Folk Tales of Bolivia opens with two traditions and legends of Bolivia, collected and shaped by José Manuel Aponte in his Tradiciones bolivianas (La Paz, 1909) — traditions he gathered, in the judgment of the Bolivian folklorist Antonio Paredes Candia, from nearly the whole country, and shaped as he set them down. They are read here in a fresh English translation made for this shelf.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In Our Lady of Candelaria and the Silver Arch, Potosí in 1662 gives its silversmiths' finest work to the mother church: the corregidor Don Gómez de Ávila commissions a silver arch for the image of Our Lady of Candelaria, and the master smith, forced to the work against an impossible deadline, finishes it on the eve of the feast — only to find, before the whole congregation, that the arch does not fit. What happens next, the chronicler Martínez y Vela recorded as a miracle, and the image keeps her inclined head to this day. Two harms stand in the tale's frame, reported and not enacted: the corregidor, deposed by a riot before the tale opens, is said to have died shortly after, poisoned; and the smith is dragged off toward jail before he breaks free to pray.
In A President's Dream, the bishopric of Santa Cruz stands vacant in 1855, and the President — tradition names General Belzu, though Aponte's own dates assign the deed to his successor Jorge Córdova — dreams of the bishop to come: dark, short, lean, and humble, and will appoint no other. Marching out against a rumoured revolution that never materialises onstage, he halts for one night at Toledo in Oruro, and recognises the village priest, Don Agustín Gomes Cabezas, as the man of his dream. The tale's frame carries the period's military colour, armies described in general terms as falling on towns like locusts.
Chapters
0:19 Our Lady of Candelaria and the Silver Arch
7:57 A President's Dream
From Tradiciones bolivianas (1909) by José Manuel Aponte — public domain. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
