Incredible houses built by rich Indians in Bolivia
Photographer and traveler Yuri Segalerba took wonderful photos of the Bolivian city of El Alto, which is located at 4,000 meters above sea level. But the geographical location is not the only thing that can surprise this city. It impresses, first of all, with unusual and colorful mansions in the style of Nuevo Andino, created by the self-taught architect Freddie Mamani Silvestre.
Multi—storey buildings with geometrically regular facades of flashy colors and large windows are called cholets - from the French chalet ("chalet", big house) and the local, contented disparaging word cholo, denoting the Aymara Indians.
In recent years, a large stratum of the population has appeared in El Alto, consisting of wealthy Aymara Indians, and it is they who order bright cholets for themselves from a local architect. This is the new middle class of El Alto, and the new extravagant style of Nuevo Andino is a reflection of the ongoing changes that have added brightness and color to the city.
Cholets have a well—defined structure: on the ground floor there are usually small shops and benches, on the second — a large party hall, on the third - housing for rent (so that the owners can "recapture" the cost of the building), and on the top, in fact, there are apartments of the owners.
These interesting and bright buildings have become a symbol of the economic prosperity of El Alto and Bolivia as a whole.