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said, “Clothes. Dirty underwear.” Some U.S. dollars had changed hands, and then we’d been ordered back on the bus. The four of us hadn’t been taken to the shack where the people refused entry were sent. They were all Indian, all poor, all Peruvian. There were two young guys with fear clamped in their jaws, a woman with a baby on her back, a girl who’d kept her chin up. The German shepherds had bounded around them barking, stirring up dust that landed in their shining black hair. I was afraid for them, and I swallowed and swallowed what felt like broken glass cutting its way down my esophagus. Bob rubbed my back.
    That afternoon, a boat with our bus on board had crossed Lake Titicaca, the highest lake of its size in the world, delivering us into Bolivia. The boat was more like a raft, really, and the driver put bricks all around the tires to keep the bus from rolling off. Everybody cheered when we were firmly back on land.
    I’d been confused when Copacabana first came into view. From watching Barry Manilow sing his hit song on TV, I’d thought Copacabana was a place where you fell head over heels in love while doing the kick ball change in platform shoes. But I’d gotten it wrong. Copacabana was the home of a brown Virgin with pink neon lights flashing off and on all around her. She commanded the top of a steep hill, and people crawled up to her on their knees like little ants, murmuring prayers in Spanish, Aymara and Quechua. We’d arrived on August 6, Independence Day. Bolivia had freed itself from Spanish control in 1810, and every year thousands of people came to this sacred place to celebrate. Everywhere we looked there were temples and shrines and candles burning. Our Lady of Copacabana was the country’s patron saint. She kept the roads safe, and seemingly every car, cart, bus, truck, taxi and bicycle in the land was here to be blessed. Everybody prayed for protection from accidents that would kill them or turn them into vegetables or leave them deformed.
    As we walked through town, it became evident that every thief in Bolivia was here as well, using razor blades to rip people’s pockets and purses open. The thieves robbed everybody: gringos, skinned-kneed believers, nuns, students, whole families. They didn’t care. People chased them through the streets and markets, but they were fast, and they helped each other out. Also, if you made too big a scene, they might slide a palm across your face, razor still in place, and leave you with a scar you’d have forever.
    Under the circumstances, my mother decided it would be best to keep her butcher knife visible. She held it up against her chest as we manoeuvred around the processions and offerings that littered the sidewalks. Since she was a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone kind of person, she took the opportunity to remind Ale and me that organized religion had been invented by the rich and powerful to keep the poor down. “See?” she said, gesturing to the prostrate pilgrims. “Who’s on their knees right now? The Indians, the most exploited of all.” She gripped her knife with ferocity. “Once upon a time, Bolivia was the richest country in the world. The city of Potosí was crowned by a shining silver mountain. But the Spaniards arrived and enslaved these people—though they resisted, they put up a damn good fight—and made them mine that mountain until every last ounce of silver was gone, across the Atlantic to Europe, along with all the gold taken from the Incas and every last resource in the South. Genocide was committed in the name of the Church and progress. That’s why we are atheists.”
    We passed a red-haired priest who was sprinkling a procession of taxis with holy water as he recited prayers in gringo Spanish. The priest was Irish, probably, Bob said. Buses had their own separate procession, as did trucks. Shiny Mercedes-Benzes driven by men in Ray-Bans lined up as