Hundreds of buildings located on the edge of a steep earthen cliff on the outskirts of El Alto, in Bolivia, have been dubbed “suicide homes” because of the high risk of a devastating landslide.
Located on Avenida Panorámica and in La Ceja, one of the busiest commercial areas of the city of El Alto, Bolivia’s suicide homes have been getting a lot of attention because of their precarious positioning, on the very edge of an earth cliff that has been deemed very susceptible to landslides. In recent weeks, rains have been wreaking havoc in Bolivia’s capital and its surrounding area, increasing the risk of a landslide even more. But that doesn’t seem to scare the inhabitants of these suicide homes one bit, as most of them refuse to move away. These buildings are inhabited by local shamans known as yatiri and merchants who don’t want to give up their place of business even if it means falling to their deaths one day.
Photo: Mabel Duran
“We are not going to move from this place, because this is our daily work place,” one yatiri recently told Reuters. “But we are going to take care of the soil, especially the rainwater, we are going to channel it so that the water goes somewhere else.”
Preventing the water from eroding the earthen cliff even more is easier said than done, and local authorities say that further collapse of the cliff is imminent, so the buildings must be evacuated for the good of their inhabitants.
“The precipice in this valley is 90 degrees,” said Gabriel Pari, municipal secretary of water, sanitation, environmental management and risk. “That is precisely why we want them to leave this place, if they do not want to leave we are going to have to use force.”
Built out of brick and covered with sheets of corrugated iron, the rickety suicide homes of El Alto are very important to the yatiris and they would do anything to keep them. Some have even suggested making offerings to the Pachamama, the goddess revered by the indigenous people of the Andes.
“We can do an offering ceremony, we do it as a payment and in this way, the land will never move because Pachamama needs an offering,” one shaman said. “It is like giving food and this way this place will not move. On the contrary, it will stabilize.”
The suicide homes of El Alto have been on the edge for a while, but heavy rains and environmental changes attributed to climate change have exacerbated the risk of a landslide.
