Hats and Hershey's kisses, briefcases and black men

The sun is so strong here and the air so thin that cancer is a serious concern. Wisely, the indigenous farmers all wear broad-brimmed hats as protection. The mass of sophisticated urban Bolivians would rather jab their eyes out than be associated with them. Instead, they wear baseball caps or use another means of protect themselves. Newspapers, hands, folders, semi-furled umbrellas, bags: it seems Paceñas (La Paz residents) will put anything over their heads to avoid anything so foolish as a hat. Today, I saw an otherwise elegant lady dashing her sophisticated aura into the dirt by carrying a lipstick-pink child’s briefcase on her head.

In the supermarket checkout next to the other mass-market chocolate is a brand called Beso de Negro. I don’t think a Black Man’s Kiss would be really considered acceptable in the UK. However, these are no dark-chocolate, local version of Hershey’s kisses. Instead, they are knobbly, phallic-shaped and filled with cream. Added to this, “beso de negro” is another name for what greasy-palmed tabloid journalists like to call an “unnatural sex act”. Have I let political correctness get the better of me or is this simply wrong?