Bolivia History

History

The first inhabitants arrived in this part of the world from Asia about 20000 years ago. They were primarily hunter-gatherer tribes among whose achievements can be attributed the domestication of animals such as the llama, alpaca and guinea-pig and the cultivation of cotton, beans and squashes throughout the regions that are now modern day Peru and Bolivia.

By 1000 BC these tribal peoples began to develop what we would now recognise as a regional culture in art, religion and agricultural methods, but, for unknown reasons these began to diversify into individual pockets of expertise. By 700BC the Tiahuanaco people had developed an extensive civilisation around the shores of Lake Titicaca in Alto Peru - now known as Bolivia. These advances included the devolvement of advanced irrigation systems for arable farming and a road network. Relics of the Tiahueanaco city can still be found but mystery surrounds what happened to these people.

The Incas replaced the Tiahueanaco as the most prosperous group in Bolivia, after their expansion out of the Peruvian city of Cuzco from 1440. They suppressed other local tribes and absorbed their wealth into their own empire. This was rarely a popular exercise, and hence when the Spanish arrived in the 1530s, while huge, the Inca Empire was not united and so quickly fell to the better-armed, more determined Spaniards.

The Spanish founded Sucre (then known as La Plata) as their new capital and the European culture was spread across the region by the ever-onwards-marching conquistadors. Silver was discovered and mines were dug at Potosí­ - the most rapidly devoured metal resource ever recorded. The local Indian populations and imported Africans were enslaved for the extraction of the metal - all of which was shipped straight out of the country to Spain. The lucky of these workers died in swift accidents, the unlucky were condemned to death by the terminal illnesses pandemic in the terrible working conditions, or simply worked to death. Conditions were finally tackled in 1952 when Victor Paz was elected president to represent the working classes and in doing so revolutionised the educational system. Natural minerals remain the main source of income for the country today, in particular tin and oil.

During border disputes of the last 100 years, mostly regarding the ownership of resource-rich land, Bolivia lost a huge amount of land to its neighbours: Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru and Chile - the latter of which left the county land-locked: a bitter issue behind which the country still unites today.

After Peru gained its independence in 1824, Alto Peru delivered its declaration of independence, and one year later the Republic of Bolivia was formed with the revolutionary liberator Bolivar as its fist president. The new country was modelled on the political system of the USA, but the result was inherently unstable and there were 192 governments in the 179 years between 1825 and 2003. Democracy was finally established in 1989 after a succession of military dictatorships.