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Bolivia
By Keith John Richards Bravo Ltd
Copyright © 2009 Kuperard
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-85733-623-8
CHAPTER 1
LAND & PEOPLE
GEOGRAPHY
Lying at the heart of the South American continent, Bolivia borders the region's other landlocked country, Paraguay, to the southeast. It also shares frontiers with Peru and Chile to the west, Argentina to the south, and Brazil to the north and east.
Bolivia has a surface area almost twice that of Spain and slightly greater than the state of Texas: its population is about the same as Los Angeles County. Its population density is among the lowest in the world. Bolivia's surface area has diminished considerably since its foundation in 1825, but its extreme topographical diversity still makes it very difficult to administer as a coherent whole and to provide adequate communications. There are three main geographical zones: the Altiplano, the valleys, and the tropics.
The Altiplano (high plateau) was formed by the same seismic activity as the Andes; a huge section of seabed, the South American Plate, was lifted into its current position, an average of nearly 12,500 ft (approx. 3,800 m) above sea level, by the Nazca or Pacific Plate moving beneath it. Marine fossils found there are often hawked to tourists in the streets of La Paz. At the northern end of the Altiplano lies Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable body of water on earth, covering some 3,232 sq. miles (8,371 sq. km) and bisected by the border with Peru. The Altiplano occupies the western end of the country, spreading from Titicaca to the borders with Chile to the west, and with Argentina to the south. The area contains the cities of La Paz, Oruro, and Potosí, as well as mining areas that still produce tin, silver, and other minerals. The altitude and extremes of temperature make it a harsh environment. Farmers cultivate potatoes and crops peculiar to this habitat, such as quinua, olluca, and cañahua. Llamas, once abundant here, are now gradually giving way to sheep and cattle. The famous salt lake at Uyuni is the world's largest.
The Andes, the planet's second-highest mountain range, date from the Cretaceous period (138–5 million years ago). The central Andean cordillera, or mountain chain, extends southwest across the western half of Bolivia. The highest peaks are Sajama (21,463 ft; 6,542 m) in the southwest, and Illimani (21,201 ft; 6,462 m), which overlooks the city of La Paz.
To the southeast of the Altiplano are the temperate valleys of Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, and Tarija. This hospitable area permits a broad spectrum of agricultural activity. The Cochabamba valley supplies the rest of the country with food.
The Chaco is an arid zone to the southeast shared with Argentina and Paraguay, to which countries Bolivia has lost considerable territory. This area contains most of the country's natural gas resources (exported to Brazil, gas is now the country's biggest earner) and still produces petroleum. The area's main river is the Pilcomayo, which flows some 1,550 miles (2,500 km) southeast from southern Bolivia into the Paraguay River just south of Asunción.
To the north and northwest are the tropics, the eastern lowlands (known as Oriente and Amazonía) that make up some three-fifths of Bolivia. The Mamoré is the most important river in this region, flowing north into the Madeira River in Brazil. Almost all its 1,180 miles (1,900 km) are navigable. The Guaporé forms part of the border with Brazil.
Much of the original forest has made way for soybean cultivation, particularly in the Santa Cruz area. Another activity in this area (with dubious ecological consequences) is cattle ranching.
The economy of the northern department of Pando long depended on rubber and was practically the private fiefdom of the "baron" Nicolás Suárez during the late nineteenth century (see the section on Melgarejo under "The Republican Era" below).
Departmental Capitals
Of Bolivia's nine departments, six (La Paz, Santa Cruz, Oruro, Cochabamba, Tarija, and Potosí) are named according to their capital cities. The exceptions are Beni (capital Trinidad), Pando (Cobija), and Chuquisaca (Sucre).
CLIMATE
Bolivia's climate is as varied as its geography, though there are really only two seasons: winter (April to October) and summer (November to March). The weather is becoming ever more unpredictable due to global warming, the El Niño effect, and other influences.
PEOPLE
Bolivia had 9,247,816 inhabitants in July 2008. Calculations of ethnic ratios differ, often for political reasons, and are largely dependent on self-perception. Most surveys indicate a ratio of roughly half indigenous, and half mestizo and white, though this is notoriously difficult to evaluate.
Part of Bolivia's historical problem in keeping control of its outlying regions can be attributed to the failure to populate these areas. Population distribution is still a problem today. Most people live in the west, which is the area least able to support human habitation, though there have been programs to populate areas such as the northern Pando and the Chapare near Cochabamba.
There have also been attempts to bolster the population by offering land to foreign immigrants: Mennonites arrived at various times in the twentieth century from places including Mexico, Paraguay, and Russia via Canada, to cultivate the Chaco and Beni, while Japanese and Croatian settlers were brought in to areas near Santa Cruz in the early twentieth century. There has been limited immigration from Germany, Spain, and Italy.
A BRIEF HISTORY
Bolivia has been shaped by myriad historical forces operating at different levels of intensity in the country's various regions. Here we shall attempt to pull together these numerous strands.
Pre-Columbian Bolivia
Opinion varies greatly as to the dates of the original settlement of the Americas. For some, this began with the Clovis culture of New Mexico, c. 13,500–2,500 BCE. Others hold that it slightly predates this, with a third school of thought placing the human presence at about 30,000 BCE. According to this estimate, the Bolivian Andes would have been populated as long as 20,000 years ago. Established civilizations have existed in Bolivia for perhaps three millennia, but their importance is not yet appreciated.
Bolivian Andean archaeology is generally divided into three main Horizons. The Early (Chavín) Horizon (1400–00 BCE) saw the emergence of trade and interchange between the region's cultures and those of other parts of South America, leading to the formation and consolidation of settled societies. The most important development was the invasion by people from the Chavín region of central Peru — an influence seen during the Early Middle Horizon (400 BCE–00 CE). The Middle Horizon (500–00 CE) is also named the Tiwanaku, because that culture's sophistication, power, and influence reached its zenith during this period, alongside that of the Huari culture in Peru. The degree of association between these two cultures has yet to be determined, as have the reasons for Tiwanaku's decline. The years 900–476 are the Late Middle Horizon. During the Late Horizon (1476–534), the Incas incorporated the area into their realm of political control and cultural influence; this process was truncated by the Spanish invasion.
Archaeological work in Bolivia is still far from complete, reflecting the neglect of pre-Columbian indigenous cultures until recently. One of those who encouraged interest in this heritage was Vienna-born Arthur Posnansky (1873–946), whose unbounded praise of the indigenous Aymara people as an Andean "master race" was both eccentric and politically questionable. Posnansky's nationalist feeling for Bolivia was such that he fought against Brazil in the Acre War (1899–902). He saw the ruins of Tiwanaku, near Lake Titicaca, as a potential national symbol along the lines of Machu Picchu in Peru or Mexico's Aztec ruins.
Until the 1950s, most archaeological activity had been undertaken by foreigners such as Posnansky, Max Ühle, and Dick Ibarra Grasso. The great exception is Carlos Ponce Sanginés, generally considered the father of Bolivian archaeology. His work mainly focuses on Tiwanaku, the most intriguing of Bolivian pre-Columbian sites. Ponce Sanginés identified five phases in Tiwanaku, culminating in a classic period when it controlled an area stretching from today's Cochabamba to southern Peru. It is thought to date from around 1500 BCE and to have been in decline by 1200 CE. Tiwanaku dominated and at times physically relocated populations such as the Urus and the Chipayas.
The Finnish archaeologist Martti Pärssinen has undertaken work to show that Bolivia's lowland cultures were not only part of an intricate network that linked them with the Andes but that they were of great sophistication in their own right.
Samaipata, one of the chief archaeological sites in the east of the country, lies between Santa Cruz and Cochabamba. It features a single huge carved rock that is generally believed to have been a ceremonial site.
The Spanish Conquest
The territory now known as Bolivia was conquered and colonized from two almost diametrically opposite directions: Lake Titicaca in the west, and the Plate River (Río de la Plata) in the southeast. In both cases, the Spaniards were spurred on by the prospect of reaching the fabled land of El Dorado — otherwise known, in this region, as Gran Paitití (meaning and origin unclear).
In 1531 the Spaniards reached the Peruvian coast. Within a couple of years of their arrival in the Inca capital, Cuzco, they had destroyed the infrastructure of a civilization that, though not lasting particularly long, was remarkable for its organization and coherence. The southern part of the Inca territory Tawantinsuyo ("union of four quarters" in Quechua, the Inca lingua franca) was the Kollasuyo, the origin of the modern nickname "colla" used for Andeans. The Spaniards could simply follow the Incas' path southward, forming alliances with local peoples who wished to rid themselves of their imperial masters, unaware that they were making way for something far worse.
The Spanish navigator Juan Díaz de Solís had reached the mouth of the Plate River on the Atlantic in 1516, but was ambushed and killed when attempting to find a passage to the Pacific by sailing up it. The Guaraní-speaking Chiriguano cultures to the east were largely comprised of Amerindians seeking what their mythology had determined as a "Land without Evil" — a coincidence with the El Dorado sought by the Spaniards, leading to a sometimes curious conjunction of forces. "Chiriguano" is said to be a pejorative Quechua term used by the populations resettled by the Incas to refer to the locals.
The area to the northwest of Santa Cruz was largely settled by Jesuit missions, which served as frontier outposts for the Spanish presence. This, however, does not mean the absence of conflict: the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, founded in 1561 by Ñuflo de Chávez, who had penetrated inland from Buenos Aires, was moved at least twice due to environmental factors and hostility from local peoples, finally settling in its current site in 1592.
The Colonial Era
The Viceroyalty of Peru, created in 1542, controlled the first incarnation of today's Bolivia, Upper Peru. Peru's predominance in South America was undermined by the creation of two new Viceroyalties, first Nueva (New) Granada in 1717, then Plate River (Río de la Plata) in 1776. These new entities shifted political and economic influence from Lima to Caracas and Buenos Aires.
The Royal Audience of Charcas, based in the city of La Plata (now Sucre), was a judicial and administrative body created by Philip II of Spain in 1559 to rule Upper Peru. The city's university, San Francisco Xavier, paradoxically produced some of the region's foremost revolutionaries.
In 1570, the Spaniards put a definitive end to Inca rule with the execution of Tupac Amaru I. Tupac Amaru had been a symbolic figure reduced to a clandestine existence — his chief gesture of resistance, apparently, his refusal to convert to Christianity.
The Potosí Mita
The discovery in 1543 of a huge vein of silver at Potosí, some 341 miles (550 km) south of La Paz, was to have major consequences for the history of the region. In 1545 a city was founded in this hostile area, 13,123 ft (approx. 4,000 m) above sea level, which had to be supplied and serviced from the surrounding valleys. At first the mined silver was smelted by Indian craftsmen, an activity later taken over by the Crown. In the 1570s Viceroy Toledo brought in measures to rationalize silver production in Potosí, dividing the city into white and Indian sectors, and setting up the infamous mita (labor tribute).
These measures acknowledged that it was imperative to use Indian labor to extract the metal. Because the enslavement of Native American peoples was technically banned by the Crown (largely as a result of campaigns by humanitarian churchman Bartolomé de las Casas), an alternative had to be found. Black slaves, it was discovered, died all too easily in the cold, rarified air of Potosí: in any case, they were extremely expensive to bring in and were used largely as servants — a status symbol in rich people's homes. This dilemma led the Spanish to revive the ancient Inca practice of exacting mita from the populace — but with a difference. Whereas under Inca rule the people saw some of the benefits of the mita, the Spaniards used it for their own enrichment, and to great effect.
As news spread of the extraordinary wealth of Potosí, people flocked to the city from all over the globe to seek their fortune. Potosí was also where peoples from different regions of the Iberian peninsula met for the first time — these were not always peaceful encounters, as can be seen from the so-called Vicuña Wars of the 1620s, which pitted Spanish newcomers against Creoles (criollos: people of Spanish descent, born in the Americas). It is estimated that, by the seventeenth century, Potosí was the most populous city in the Western hemisphere.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Bolivia by Keith John Richards. Copyright © 2009 Kuperard. Excerpted by permission of Bravo Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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