Bolivian city hires 'cholita' traffic policewomen
Bolivian city hires 'cholita' traffic policewomen
| December 22, 2013 | Updated: December 23, 2013 12:24am
EL ALTO, Bolivia (AP) — This city in Bolivia's highlands has hired Aymara women dressed in traditional multilayered Andean skirts and brightly embroidered vests to work as traffic cops and bring order to its road chaos.
About 20 of the "traffic cholitas" have been trained to direct cars and buses in El Alto, a teeming, impoverished sister city of La Paz in Bolivia's Andes mountains.
The women wear the bright petticoats and shawls of Andean indigenous women, who are called "cholitas" in Bolivian slang. The only difference is that instead of wearing their traditional bowler hats they don khaki green police-style caps. Some also don fluorescent traffic vests.
Amid El Alto's dense traffic and the incessant honking of horns, 24-year-old Sofia Colque blows her police whistle with authority.
More:
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Bolivian-city-hires-cholita-traffic-policewomen-5087201.php