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| The Origin– The Incas: |
The legend tells that in the end of the XII century a little tribe managed by Manco Capac and Mamma Ocllo (his sister-wife), sons of the Sun God Inti, arrived to the basin of Cuzco in the Andes of Peru. This indigenous “Quechuas” were looking for the ideal place to establish themselves, and their city had to be founded in the exact place where the golden stick of Manco Capac was plunged. So, they founded the city of Cuzco, “the navel” in the Quechua language, and they ruled with cruelty the nearby populations. Manco Capac taught them agriculture and how to make handcrafts, and Mamma Ocllo taught the women the art of weaving.
The Inca Empire was the most extraordinary civilization of America, the one with the most impulse and the most organized one. Their dominion started from the North of Ecuador to Central Chile; it was 4.800 Kilo-meters long and 460 kilo-meters wide. Its capital was Cuzco, by the time the Spaniards arrived, it had 100.000 habitants and its principal god was the Sun, called “Inti”.
The Inca culture was the result of the fusion of three cultures that preceded it: the Tiahuanaco culture (1000-1300 A. C.) from the Lake Titicaca region (between Peru and Bolivia); the Nazca culture, of the meridian zone of Peru; the Mochica-michu culture, from the northern coast.
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| The Conquest: |
In the year 1511 the Spaniard conquerors arrived in Panama searching for enormous quantities of gold and following the rumors of the existence of a country with fabulous wealth, these rumors monopolized the spirits of the most adventurous ones.
On April 1532, at the head of 180 men and 37 horses they arrived in Tumbes, north of today’s Peru. However, these conquerors did not trouble the Incas because of their inferior numbers , although the Incas were puzzled.
Since the arrival of the Spaniards in 1532 the organization that functioned in the region for centuries separated. They arrived implanting a new institutional political structure supported by the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources. To accomplish their goals, the conquerors organized the territory and founded cities with defined functions in strategic zones, for their interests.
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| The Colony: |
Since 1538 the Spaniards founded the cites of: La Plata, known today as Sucre (1538), as political and administrative center of the Real Audiencia de Charcas; Potosí (1545), based on the exploitation of silver of the Cerro Rico; La Paz (1548), as active commercial and trade center; Santa Cruz (1561) and Trinidad (1686), as barriers for the Portuguese expansion and to control the oriental zone; Cochabamba (1574), as a center providing agricultural products; Tarija (1574), as a connection area with the Rio de la Plata; and Oruro (1600), for the mining potential of the zone.
The discovery of a silver mine in Potosi in 1545 marked completely the history of the country because the cycle of silver lasted a hundred years, from 1545 to 1650. Potosi became the biggest city of America (160 000 habitants in the XVII century). An obligatory system of work was established “la mita”, which resulted in the deportation of 6 million indigenous people at that time. La Paz was just a city and Sucre (formerly La Plata) had the administrative powers.
It is in the University of San Francisco Xavier, in the city of Chuquisaca, where the ideas of rebellion matured, creating in the last quarter of the XVIII century the ambient where the first shout of liberty took place, on May 25th, 1809. On July 16th of that same year, La Paz formed part of the movement, initiating a process that crossed the South American Continent and ended with the recognition of the countries of the region as free, sovereign and independent.
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| The Republic: |
From the year 1810 to 1820, the pursuit of Spanish troops and the victory of the Mariscal Sucre (Simon Bolivar´s lieutenant), opened the way to independence, proclaimed on August 6th, 1824.
The Republic of Bolivia (in honor to the name of the liberator) was temporarily united with Peru in 1836 by Santa Cruz, but the possibility of the constitution of a powerful State worried the neighbors.
As a consequence, the extensive Bolivian territory (2 340 000 km²) was consumed by many wars with its neighbors, the saltpeter war with Chile (1879-1883) does not allow the country to have access to the sea which Bolivia still claims today, the war against Brazil (1901-1903) cut the region of the Acre and of the western part of Mato Grosso. Until the war with Paraguay, where Paraguay added to its territory around 200 000 km².
The reshaping of the country and the political instability resulted in takeovers every year between 1850 and 1950. However, there were some stages of prosperity in the country, with the exploitation of the quinine (1830-1850), of the guano and the saltpeter (1868-1878), of latex (1895-1915), and tin (since 1880).
If the country is in debt today it is due in part to the construction of the railroads, to the financial needs of the State, and the decreased value of raw resources.
The luxurious lifestyle of a minority, opposed to the extreme poverty of the population, leads to a popular insurrection in 1952, bringing the Movimiento Nacionlista Revolucionario (MNR) to power. This had as a consequence the nationalization of the mines, the universal vote and the agrarian reform. Progressively, the regime moves away from the population, the MNR party divides, and in 1964 the army took power. They repressed the strikes with difficulty, and it was in 1967 that Ernesto Che Guevara was executed with the bullets of the Bolivian army.
The takeovers took place one after another. Only general Banzer kept himself in power for 7 years (from 1971 to 1978, and from 1997 to 2002, year in which he died). Even with the return of civil power in 1982, the country went through a succession of economic and political crises, the decade of the 80s was characterized by a great depression due to the fall of the price of tin, with the outbreak of the greatest hyperinflation of its history (11750% in 1985), as a consequence the drug economy increased.
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| The last years : |
At the beginning of the nineties, the country changed its path, towards economic liberalism, with the privatization of the mines and of numerous public enterprises. However, the social and economic instability is still present, the discontent of the population, and of the majority of social groups towards the governments in power is more evident every time.
Since the year 2000 the discontent manifested in successive movements; the war against privatization of the water in Cochabamba in 2000; the war in defense of the coca plantations in the Chapare region against the army and the police on January 2003, the war against salary tax in La Paz on February 2003, and the gas war in September and October 2003 that ended with the indigenous people taking the power of La Paz , and the fall of the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.
This same movement did not allow the conservative stabilization of its successor, Carlos Mesa, it obligated two possible presidents to step aside and ended imposing a transitory president, Eduardo Rodriguez Veltzé, whose main mission was to summon new presidential elections as soon as possible.
It is like this that on December 18th, 2005 Evo Morales Aima is elected as the new Constitutional President of Bolivia, which signifies an important change in the politic process of Bolivia, after many years of political crises and rises of the masses, that virtually demolished the regimen of the neo-liberal “agreed democracy” and its own parties.
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