Dia de Todos los Santos

All Saint's Day is a Catholic holiday on November 1st, in commemoration of "the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors, or all the just made perfect who are at rest throughout the world" (per Wikipedia).

graves here are more economical
in cost and land

Surprisingly enough, here in Bolivia business took priority, and the bank holiday was moved to Friday November 2nd (today) to give it the long weekend. For the day, everyone is supposed to visit the graves of old relatives. Jackie and I went to the general cemetery in Santa Cruz to check it out.

The streets were silent with all shop doors boarded.  Bolivians poured in and out of the cemetery gates, the more elderly in their Sunday best and the youth with their logo Amercian Eagle knock-off t-shirts.  Families set up plastic chairs in front of their section, and together drank some local juices from a thermos or a 2 liter of Coke.  They brought fresh flowers, chatted, milled about, lit candles as dusk fell, prayed, and passed the time.  The Bolivian custom is to bring the favorite food of the deceased and eat it too, but Jackie and I didn't actually see that.  Also, apparently further outside the city it turns into more of a party, where the cemeteries belong more to a community.

Jackie and I decided it's really a fantastic sentiment. In the US, you can look at your calendar once a year for an anniversary and mourn silently in solitude, albeit quickly between daily life. But here, you spend time with the ones you have and remember the one's you don't. And it's just really nice.

a photo I took a while back-peaceful graves on the side of the road, hours outside the city