{"id":1951,"date":"2013-02-12T19:37:17","date_gmt":"2013-02-12T19:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/?p=1951"},"modified":"2013-02-12T21:13:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T21:13:50","slug":"la-challa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/?p=1951","title":{"rendered":"La Ch’alla"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As I walked into the grocery store I saw that the place was filled with smoke. My first thought was, \u201cthere must be a fire\u201d but then I saw that the people were walking around, of course bothered by the suffocating smoke but they weren\u2019t fleeing for their lives as a thought they might be. Then as I got a whiff of the smoke I knew exactly what it was. The Ch\u2019alla. This week is Carnaval here in Bolivia which coincides with the same event in many areas like the well known Carnaval en Brazil and even Mardi Gras en NewOrleans. The festivities end here with what is called \u201cmartes de Ch\u2019alla\u201d or the Ch\u2019alla offered on Tuesday. The Ch\u2019alla is a tradition here as well as many countries where an offering is made to the Pachamama or the mother earth. On this day the people decorate their houses, cars, businesses, or anything else that they want blessed with balloons, streamers and confetti. Then some form of Alcohol (the drinking kind) is poured in every corner of the house or on the car that they are wanting blessed. Also a special table is prepared of incense, coca leaves, small figurines, fruits, grains and even fetuses of animals and are burnt as an offering to the \u201cMother Earth\u201d and to cause the evil spirits to flee. This is of course, is what I encountered when I went to the grocery store. The purpose of all this is to thank the mother earth for the blessing of the year and obviously to ask for her blessing in the coming year. The amazing thing is to see how often this tradition that dates back to the time of the Incas, is mixed with the local Catholic religion. Many times the processions and activities take place inside of the church. While for many, this is a time of fun, parties and playing with water, they don\u2019t realize that the \u201cgod of this world\u201d has blinded them to the truth and they don\u2019t even realize it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 As I walked into the grocery store I saw that the place was filled with smoke. My first thought was, \u201cthere must be a fire\u201d but then I saw that the people were walking around, of course bothered by the suffocating smoke but they weren\u2019t fleeing for their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-1951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-bolivia-news","tag-feature","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1JaXV-vt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1951"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1973,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951\/revisions\/1973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.operationbolivia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}