High within the Bolivian Altiplano, Challapata is the place the street from La Paz splits: one method to Potosí and the opposite to Uyuni and the salt flats. It appears an unremarkable place; many vacationers steam by with out even realising. However Bolivians comprehend it to be dwelling to the nation’s largest contraband automotive truthful, a hub in a commerce community that reaches from Japan to the Bolivian Amazon.
Contraband vehicles – referred to as chutos – are nothing new in Bolivia. However these behind the enterprise have just lately obtained a recent burst of consideration, as a youthful technology has taken to posting movies of their adrenaline-fueled border runs on Tiktok.
Efraín, 35, mentioned he began out as a chutero when he was 12. Within the ensuing years, the basics of the commerce have stayed the identical: second-hand vehicles from richer international locations, like Japan, are purchased and shipped to Iquique, a free port in Chile. From there – together with different vehicles stolen in Chile – they’re spirited throughout the lengthy desert border with Bolivia, utilizing clandestine paths to keep away from army patrols.
“It’s very dangerous, nevertheless it’s worthwhile, too,” mentioned Efraín. “And it’s thrilling. It’s like participating within the Dakar Rally. A minimum of I see it that approach, as a result of it’s important to drive by the evening with no lights. That approach, the troopers don’t see you. You possibly can cross beneath their noses with out them realizing. However in the event you flip the lights on, all of a sudden you see within the distance, one, three, 5, 10 lights coming for you.”
At 35 years previous, Efraín is a veteran– and he mentioned it’s the youngsters which are utilizing TikTok. Movies present teams of chuteros ingesting and making ritualistic choices earlier than journeys; others present convoys of SUVs tearing throughout the salt flats; some present wrecked and burnt-out automobiles misplaced on the best way.
Nearly all of those movies are set to at least one music – Chutero Yo Soy, by Simon Latorre – that has turn into an unlikely viral hit. A dialog with a chutero near Latorre yielded a cellphone quantity. When he answered the cellphone, he did so within the third particular person: “Simon Latorre at your service.”
Latorre himself is just not a chutero, nor even Bolivian: he’s from Juliaca, a metropolis in southern Peru. However he had a Bolivian buddy who was a chutero, and it was by him that he noticed the life-style.
“He would go bravely into the evening, and are available again together with his vehicles,” mentioned Latorre. “Then he would exit once more. He didn’t even have time to sleep. Such is the sacrifice he needed to make. Generally he would say he’d had issues, that he’d run into the military, they’d opened hearth, issues like that.”
His buddy requested him to compose a music about chuteros, for chuteros. And so he wrote Chutero Yo Soy, which he began performing in cities alongside the Bolivia-Chile border.
Then they requested him to carry out in Challapata. “What a welcome. Actually, I didn’t know Challapata earlier than that, however once I went to carry out a great deal of individuals turned up, they usually knew my songs and sang alongside. There’s nothing higher as an artist.”
Tania Jiménez, a sociologist who carried out years of fieldwork amongst chuteros, and extra just lately a digital ethnography, notes that being a chutero is a form of identification, with a tradition of rituals, fiestas and songs round it.
Only a few girls are concerned, and the songs mirror that. “They’re about sacrifice, and having the braveness to dare to do it – there’s a marked sense of masculinity.”
The vice-minister of the combat towards contraband just lately in contrast chutero tradition to that of drug-trafficking gangs. “That’s ridiculous,” laughed Jiménez. “Very pressured.” She mentioned that teams having their songs is commonplace in Andean tradition. “For those who strip it of its cultural context, after all it may appear like the tradition of prison teams in Mexico.
“However actually,” she provides, “I feel it’s silly that they’re placing these movies up. Everyone knows that they’re on Fb: in the event you go and search ‘autos chutos’, there are a great deal of teams. Folks will even ship one to you. However these movies are a form of ostentation of what they do.”
That the music went viral has been a supply of some anxiousness for Latorre. “I generally fear that the Bolivian authorities would possibly flip towards me, asking why Simon is singing these songs devoted to chuteros. However I’m only a songwriter – I don’t do that work myself,” mentioned Latorre. “I hope that’s how the authorities see it.”
In the meantime the chuto enterprise drives on. Analysts reckon maybe 25,000 chutos enter Bolivia yearly, and a few of the cash earned will get piled again into fiestas the place Latorre would possibly carry out. His consultant says he does two or three gigs a month in Bolivia. “Folks name me each day asking for a shoutout in my subsequent music,” mentioned Latorre. He mirrored for a second. “I’ve extra followers in Bolivia than in Peru. Some individuals know me right here – however not like in Bolivia.”
