During the annual Alasitas festival, the Aymara pay their respects to Ekeko – the god of abundance and good fortune. Miniatures of the community’s material and spiritual desires are offered up to Ekeko, in the hope that they will realise the wishes of those who are true of faith. Here, an Aymaran man embodies the Ekeko on the streets of La Paz in a fiercely fought over contest every year to become the official Ekeko for the year.

Often depicted as a man with a mustache wearing traditional Andean clothes and overloaded with bags and baskets with grain and food, household objects, and currency bills, and anything that a person is thought to want or need to have a comfortable and prosperous life. These trappings of a perceived 'good life' have changed over the years as Bolivia has developed and become connected to the outside world.

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