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- 1548 - The city of La Paz was founded by Spanish settlers
on the pre- existing site of Choqueyapu, an ancient Aymara village. It
was founded as Nuestra Senora de La Paz (Our Lady of Peace) by Alonso de
Mendoza, commissioned by Pedro de la Gasca, to commemorate the "pacification"
of Peru. It was started as a commercial city, lying on the main gold and
silver route to the coast. The Spaniards came for the Bolivian gold found
in the Choqueapu River that runs through present-day La Paz. The Spaniards
took the gold mines away from Aymara people and made them work as slaves.
The primarily male Spanish population soon mixed with the indigenous people,
creating a largely mestizo, or mixed, population.
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- 1549 - In November of this year, Juan
Gutierrez was given the task of designing an urban plan, in keeping
with the Code of the Indies (regulations on Spanish Colonial Cities
from Spain). As such, he was to lay out plazas
and public lands and designate sites for public buidings. The Plaza
Murillo (pictured below) was later selected as the site for the
city Cathedral, elite homes, and government buidings.
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- 1600's - As the gold slowly diminished, the city's
location between Potosi (the primary silver
mining town) and Lima grew in importance, as La Paz became a main
stop on the trade route. Soon La Paz was the most flourishing town
in the Altiplano area
of the Andes, although it was not as wealthy as Potosi.
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- 1800 - La
Paz emerges as the largest city of Upper Peru (the early name for Bolivia)
in the late eighteenth century, acting as the center for
the population and agricultural production zone. The heavily populated
Altiplano hinterland above La Paz fed its growth. Many large estate land
holders, known as haciendados, lived in La Paz throughout most of the year
while they maintained a small community of indigenous people to live and
work on their haciendas (landed estates).
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- 1825 - Bolivia gained independence, which sparked even more
growth in the city. Simon Bolivar was the first president of the
Republic. The country was divided in 5
departments: La Paz, Cochabamba, Potosí, Charkas and
Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
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- Early 1800's - La Paz emerged as the capital of the
Intendencia, the home of a thriving commercial community, and the
center of an important network of interregional and internaional
trade routes. The majority of the absentee landed elite resided
in La Paz, creating the commerce and royal treasury from which more
wealth could be generated for investment in the rural zones of the
Intendencia. At that time in history, the capital and its
provincial hinterland were one of the wealthiest tax-producing areas
in all of the Andes. This early beginning, as the home of
the rich land-lords of the haciendas, is still evident in the structure
of the city today, as the finest example of old Spanish Colonial
Architecture seen in houses is located close to the central plazas
and offices of the city.
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- Mid-1800's - Bolivia started exporting more than it imported,
allowing the government to engage in infrastructural
investments with the surplus funds. This led to a growth of
La Paz as the financial, commercial,
and political capital of the area. "With new urban classes
emerging, and new capital to spend, there was
both increased demands for foodstuffs production and an aggressive
class of urban-based capitalists willing to engage in agricultural
production"(Klien 1993 134). However, at this time La
Paz was virtually isolated from the rest of the world due to the
poor roads and lack of rail lines leading over the harsh Altiplano
to ports in Peru and Chile. Contact between La Paz and the eastern
part of the country, surrounded by rainforest, was even more difficult.
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- 1879 - The Pacific War with Chile. The Chileans entered
the country at the coast for the salitre and the guano(Nitrate-rich bird
dung). The result of this brutal war was the loss of Bolivia's coast land
to Chile.
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- 1898 - La Paz becomes Bolivia's administrative capital and
the seat of the government, thus starting
the process of development into the large city it is today.
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- 1900 - Construction began on the international railroad
network linking La Paz to the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, thus solidifying
the future role of La Paz as a primate city.
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- 1921 - The first oil company came to Bolivia. Bolivia
was found to have great reservoirs of oil, in addition to all the precious
minerals.
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- 1952 - The great national revolution
when the revolutionaries won the rights for the indegenous people. Their
biggest accomplishment was agrarian land reform, which allowed peasants
to have freedom from the obligations of working on the elite-owned land,
diffusing the long-
- established hacienda system. This in turn sparked a great
growth spurt in the city, as many working-class and poor migrated to urban
areas.
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- 1964 - Military revolution, with the help of the US,
that established the dictatorial rule that would remain until 1980. The
last dictator was General Hugo Banzer. He held elections in 1980, although,
suspiciously, Banzar's candidate won and was president until the year 1982.
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