Fiesta de las Ñatitas: The Named Skulls of La Paz, Bolivia, and the Families Who Keep Them

The word itself is affectionate. *Ñatita* is a diminutive related to *ñato*, a Spanish word for someone with a short or flat nose; *ñata* is its feminine form. In Bolivia the affectionate word became the name for these skulls, as Atlas Obscura and National Geographic explain.

In practice, a ñatita is a skull cared for as a named, socially active dead person, especially among Aymara families in La Paz. The researcher Milton Eyzaguirre describes each skull as having its own identity within family and community relationships. A ñatita has a name, a place in the home and a relationship with the people who look after it.

On the morning of the festival, families bring their ñatitas from household shrines to the Cementerio General in La Paz. The skulls arrive dressed for the occasion: flower crowns, hats, sunglasses and other personal touches chosen by the family. Around them people set out coca leaves, cigarettes, candles, food and drink. Devotees pray to the ñatitas, sing to them and ask them for protection or for favors in the year ahead.

The anthropologist Gerardo Fernández Juárez, in his study "La revuelta de las ñatitas", describes the celebration as the concluding public rite of the Aymara cycle of Todos Santos, the early-November observances for the dead, which is why it falls after them. Most accounts give the date as November 8; some academic descriptions place it on the Sunday after November 1, so you may see it reported as November 8 or 9.

The crowd changes from year to year. On November 8, 2024, the Associated Press reported hundreds of devotees at La Paz's municipal cemetery, with skulls crowned in flowers and offered coca and cigarettes.

Some ñatitas are believed to be relatives or ancestors of the families who keep them. Many others are not. Reported examples include unidentified skulls and skulls with no family connection that came from old cemeteries, from medical schools or from other families. Devotees may give an unknown skull its name after a dream or another personal experience, as Atlas Obscura reports.

The practice varies from family to family, and there is no single story behind every skull. What the families share is the relationship: whoever the person once was, the ñatita now belongs to a household that cares for it.

The festival is one day; the care goes on all year. Families commonly keep their ñatitas at home in a household shrine or a glass urn. They clean and arrange the shrine, light candles, set out flowers, coca leaves, cigarettes, food or drink, pray to the skull and speak to it by name. Fernández Juárez, in his ethnographic essay "Ñatitas", records Monday observances through the year.

Some households keep many. In 2020, the news agency Anadolu described one La Paz family caring for 23 ñatitas in a room set aside for them, each with its own name and its own gifts. After the festival day at the cemetery, the ñatitas go back to their usual home or shrine until the next November.

Scholars place the ñatitas within a long Andean history of relationships with the dead. Fernández Juárez connects the festival to Aymara communities and to the wider cycle in which the dead remain part of social and family life, including the ritual exhumation and movement of remains recorded in colonial documents and the Todos Santos practices of today. Eyzaguirre links the practice to Andean ideas in which death is bound up with life, fertility, the earth and continuing relationships between the living and the dead.

Catholic influence runs through it too, in the November calendar, Catholic prayers, chapels, Masses and blessings. Spanish colonial authorities tried to suppress Indigenous practices they considered non-Christian, and some elements carried on in altered or less public forms.

Exactly when the present festival began is unclear, and National Geographic reports Eyzaguirre's own caution on that point. Americas Quarterly reports that the earliest documented celebrations resembling it took place in Potosí in the early twentieth century, and National Geographic notes that rural-to-urban migration in the 1970s made ñatita rituals more visible in La Paz. The fairest summary is that today's festival brings together Aymara and wider Andean relationships with the dead, Catholic calendar and ritual, and the changes of city life, rather than continuing one ancient ceremony unchanged.

The Church's leaders in La Paz have not accepted the practice. On November 7, 2008, Archbishop Edmundo Abastoflor of La Paz said that bringing skulls to Mass and making gifts to them was contrary to Catholic teaching, as ACI Prensa reported. In his words, such practices "no están de acuerdo con la fe y el actuar cristianos" (are not in keeping with Christian faith and conduct). He told priests not to accept Mass intentions for the ñatitas, asked them to teach that remains should not be taken from graves into churches, and said the dead should be left to "descansen en paz," to rest in peace.

The devotees' practice and the Church's position have met at the cemetery chapel ever since. In 2008 a cemetery priest eventually celebrated a service after devotees protested. In 2009 the chapel announced that Masses for ñatitas were prohibited. In 2017 the Bolivian news agency ANF reported that no Mass was held for the skulls, and devotees used holy water themselves. In 2024 the AP described the custom as one the Catholic Church does not recognize.

Over the twentieth century the celebration grew more visible in La Paz, and by the 2000s and 2010s journalists, photographers, scholars and city cultural officials were documenting it often. Crowd sizes are reported estimates rather than official counts: a 2016 account put attendance above 10,000, and Americas Quarterly cited an estimate of 12,000 for an earlier festival.

The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the public gathering. In 2020, Anadolu reported, the cemetery celebration was suspended and a smaller religious observance was held elsewhere. In November 2022, Red Uno reported the public festival back after two years with thousands attending, and Radio Integración described the city's restrictions that year on alcohol, food, furniture and crowding.

The city has also begun to present the cemetery itself as heritage. On October 31, 2023, the La Paz municipal government announced 14 new murals at the Cementerio General, with themes from gifts for the dead to the ñatitas, and presented the cemetery as a cultural and tourist site.

Tourism and cameras have grown, but the festival is still kept by families and devotees who have cared for their ñatitas all year. If you hope to attend, confirm the current cemetery schedule, capacity, photography rules and any fees with the Cementerio General or the La Paz municipality before you go.

These answers add a few details to the story above.

Other traditions keep their dead close in November too, each in its own way. Our guide to the Day of the Dead by region follows how Mexican communities mark the season. For another tradition of named and adorned remains, read the story of Europe's catacomb saints, and for places where bones are kept and arranged with care, see ossuaries around the world.