A new Bolivian exhibit showcasing a collection of ritual artifacts provides insight into ancient indigenous ceremonies during which shamans took psychedelic substances.

The objects exhibited in a gallery in downtown La Paz belong to the ancient Tiwanaku culture, which spread over the Andean highlands between 2000 BC and 1500 AD.

The spear tips, polished stones with llama wool wrapped around them and colorful hand-woven fabrics were kept in bags made with puma or jaguar skin and used in rituals to invoke indigenous deities.

But the star of the show is a carved wooden board studded with colorful stones from which indigenous shamans inhaled a hallucinogenic preparation - a powder made with seeds from the cohoba tree, which can be found in several South American countries.

Archaeologist Pablo Rendon describes the board, which has a human figure carved into it, as “really spectacular.” Although plenty of similar stone boards have been discovered in the Andean region, only a handful of wooden ones have been uncovered.

Also, the importance of this one lies in the fact it was found with other objects used for this particular ritual, all of which he says are in “mint condition.”

They were discovered by a local farmer in 1998 under a rock in Amaguaya, a village in the Andean highlands near lake Titicaca, and exhibited soon after. But they have not been seen by the general public for nearly ten years.

Rendon estimates the board was crafted between AD 350 and AD 1000, at the heyday of the Tiwanaku civilization. The set also includes a spoon made with llama bone and featuring a condor-like bird carved on the handle, which was used to measure the amount of powder to be inhaled.

Rendon said the psychedelic dust was consumed only by shamans, who found that getting high was the best way to rub shoulders with supernatural beings and “see into the future.”

(Photograph by David Mercado/REUTERS, April 3, 2009)

Oruro, Bolivia - I’m walking through a mining tunnel in Bolivia, dark but not too narrow, with a deafening brass band marching behind me. A stumbling drunk miner stops to urinate on the wall near me. The choking smoke of a bonfire inside the mine mixes with the sharp tea-like smell of the coca leaves the miners are chewing. Just ahead of me other miners are carrying four trussed-up llamas, drenched with beer and festooned with ribbons and confetti. The miners forced firewater down the llamas’ throats in a ceremony at the mouth of the mine and now they are bringing them into the mine to sacrifice them and ask for safety and abundance in the dangerous shafts.

The llama sacrifice is a ritual at the heart of Bolivia’s carnival, which also includes more familiar trappings such as parades, masks and carnival queens. The Quechua Indians who run the tired old Itos mine above the city of Oruro make offerings to two different protectors during carnival. As Catholics, they have a shrine to the Virgin Mary in the mine. As Quechuas who observe pre-Columbian religious beliefs they make sacrifices to “uncle,” the spirit who owns the zinc and tin and silver they blast out of shafts 300 meters deep. It’s dangerous work because they run aging equipment on a shoestring budget - each miner gives 10 percent of his earnings back to the cooperative. Commercial miners abandoned Oruro long ago, having sucked the biggest riches out of the mountain. The Quechua cooperative miners make a hard living off of the leftovers but if things go well at the sacrifice it could mean better days ahead.

For the sacrifice, dozens of miners and several journalists walk into the mine and stop in a cavern about 25 meters in. The atmosphere is serious, as befits a religious ceremony, but also joyous and a little unhinged as the miners drink heavily and their children run around squirting everyone with gigantic pump-action water guns (which is something children in Oruro do during carnival week). Some of the miners are in Andean ponchos, others in coveralls and helmets and headlamps. Most of their wives are in traditional Bolivian Indian wide skirts and bowler hats and shawls.

Deep in the mountain around me, miners are taking creaky lifts into other mines this day to make their own sacrifices asking for safety and abundance for the next 12 months.

“We must do this with all our faith,” says Jorge Gutierrez, the head of the mining cooperative, speaking through a wad of coca leaves. Then a Quechua witch doctor, Jose Morales, takes over the celebration, sprinkles sugar over the crowd in the dim cavern and blesses the eggs, alcohol and other offerings that were pushed into the mine on a trolley.

As he speaks people cheer, raise their 1-1/2-liter bottles, sprinkle beer on the floor and then drink deeply and drag off of cigarettes that were handed out as part of the ritual. I hear the rustle of hands in green plastic bags as the miners grab coca leaves from their stash and stuff them in their cheeks. They drink, chew coca and smoke at the same time.

The witch doctor, in a long red poncho, prays that the miners who cut the llamas will have “steady hands.” This is because the goal is to take out their hearts still beating - which is a good sign for safety in the mine. The brass band starts up again with gusto.

Betsabe Pacheco, a 48-year-old school teacher married to a miner, says she has come with her husband to the “challa,” or offering, for 20 years in a row. “I always ask for things to go well. We do this with all our hearts. I ask for a lot of mineral, a lot of zinc, a lot of silver,” she says.

The miners invite television camera crews to close in around them while they slit the llamas’ throats, drain blood into bowls, then open the animals’ chests to pull out their hearts. Morales holds up each gleaming heart in a bowl. Each one in turn beats vigorously for several seconds.

The lift rushes up and down the elevator shaft, taking blood to each level of the mine. The miners smear their faces with blood and then hug each other, their children and their wives and pose for photos. The band plays on. I jump when firecrackers go off behind me.

“Everything has its place. The things below the earth belong to uncle,” Morales tells me, looking a little dazed after the ceremony and rubbing his blood-caked hands. “We are giving something back for what he has given us. The blood is so we don’t have any accidents and we also ask that he gives us good veins of minerals,” he said.

The miners are eager to tell reporters about the ritual and their mine. Jaime Robles boasts to me that he can still carry 70 kg of ore on his back even though he is 51. After ascertaining that I’m roughly in his age group he tries to get me to dance. I can smell his coca breath as he leans in to tell me about the spirit of the mountain.

“He owns everything in there, he can kill us. You have to have a lot of faith in uncle.”

Photo credit: Reuters/David Mercado (Scenes from Ilama scrifice at Bolivian mine, February 20, 2009)

Bolivians are crowding the steep cobbled streets of La Paz these days to pay homage to Ekeko, the squat mustached Andean god of abundance. They load down colourful Ekeko statues with tiny items representing prosperity, something elusive in South America’s poorest country. It’s the annual festival of Alasita, the time when Bolivians like to buy trinkets representing their wishes for the new year in the hope Ekeko will make them come true.

The festival of Alasita (“buy me” in the indigenous Aymara language) combines local Aymara traditions and Roman Catholic beliefs. In keeping with its traditional roots, a shaman often blesses the trinkets with incense, flower petals and rubbing alcohol. But many participants also climb the stairs to the Roman Catholic cathedral for the blessing of Our Lady of La Paz.

Inside, men in white robes toss holy water onto people’s purchases, creating a muddy slop on the cathedral floor. The faithful throw tiny dollar bills, or bolivianos, at a flower-covered altar to the Virgin Mary. Some of them just ask that their bags of goodies be placed close to the altar for a moment, to receive her blessing.

The stalls lining the streets sell everything from teensy wads of euros to miniature diplomas for industrial engineers and gynecologists. Their tables are dotted with small pots of gold, good-luck frogs and mini-SUVs. Tiny scarecrow-like figures on display are meant to represent maids.

Two giggling young women buy rooster statues to give to one another, in the hope they’ll both find boyfriends in the coming year. “That’s the tradition, that this will come true,” said Lizzette Ramos, 18.

The toy money is also used to symbolically pay off debts. Several people hand me bills, one woman to pay for life insurance, another to repay a bank loan and a third “for her trip to the United States”. After performing the ritual, an old woman in the long braids and layered skirts typical of La Paz’s indigenous population declared: “I don’t owe anything anymore!”

Bolivia’s first Indian leader, President Evo Morales, opened the main Alasita street fair on Thursday calling to the crowd: “May Ekeko give prosperity and justice to all!” An artisan gave him a statue of a hen, so he can find a partner during the coming year, and handed him another for the vice president, who is also a bachelor.

He also received a tiny version of the government’s controversial new constitution, which he hopes to implement despite stiff opposition.

Cristhiam Casazola, a 26-year-old doctor, did some shopping for his whole family, buying a basket of miniature food items and a large pot of gold, representing bounty. “I also bought some bread,” he says, “because we should never be without.”