LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- Hundreds of Bolivian devotees arrived Friday at the municipal cemetery of La Paz carrying human skulls adorned with flowers for the Ñatitas festival, a custom rooted in the Andean region, but not recognized by the Catholic church.

According to Bolivian belief, devotees ask Ñatitas for health, money, love and other favors.

Mama Azapa is one of the Ñatitas, and unlike many others, her skull has braided hair. "She is my protector," Elena Martínez, who identified herself as an "amauta," or Quechua priestess, said.

During the festival, people throw coca leaves and flowers at them and put cigarettes in their mouths. Some skulls are even wearing sunglasses and hats. Some are kept in golden, glass urns and others in shoe boxes decorated with flowers.

The festival is a mix of Andean ancestral worship and Catholic beliefs. Experts say it was common in pre-Columbian times to keep skulls as trophies and display them to symbolize death and rebirth.

Anthropologist Milton Eyzaguirre, a researcher at the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore, explained that in Andean culture death is linked to life.

"The deceased are underground, in the earth, that is why they are related to plants that are about to be born," he said.

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