Log in to hire Israel

Israel Fuguemann

Journalist & Photographer
   
Life beyond the Andes
Location: Colombia
Nationality: Mexican
Biography: Journalist and documentary photographer.  In the last years his work focused on social and environmental themes, especially documenting people and cultures in resistance, and the always more extensive reality of extractivism of raw materials... MORE
Public Story
Life beyond the Andes
Copyright Israel Fuguemann 2024
Updated Nov 2022
Location El Alto, Bolivia
Topics Celebrations, Community, Culture, Culture stories, Documentary, Journalism, Latin America, Photography, Photojournalism, Spirituality
Summary
La Paz, Bolivia, is the city of the great lie, of "peace" it has nothing, although seen from El Alto at more than 4,000 meters above sea level, it can deceive anyone. If the souls of the dead rest somewhere, they don't do it quietly here, it's not that they're suffering, it's that they don't know how to do it any other way because that's how they lived, that's how they left and that's how they call them back. The Day of the Dead is the perfect example of this cultural syncretism that transforms the old General Cemetery of La Paz into one of the most massive celebrations in South America.

La Paz, Bolivia, is the city of the great lie, of "peace" it has nothing, although seen from El Alto at more than 4,000 meters above sea level, it can deceive anyone. If the souls of the dead rest somewhere, surely they do not do it peacefully here, it is not that they are suffering, it is that they do not know how to do it in another way, for what? that's how they lived, that's how they left and that's how they call them back. The Day of the Dead or All Saints Day is the perfect example of this pilgrimage and cultural syncretism that transforms the daily silence of the old General Cemetery of La Paz into one of the most emblematic and massive celebrations in South America.

On this particular chaos of music, food, drink, and folklore that is drawn in the Bolivian capital on the first days of November, where it is believed that the dead, or their souls return to remember and appreciate that the highest capital of the American continent continues being in some way, the stamp of that old world they knew; perhaps with more cars, traffic, houses, people and buildings invading the mountains, but still preserving many of those deeply indigenous traditions and rites that resisted each conquest that took place here.

Every year the hill that shelters the tombstones, niches, and mausoleums of some of the most emblematic characters of Plurinational Bolivia, becomes a free zone, a small limbo where the dead and the living take a truce and challenge the laws of nature to coexist in the same space, but in completely different dimensions. The reason is simple but not easy, to make pain, nostalgia, and memory a pretext to continue the great party that was or is, as the case may be, life itself.

LinkedIn Icon Facebook Icon Twitter Icon
832

Also by Israel Fuguemann —

Story

Dangerous job of recycling

Israel Fuguemann
Story

The tortuous journey, the migration through America

Israel Fuguemann / Colombia & Mexico
Story

The journey trough Darien Gap

Israel Fuguemann
Story

The stupid idea of ​​not seeing you again

Israel Fuguemann
Story

The violated territory, the isolation of the communities in Medio Atrato, Colombia

Israel Fuguemann / Array
Story

La tortuosa travesía, la migración a través de América.

Israel Fuguemann / Piedras Negras, Mexico
Story

Between conflict and water, the hospital ship of the Pacific Region of Colombia

Israel Fuguemann / Cauca, Colombia
Story

Funeral in West Bank

Israel Fuguemann / West Bank
Story

Emberas: The violated territory

Israel Fuguemann / Colombia
Story

Nador-Melilla, the tragedy that governments want to erase quickly

Israel Fuguemann / Melilla, Nador, Marruecos, España
Story

Moladavia: The day of the victory of the Soviet Union that they cannot forget

Israel Fuguemann / Moldova
Story

The refuge of ethnic minorities who escaped the war in Ukraine.

Israel Fuguemann / Moldova
Story

This is the East

Israel Fuguemann / Moldova
Story

The emotional vulnerability of young people displaced by the war in Ukraine

Israel Fuguemann / Moldova
Story

The dangerous job of recycling in Bangladesh

Israel Fuguemann
Story

Dhaka, the ritual of chaos

Israel Fuguemann / Dhaka, Bangladesh
Story

Letters from a distance

Israel Fuguemann / Mexico City
Story

Mexico: The liquid border

Israel Fuguemann / Río Suchiate, Chiapas, México.
Story

Matricide: The devastation of mining in the Amazon

Israel Fuguemann / Madre de Dios, Peru
Story

Oro et labora: The most dangerous mine on the planet

Israel Fuguemann / La Rinconada, Perú
Story

Lullabay: A sacred funeral in Colombia

Israel Fuguemann
Story

Tijuana: the dream denied

Israel Fuguemann / Tijuana, México
Story

Not Without Us: Chronicle of an Earthquake

Israel Fuguemann / Mexico City
Story

Fidel Castro, The Twilight of an Era

Israel Fuguemann / La Habana, Cuba
Life beyond the Andes by Israel Fuguemann
Sign-up for
For more access