A Road Paved With Hope

"This is it," said Zacarias Colque, one of the leaders of a local federation of indigenous workers, which paid to rent the truck. "Come down, everyone. Careful with the drums."

With their musical instruments in hand, they walked to a clearing in the village's main square, which is anchored by a small church topped with two wooden crosses. Some took off their baseball caps and donned traditional broad-brimmed hats with feathers jutting from the bands. A group of villagers joined them in the square. The musicians played and danced around a jug of alcohol on the ground, while others held hands and encircled them. A few minutes later, the ceremony moved into the nave of the church.

"We're praying for the trip, to ask Mother Earth that nothing bad happens," said Victor Chocotel, 42, one of the Lagunillas residents gathered in the square.

Blurring the lines between indigenous religious rites and Christianity is common in Bolivia, though not without occasional controversy. Last month, the education minister, Felix Patzi, suggested that courses on Catholicism -- the religion taught exclusively in most public schools -- be shelved in favor of instruction that puts more emphasis on indigenous faiths. When supporters of the Catholic Church balked, Morales weighed in by saying the church hierarchy was behaving as if it were stuck "in the times of the Inquisition." His approval rating dropped from 75 percent to 68 percent.

Last week, the church and the government came to a vague agreement that Catholic courses would remain, while respecting the country's religious diversity. In an interview in La Paz last week, Eduardo González Saá, head of the Catholic Church's education commission, said the details of the agreement would be determined at an education summit and would likely resurface for debate in the Constituent Assembly.

"Issues related to indigenous religions are not limited to just education," said Eduardo Burgoa Zeballos, 26, who rode in the truck from Llallagua. "The justice system is affected, too, and reforming the judiciary is one of the most important things that the assembly could do."

He nodded at Chocotel, who wore a feathered, conical helmet made from bull hide. The helmet is normally worn during tinku fighting rituals, which pit members of neighboring villages against each other in hand-to-hand combat. If blood is spilled, it is considered a blessing to the earth. Sometimes the fights end in death.

Like many others on the truck, Zeballos said he wants the assembly to create a judicial system that guarantees more indigenous judges who would preside over indigenous cases.

"The ordinary courts do not understand that if someone dies in a tinku ritual, it's not considered a bad thing to us," he said.

When the group finished the ceremony, about 20 residents of Lagunillas hopped in the truck to join the trip. They sat shoulder-to-shoulder, back-to-back.

Less than 30 minutes after getting back on the road, a tire blew. While everyone waited under the unfiltered glare of the sun, one man grabbed his charango and began to play.

"Viva Bolivia!" he sang.