This Still Happens: La Paz Carries Its Ñatitas to the Cemetery Every November 8

On November 8, 2025, the municipal government of La Paz opened one section of its General Cemetery to people carrying human skulls. The skulls arrived in boxes and glass cases, crowned with flowers, fitted with hats or sunglasses, and given coca leaves and lit cigarettes. The cemetery scheduled a liturgy, restricted alcohol, and prohibited large offering tables because construction limited the available space.

The event was not a historical reenactment. It was the latest Fiesta de las Ñatitas, the public day in a year-round relationship between caretakers and skulls treated as persons, protectors, companions, and members of a household.

The 2026 observance falls on Sunday, November 8. Its detailed rules have not yet been announced. The date is stable. The form keeps changing.

What a ñatita is

Ñatita is an affectionate Andean Spanish diminutive built from ñato, a word for someone with a short or flattened nose. Applied to a skull, it means something like "little flat-nosed one." The name softens what English descriptions often turn into a horror image.

A ñatita is not any skull on display. It becomes part of a reciprocal relationship. Caretakers give it a name, a place in the home, flowers, candles, coca, tobacco, alcohol, sweets, music, hats, jewelry, or other objects. In return, they may ask for protection, health, help with work, success in business, the discovery of a thief, family peace, or guidance.

Some caretakers identify a ñatita as a relative. Others care for remains whose biography is unknown or partly reconstructed through dreams, family accounts, cemetery histories, medical collections, or previous keepers. That range is important. There is no single origin story for every skull and no responsible way to treat anonymous human remains as if anonymity removes ethical questions.

The Fiesta de las Ñatitas at the General Cemetery makes these relationships visible for one day. It does not create them.

What happens on November 8

Caretakers prepare ñatitas at home, cleaning and decorating their cases, arranging flowers, and choosing clothes or accessories. On November 8 they carry them to cemeteries, especially the Cementerio General de La Paz on Avenida Baptista. Other observances take place in El Alto and elsewhere in Bolivia's western highlands.

At the General Cemetery, caretakers place the skulls where visitors can approach. Coca leaves and flower petals are offered. Cigarettes are set between teeth or at the mouth and allowed to burn. Musicians play for particular ñatitas. Prayers, thanks, requests, conversation, and photographs move through the same space.

Municipal reporting from the 2025 observance documented coca, cigarettes, flowers, and mariachis at the cemetery. The city had announced hours of 8am to 4pm, a designated section, added security, and restrictions shaped by active work in the grounds. That is the latest operational model, not a guaranteed 2026 schedule.

The day is public, but it is not a general license to handle, rearrange, or photograph every set of remains. Each ñatita is under someone's care. The caretaker is the person from whom to seek an explanation or permission.

The festival is not "Bolivian Day of the Dead"

The date invites a lazy comparison. Todos Santos and the Day of the Dead period center deceased relatives and the return, feeding, remembrance, and farewell of souls around November 1 and 2. The ñatitas observance takes place a week later and centers specific skulls whose relationships with the living continue through the year.

The two belong to a broader Andean cycle of relations with the dead, and families may participate in both. They are not the same observance with different props.

Calling November 8 "their Halloween" is even less useful. Costumes and spectacle do not explain why a skull receives a cigarette, why someone carries it to hear a liturgy, or why a caretaker regards it as a protector rather than a decoration.

A person, not a symbol

Caretakers describe the point plainly: ñatitas act in social relationships. A recent master's thesis, The Material World of Ñatitas, describes them as persons who take an active role in the world of the living. María Fernanda Apipilhuasco Miranda's doctoral research likewise follows the affectionate, economic, protective, and ritual exchanges that make a skull a ñatita.

This approach changes what a reporter looks for. The important question is not only what the skull represents. It is how the caretaker addresses it, where it lives, which gifts recur, what promises have been made, and how its personality is understood.

At the 2024 festival, Associated Press photographed a ñatita called Mama Azapa whose braided hair remained attached. Her caretaker, Elena Martínez, identified herself as an amauta and gave the relationship in three words: "She is my protector." The AP report also showed the material range of the day, from gold-colored glass cases to decorated shoe boxes.

Price does not establish devotion. A carved case can express years of care, and a clean cardboard box lined with flowers can too.

Where the skulls come from

This is the question most short reports rush through. The honest answer is multiple places, incomplete records, and practices that changed over time.

Some ñatitas are described as the remains of relatives and pass within families. Others came from forgotten or disturbed graves, cemetery collections, medical or teaching contexts, archaeological sites, or earlier caretakers. Stories also circulate about skulls revealing their names in dreams. These are different kinds of claims and should not be flattened into one provenance.

Modern ethical and legal standards for human remains sit uneasily beside inherited collections and informal transfers. A public article should not tell readers how to acquire a skull, identify unguarded burial places, or treat uncertain provenance as charming mystery. The relationship matters to caretakers, and the remains still belonged to people.

That tension is part of the current practice. It is not solved by either calling all ñatitas stolen or assuming devotional care answers every question about origin.

How old is the practice?

Andean societies have long histories of maintaining relationships with ancestors and human remains. Archaeology documents curated heads, trophy heads, mummies, burial towers, and other practices across different cultures and centuries. Spanish colonial authorities also recorded and suppressed Indigenous funerary and ancestor practices.

None of that creates a straight, unbroken line to the flower-crowned skulls seen in the General Cemetery today.

Apipilhuasco Miranda's research specifically cautions against reducing ñatitas to ancient trophy heads, chullpas, or one ancestral source. Her open doctoral thesis record treats claims of antiquity as part of the modern social life and politics of the practice, not just a fact to repeat.

The large public cemetery gathering appears to be much newer than the broad Andean relationships often cited to explain it. Bolivian researcher Milton Eyzaguirre has described the practice as becoming more openly visible in the 1990s after years in which people concealed it under pressure from religious and social authorities. The cemetery festival then expanded through the 2000s, media attention, municipal management, and growing public confidence.

The careful description is therefore "a contemporary urban observance with deep and varied Andean precedents." "An unchanged pre-Columbian ritual" promises a history the evidence cannot carry.

The Catholic relationship is not one contradiction

Caretakers often want their ñatitas to hear Mass, receive holy water, or be present for prayers for the dead. Catholic authorities have objected to treating skulls as powers or intercessors. Local clergy, cemetery chaplains, municipal organizers, and devotees have nevertheless negotiated ceremonies in different forms across different years.

In 2008, church opposition led to a public dispute over whether a Mass or blessing would take place. In 2009, a priest celebrated before a packed cemetery chapel while leaving the application of holy water to participants. Later reports alternately describe Masses for the dead, liturgies, blessings, and periods when the chapel did not admit the skulls.

The ambiguity is not incidental. Apipilhuasco Miranda's study calls the ñatitas' relationship with the Catholic Church precisely that: ambiguous. Devotees may regard Catholic rites as essential while the archdiocese rejects worship directed toward skulls. Individual priests and annual organizers work inside that disagreement.

That is why current terminology matters. If the 2026 municipality announces a liturgy, call it a liturgy. If a parish announces a Mass for deceased souls rather than a blessing of ñatitas, preserve that distinction. Do not upgrade every use of holy water into formal Church recognition.

What changed in the most recent observance

Public traditions are often described as if they repeat from a fixed script. The 2025 festival shows the opposite.

Construction at the General Cemetery meant the municipality opened only the third expansion area for the event. It barred alcohol and the assembly of large offering tables. It scheduled the grounds from 8am to 4pm and prepared security for a gathering expected to draw thousands. Local coverage announced a liturgical celebration at 11am.

Those controls did not end the practice. They changed where caretakers stood, which offerings could be arranged, and how long the public day lasted. They also made the municipal role unusually visible. The city was not recognizing a timeless tableau. It was managing a current gathering in an operating cemetery.

The 2026 rules may change again. Publication should wait for the municipal cemetery authority's November notice before stating an hour, entry gate, allowed offering, or clerical program as settled.

How to observe respectfully

The Fiesta de las Ñatitas is publicly visible and has long drawn journalists, photographers, researchers, and visitors. Public visibility does not make human remains anonymous visual material.

Ask the caretaker before photographing a ñatita or the person carrying it. If permission is granted, ask for the ñatita's name and the spelling the caretaker uses. Caption the relationship and the setting rather than describing an isolated "decorated skull." Do not place a camera between a caretaker and a prayer, block a passage, touch offerings, or lean over a case for a closer image.

Consent to one photograph is not consent to prolonged filming, a close-up of a face, or commercial reuse. Reporters should explain where an image will appear. Travelers should be comfortable leaving without the photograph they imagined.

The cemetery is also a working burial place. Families may be visiting graves unrelated to the festival. Normal cemetery restraint still applies around them.

La Paz sits at high altitude, and visitors arriving from lower elevations often need time to adjust before a long day on foot. That practical concern is a reason to arrive in the city before November 8, not a reason to convert the observance into a travel challenge.

What the festival makes public

The annual day brings an intimate domestic relationship into civic space. A skull cared for on a shelf or household altar travels through the city, enters the cemetery, receives visitors, hears music and prayer, and returns home. The route makes the ñatita visible as a social person without making every part of the relationship public.

This is why the General Cemetery matters. It is not only a picturesque backdrop. It is the municipal home of the dead, a Catholic architectural space, a workplace, a site of family memory, and the place where a practice once kept quiet became collectively visible.

The story does not end by proving that every participant believes the same thing. It ends with specificity. On November 8, Mama Azapa may arrive with braided hair, another ñatita may come in a gold case, and another may be carried in a flower-lined shoe box. The boxes are different. The gesture is the same: each caretaker brings someone, not something.