FT260

Early on the morning of Sunday, 8 November, the Quinones family of La Paz, Bolivia, was preparing to go to church. Standing alongside their battered Toyota Cressida, Maria Quinones (right) scolded her husband. “No, remember, Tuco likes the front seat!” She opened the back door and moved little Tuco to the front, then announced that she would ride in the back with Juancho and Dieguito. With everyone in place, the old car lumbered down a cobble­stone street destined for the chapel. In predominantly Catholic Bolivia there is nothing particularly unusual about such a Sunday morning ritual, except that on this particular Sunday the family in question was more dead than alive: Tuco, Juancho, and Diegito are all human skulls, the mortal remains of Maria’s paternal grand­father and two of her uncles.