Britannica)
Exploring El Alto, the highest city in the world
Enjoy the highs of Bolivia's second-largest city
TRAVEL South america
El Alto is a city that lives up to its name, its meaning in Spanish translating as "The Heights." Located in Bolivia, El Alto is in fact located adjacent to La Paz, but set a good deal higher than its sprawling neighbor. Many travelers neglect to explore El Alto, but to do so is to miss out on a destination renowned for its exuberant architecture, unique culture, and the mystical practices of some its residents—the shamans. So, ready to take the high road?
Click through and explore the highest city in the world.