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Big Dreams Embodied In Small Tokens
Priscila Pearanda, 20, receives a rooster -- representing a boyfriend or husband -- from her mother, Angela Tapia, who is hoping for a wedding in the coming year.
(By Evan Abramson -- For The Washington Post)
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As they rejoined each other in the crowd, the crackle of fireworks overhead signaled that it was noon: time to stretch the rules just a bit.
Tapia ventured a few stalls away and asked a vendor whether he had degrees in geography. He had engineering, law, accounting, but not geography. Tapia gave up; her daughter would have to do without this year.
Priscila was about 20 feet, and about a dozen people, away from her mother, showing her purchases to her best friend, who had accompanied them to the fair.
"Where's my daughter?" Tapia asked at 12:07, her voice heard by Priscila above the crowd. "Come on, let's go."
For several minutes they walked through the throngs to find one finishing touch of extra good luck: a blessing from an Aymara Indian shaman. Luckily, Aymara priests were in ample supply; they could be found throughout the fair at regular intervals, bending low over hot coals that were filling the air with a thick, sweet smoke.
Tapia waited among the knot of people crowding the priests, then handed her bag of goods to a woman -- a sort of priest's assistant -- who wrapped it in ribbon. The woman gave Tapia's bag to one of the priests, who wore a large cross around his neck. He efficiently blessed the bag, holding it over the smoke and then raising it to the heavens. He poured wine and alcohol over the bag and Tapia's hands, then recited a prayer.
At 12:15, Tapia and Priscila walked to a place where the crowd had thinned to distribute the newly sanctified miniatures.
"This is for you," Tapia said, giving the rooster and hen to her daughter. The figurines represented the man-and-wife couple that Priscila and her boyfriend, Tapia hoped, would soon become.
Priscila's smile seemed a mix of amusement, puzzlement and embarrassment.
"For me?"
