placesEl Mercado de las BrujasEl Mercado de las Brujas
said mer-KA-do de las BROO-has
also: La Hechicería · The Witches' Market, La Paz
A run of stalls on Calle Linares in the El Rosario neighbourhood of La Paz, spilling into Jiménez, Santa Cruz and Illampu. Stock: medicinal plants, retama, amulets, talismans, powders, dried frogs, armadillos, and the sullus — dried llama foetuses — that are buried under the foundations of Bolivian houses as an offering to Pachamama.
citedWhen
in trade now; recognised by the city in 2019 still carried cited
| Period | modern, on older ground |
|---|---|
| How the date is known | ethnographic — somebody recorded it being used, on a date |
| Note | No founding date is published in the sources read. The Alasitas fair beside it was moved to 24 January during the 1781 siege of La Paz, and the miniature-offering practice is traced to the pre-Columbian period. |
Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.
The story
The market's Spanish name was chosen to be recognisable to foreigners, which is a fact about naming rather than about what is sold. Most of the stallholders are Aymara women, the chifreras. The yatiri who work here are identifiable by their black hats and coca pouches, and the pouches hold amulets, talismans and powders sold for luck, beauty and fertility; they also read fortunes and take commissions for love work and for curses.
The year has a shape. October is the busiest month, because Pachamama offerings cluster there — sellers put roughly 60 per cent of the year's sales in that one month — and February, at Carnival, is the other peak.
One street over in the calendar sits Alasitas. From 24 January, for a month, La Paz holds a fair for Ekeko, the Aymara god of abundance, where people buy miniature versions of what they want — food, tools, a house, a car, a diploma — to give to somebody else, on the understanding that the full-sized version follows within the year. Men and, less often, women acting as shaman bless the miniatures; at midday on 24 January the Catholic Church blesses them too, at the cathedral. The name is Aymara for buy from me.
In 2019 the market was named Intangible Cultural Heritage of La Paz. Tradition holds — many of the rituals served here have been adapted to an urban setting, which the encyclopedia attributes to the long aftermath of colonisation rather than to tourism.
Now
Trading, on published accounts. October and Carnival are the peaks. No day is marked open or closed below; stall hours are the sellers' own.
Where
Calle Linares, El Rosario, La Paz, La Paz Department · -16.5000, -68.1490 precision: town harvested
the coordinate published for the English Wikipedia article The Witches' Market and in Wikidata item Q7775306, queried 2026-09-16; it is given to three decimal places, so it fixes the quarter rather than the stalls
Nobody has published days this project could read. That is not the same as closed.
What is on record about it
- A market you can walk — stalls on Calle Linares and the streets around it, run by Aymara chifreras and yatiri cited
Recognised by
- A national heritage register — named Intangible Cultural Heritage of La Paz (2019)
What this is near
What names this one
Each in its own words, from its own page.
Where this came from
- The Witches' Market — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Alasitas — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Ekeko — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Elsewhere
Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.