Perhaps, I thought, Jujuy is a cultural mecca and I’ve been too busy haunting my block to see it. So I set off on one of my half-hearted museum and church tours. The Cathedral was closed but the other big church was open. It was a large marble space, unexceptional except for a glass box on the floor which contained the gaunt figure of San Cesareo, martir. The plaster man was propped up on gold tasselled cushions and wrapped in a red shawl, his eyes rolled back in his head in agony. And there was a fat baby in another box with a golden romper suit and crown wedged on his large head. Next door was the Museum of Sacred Art, a long narrow corridor with bits of church ephemera. And the Jujuy museum was a colonial mansion with old furniture and things in it – I learnt that the city had made its fame and fortune as a place to fatten mules before they set off for their long journey up the glorious Quebrada de Humahuaca to Bolivia and Peru. It was the ideal spot apparently with “abundance of aguadas and alfalfares”. (Water and fields I think that means – as usual all the signs in the museum were in Spanish only, not terribly helpful for foreign tourists). I was clearly the only visitor in both these places for years. Startled staff woke from their dozing and sleepily turned the lights on. Just as well the entrance fees were very small, 75p a pop. Compare that with the £9 I didn’t pay to tour the ex prison in Ushuaia.
I wandered down to the old train station by the river which seemed to run all round the city. It was abandoned and tatty, its waiting rooms and spaces turned into offices, a community centre and art gallery manned by two crocheting women. Actually the gallery had an attractive collection of decent naïf paintings, landscapes and images of the traditional rural life of the Quebrada made by the Ninos Pintores de Chucalezna. Child painters. If they really were then they were talented.
Across the river was a large dusty playground, clearly a community initiative, adorned with bold murals, poetic quotations and images of Che Guevara and the man in the large black hat, indigenous Bolivian leader Tupac Amaru. Obviously in Jujuy these two men are important revolutionaries – the social housing project on the edge of Humahuaca had their faces painted on the chimney pots of each home which made it look like some strange site-specific art project, both bizarre and delightful.
As usual it came down to the useful sign in the city’s largest square to answer my questions. Jujuy was founded in 1593 between the rivers Grand and Xibi Xibi which explains why it seems like an island. However the fact that it “is known as the Little Silver Cup owing to its tiny size and the special way it’s positioned” totally threw me. But Little Silver Cup I like you.
I wandered down to the old train station by the river which seemed to run all round the city. It was abandoned and tatty, its waiting rooms and spaces turned into offices, a community centre and art gallery manned by two crocheting women. Actually the gallery had an attractive collection of decent naïf paintings, landscapes and images of the traditional rural life of the Quebrada made by the Ninos Pintores de Chucalezna. Child painters. If they really were then they were talented.
Across the river was a large dusty playground, clearly a community initiative, adorned with bold murals, poetic quotations and images of Che Guevara and the man in the large black hat, indigenous Bolivian leader Tupac Amaru. Obviously in Jujuy these two men are important revolutionaries – the social housing project on the edge of Humahuaca had their faces painted on the chimney pots of each home which made it look like some strange site-specific art project, both bizarre and delightful.
As usual it came down to the useful sign in the city’s largest square to answer my questions. Jujuy was founded in 1593 between the rivers Grand and Xibi Xibi which explains why it seems like an island. However the fact that it “is known as the Little Silver Cup owing to its tiny size and the special way it’s positioned” totally threw me. But Little Silver Cup I like you.
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