Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Tucked away inside an atmospheric little courtyard a block south of Sagárnaga on Linares,
is the excellent
Museo de la Coca
, dedicated to the small green leaf that is both the central
religious and cultural sacrament of the Andes and the raw material for the manufacture of
cocaine. Crammed into a couple of small rooms, the museum gives a good overview of the
history, chemistry, cultivation and uses of this most controversial of plants, imaginatively il-
lustrated and explained in English and Spanish. There are excellent photos showing the cul-
tivation and processing of coca in the Chapare - along with military attempts to eradicate it -
and of its manifold uses.
A good selection of the packaging from some of the many modern
medicines
derived from
coca, meanwhile, underlines its continuing industrial uses, despite the rhetoric of the war
on drugs. One of the more surprising revelations is that, despite US anti-drugs rhetoric, the
world'smostpopularsoftdrinkstillcontainscocaextract-accordingtothemuseum,in1995
the Coca-Cola corporation imported over two hundred tons of the leaf.
Mercado Buenos Aires
Max Paredes and Avenida Buenos Aires • Daily, hours vary-stalls open as early as 6am and close as late as
8pm, with some food stalls open later
A few blocks to the northwest of Sagárnaga and Linares is
Mercado Buenos Aires
, also
known as the
Huyustus
, an old indigenous name for the district. Centred on the intersection
of Max Paredes with Avenida Buenos Aires, this is where La Paz's
Aymara majority
con-
duct their daily business, a vast open-air market sprawling over some thirty city blocks where
anything and everything is bought and sold.
Street after street is lined with stalls piled high with all manner of goods: sacks of sweet-
smelling coca leaf and great mounds of brightly coloured tropical fruit from the Yungas;
enormous heaps of potatoes from the Altiplano; piles of smelly, silver-scaled fish from Lago
Titicaca; stacks of stereos and televisions smuggled across the border; endless racks laden
with the latest imitation designer clothes. Behind almost every stall sits or stands an Aymara
woman in a bowler hat, calling out her wares or counting out small change from the deep
pockets of her apron, often with a baby strapped to her back or sleeping in a bundle nearby,
oblivious to the cacophonous din of the market all around.
Other stallholders sell the inexpensive drinks, meals and snacks that keep the market traders
going through the day, ladling soup from steaming cauldrons, blending juices on wheeled
trolleys, or hawking spicy
salteñas
from portable trays.
Avenida Buenos Aires and Calle Max Paredes
Highlights of the market include the numerous workshops above Avenida
Buenos Aires
where the elaborate masks and costumes for dancers in the city's main fiestas are made, and
the shops and stalls along
Calle Max Paredes
selling the bowler hats, knee-length laced
boots and endless petticoats favoured by Aymara women.
