See on Scoop.it – Geography Education

“Brash, baroque and steeped in native Andean symbols, the mini-mansions are a striking sight on the caked-dirt streets of El Alto, the inexorably expanding sister city of Bolivia’s capital.”

Seth Dixon‘s insight:

The pre-Columbian symbols of the condor, serpent and Tree of Life adorn the architecture of these brightly colored ballrooms that also have European-imported chandeliers, arches and other baroque elements.  The spread of globalization is often assumed to be a homogenizing cultural force, but local cultures typically take elements of the global, and make it their own.  The global becomes local and deeply rooted in place and reshapes place.

Tags:  globalization, architecture, South America, folk cultures, culture, Bolivia.

See on bigstory.ap.org