Cocani

Cocani are the Aymara coca merchants, who settled in the Bolivian city Oruro at the time when the region thrived on silver and tin mining. The region, its people and local mining industry gave rise to a rich carnival tradition – symbolic of the local culture – still celebrated today. Increasingly, in recent years the popularity of the local carnival tradition has been appropriated and exploited by non-indigenous economically powerful segments of Bolivian society realising its potential for the commercial tourist industry.

In the ‘Cocani’ project Diego Echevers Torrez pays tribute to the culture and traditions of the Cocani by capturing their cultural memory, their voice and their faces projecting the struggle of people anchored in the history of the mines of a city that little by little forgets its origins. The photos in the ‘Cocani’ exhibition were taken between 2015 – 2019.