Antonio Paredes Candia (10 July 1924, La Paz – 12 December 2004) was a Bolivian writer, folklorist and researcher who wrote over 100 books on Bolivian culture during his lifetime. He is considered an icon of Bolivian culture and identity. His work primarily focused on the country's characters, traditions, customs and superstitions.
He is buried in the courtyard of the museum named after him in the city of El Alto.[1]
Jose Antonio Paredes Candia was born on July 10, 1924, in the city of La Paz into a well-known political and intellectual family in Bolivia. He was the son of the famous Bolivian historian Don M. Rigoberto Paredes Iturri and Doña Haydee Candia Torrico. From his mother, Jose Antonio inherited his passion for literature and his talent as a researcher from his father.
He spent his entire childhood in a house located on the intersection of Sucre and Junín, in a typical neighborhood in the north of La Paz. His siblings were Orestes, Mercedes, Doña Elsa Paredes de Salazar, a writer and public intellectual, and an eccentric businessman Rigoberto Paredes Candia. Rigoberto was a father of 18 children and the owner of the hotel that was built on the same location as their old house (Antonio was to die 80 years later in that same house).
Antonio's mother was an enthusiastic art lover and was widely known for her love of classical music. She awoke in her son a love for literature and music at a very young age. It was very common to find her sitting by the door of her house, singing famous opera arias accompanied by guitar music. Inspired by the atmosphere in his home, Antonio began writing at an early age.
He attended Felix Reyes Ortiz high school, where he studied together with Raúl Salmón de la Barra, who would later become a famous pioneer in Bolivian folk theater.
When Antonio was 20 years old, he enlisted in the military service for almost two years in the "Abaroa Regiment" located in the city of La Paz. It was his military experience that gave him a direct understanding of the reality of the Bolivian people and would later shape his passion, fate and research.
He always had a strong inclination for teaching, which forced him to travel to the furthest corners of the country. He would always bring his bundles of books to teach in several regions of highland mining centers and the south of the country during the 1940s and 1950s. Owing to the needs of the audience that he was teaching, Antonio developed a very simple linguistic style that he used in his books. He was aware that his books were not written for the country's intellectual elite but for the lay people who did not read on a regular basis or had access to any kind of information at all. He said, "(...) I thought and knew that I had to deliver the book into the hands of our people, and that was my goal. (...) For me, the writer is just another laborer in society, not a privileged being who sits on an altar of mud. The writer, more than any other, should convey his thoughts somehow guiding society (...) I think there lies the success of my tales for children, because without political propaganda they convey the problems that we should be aware of and the ones we should try to fix".
For an extensive period during his youth, he undertook numerous trips with his puppet theater that he had created. He chose the most remote places in the country and armed with his puppets, boxes of books, and a few personal possessions, he launched a heroic affair of spreading culture within a country where the majority of its population, the indigenous people, had been denied access not only to any kind of information but also to their civil rights. It was during this period that he became the familiar figure of "Tío Antonio" (Uncle Antonio), the white "Amauta" (mystic man) who was coming from the city to those unknown villages that no one had ever visited before him.
Since then, he has devoted his life to the arduous task of transmitting his passion for literature and the country's own customs to the people of Bolivia. It was during this period that he discovered that Bolivians had an interest in knowing more about their writers, but not the means to access them. Because of that, he founded the "street fair of popular culture", at which he went out to sell books on the street. This broke with the image of the bourgeois intellectual writer, becoming rather the poet of the people, one that interacts directly with them. Several writers joined these famous fairs, and nowadays they are placed permanently in the city of La Paz in a passage called Maria Nunez del Prado.
His love for research made him one of the most read writers among Bolivians, with a collection of more than 100 books written. He wrote about customs, traditions, legends, crafts, stories, but also deep and specific investigations. He never used any kind of sponsorship, grant or foreign aid. He created his story with his own hands, without the help or approval of anyone.
Personally, Don Antonio was a person with a pleasant conversation, full of anecdotes about Bolivian characters and world history. It is said that while walking the streets with him, you supposedly received a master class in Bolivian history. His good humor was always part of his life besides his immense love for children and animals. It is well known the enormous love he felt for his little dog and life companion Isolde.
He never got married, but he adopted the son of his childhood friend that he met at the ranch of his father Don Rigoberto. Huascar Paredes Candia is the only son of Don Antonio and is responsible for the collection of books and their publication.
In the last years of his life, Antonio Paredes Candia decided to donate his private art collection to the city of El Alto. The collection was estimated to be worth half a million dollars in Bolivian artworks, sculptures, and archaeological pieces saved from the hands of "guaqueros" (looters). This entire heritage followed him all his life and now lies in the first museum of the city of El Alto since 2002, one of the most complete museums of Bolivia.
In 2004 he was diagnosed with liver cancer. After the doctor explains that he has little of his life remaining he is immediately taken to a room at the hotel of his younger brother Rigoberto to spend what would be his last weeks. Countless numbers of people gather at the hotel to visit him every day until his last breath. Don Antonio is finally able to witness the true result of his work. After so many years, his work reached the public he had looked for. Before his death he was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the Franz Tamayo University of the city of La Paz, followed by several other awards from the authorities of the city.
He died on December 12, 2004, in an apartment at the Hotel Victoria located on Sucre Street in the city of La Paz. The apartment was built on the same site as the house in which Candia was born. His funeral was veiled with a string quartet from El Alto followed by a long procession of countless people accompanying the coffin to the gates of the museum, including a little band of street kids that joined the back of the parade with instruments constructed by them, using buckets as drums and tubes as pan flutes. "Tío Antonio" had died and the whole city of El Alto was in mourning.
Don Antonio, who remained lucid until his last seconds, gave precise instructions on the protocol to be followed at his funeral. Among these instructions, he decided to be buried at the gates at the entrance of the museum, in between two layers of lime. On his grave was erected a statue with the figure that everyone remembers, his long coat, scarf and umbrella, like an old fashion gentleman. On his deathbed is the inscription "Dust to dust". He now remains in the museum as a guardian of the works he donated during his life. "My remains are buried at the museum in order to keep this entire heritage, and anyone that dares to take a painting or work of art, I'll take him with me. Be careful".
Paredes Candia books remain among the most widely read, especially the books for children that are part of the national syllabus in elementary schools. Unfortunately the re-edition of them as well as the care of the museum have been pushed to the sidelines. Nearly 80 percent of the writer's work is exhausted and not being printed again so it is disappearing very quickly. The museum is also not properly taken care of, which makes one wonder why the family of Paredes Candia remains silent while such a barbarian act is committed against his work and heritage, as has unfortunately been seen before with other great characters.
The people of El Alto constructed a monument to the memory of Candia at the entrance to Ciudad Satélite.