The Festival of Gran Poder (Great Power) involves the participation of more than fifty fraternities representing more than thirty thousand dancers from popular urban groups, middle-class sectors, and wealthy Aymara residents of the city of La Paz. The festival emerged in its current form in the 1970s, although the popular neighborhood of Chijini has celebrated a fiesta in honor of the Christ of Gran Poder since 1927. Today the festival is a grand display of social, economic, and cultural power. It takes over the principal thoroughfares of the city, involves a million dollars worth of economic activity, and celebrates the...