WAYFARING IN BOLIVIA.--THE CENTRAL PLATEAU
_A Hill-broken Table-land--By Rail along the
Cordillera of the Friars--Challapata and Lake
Poöpo--Smelters--Spanish Ear-marks in Oruro--By Stage to
La Paz--Fellow-passengers--Misadventures--Indian Tombs at
Caracollo--Sicasica a High-up Town, 14,000 Feet--Meeting-place
of Quichuas and Aymarás--First Sight of the Famed Illimani
Peaks--Characteristics of the Indian Life--Responsibility of
the Priesthood--Position of the Women--Panorama of La Paz from
the Heights--The Capital in Fact--Cosmopolitan Society._
The Altiplanicie, or Great Central Plateau, because of its mineral
riches, was called by the geographer Raimondi a gold table with
silver legs. Once the bed of a vast inland sea, the table-land now
forms the Titicaca basin and lies between the Oriental and the
Occidental Cordilleras. Its surface is broken by many conical hills
and small sierras, supposedly the result of volcanic eruptions, yet
it comes within the definition of level country as level country
is understood in the Andine regions. The southern zone of the
Altiplanicie has been aptly described as a solid cape of salt.
From Uyuni, in the lower corner of the great plain, the railway
skirts along the mountain range known as the Cordillera of the
Friars. The road crosses the salt pampas and winds among the
foothills and along the Marques River into agricultural lands,
chiefly grazing, with pasturage for some cattle, donkeys, and
llamas, and many sheep. There are a number of villages, always
with a little church in the centre. The September day on which I
took the trip the people were making a _romeria_, or pilgrimage,
from hamlet to hamlet, to celebrate one of the numerous religious
holidays.
During the first three hours weather changes were swift and
sharp,--heavy clouds, thunder, the first rain I had experienced for
weeks, a whirling dust-storm, thunder again with looped lightning,
pelting hail, and finally blinding snow. My fellow-passengers were
Bolivian business men and their families, and English and German
mining superintendents. An excellent breakfast was served in the
station at Sevaruyo.
The principal town on the line is Challapata, near the borders of
Lake Poöpo. Challapata is a starting-point for Sucre. Sucre is the
old capital of Bolivia,--an historic city and a very rich one, lying
in a fertile valley but very remote from the highways of travel.
Few foreigners or natives in Bolivia know how to find it. The most
confusing directions are given in regard to reaching it. A trail or
cart-road of a very hard kind to travel runs from Tupiza to Sucre,
and in La Paz I was gravely told that to get there I would have
to go to Tupiza. Other directions are as vague. The shortest way
from either La Paz or from the coast is to proceed to Challapata
and then procure mules to Sucre, though for two days the journey
may be followed by means of a stage or similar vehicle.
Lake Poöpo is a teacup beside a soup-tureen in comparison with Lake
Titicaca; yet it receives the waters of that lake, which is not
an evaporating pan, through the Desaguadero River, and then loses
them in the Laca-Amra, a disappearing and reappearing stream. Only
one gallon in a hundred of the water drained into Lake Poöpo by the
Desaguadero is carried off by other streams. The Titicaca current
is 23.73 metres per minute, and the volume of the Desaguadero is
4,822.5 cubic metres per minute.
From Poöpo on to Oruro I noted a succession of smoke-stacks from
the smelters, and very apparent evidences of the mining industry.
After that it was all mine sights and mine talk. There is a large
foreign colony, which includes Yankees, Englishmen, Germans, and
Chileans. The town is a bare sort of place, with the shafts gaping
from the mountains all around. It has a population of 10,000, a
newspaper, two banks, and some extensive commercial establishments.
Oruro is an old town, and still shows many Spanish ear-marks. The
Jesuit chronicles say that in the height of the mining fever, in
the seventeenth century, it had 70,000 inhabitants. The streets are
narrow, and the buildings have balconies and overhanging eaves. The
local administration is progressive, and the plaza is an evidence
of local public spirit. It has a fountain in the centre, and some
effort at adornment has been made by fencing in the flower-plats.
The pilgrimage of women and children to and from the fountain with
their water-jars is an endless one. There is a military garrison and
a _Cabildo_, or municipal headquarters. In the market are the women
venders, decked out in their brilliant petticoats, selling onions,
fruits, fish, rock salt, and the other commodities of humble life.
Here, as in Uyuni, I observed many kindly and intelligent faces
among them, and they seemed to me superior to the men. The latter
are the _cargadores_, or burden-bearers. They travel around with
their backs bent, pedler fashion, even when they have no burden.
[Illustration: Scene in the Plaza at Oruro--Ancient Tombs at
Caracollo--Primitive Methods of Tin-crushing]
Oruro’s climate cannot be made a subject of local pride. It is
raw and rainy, with snow in the morning which melts quickly under
the sun. The mean average temperature as I gleaned from the local
records is 43° Fahrenheit, but in the month of November the extremes
are 68° and 34°. An ordinary year has 54 days of rain, 8 days of
heavy snow, and 52 days of sleety winds. The mineral resources of
the sub-Andine region, of which Oruro is the centre, compensate for
its lack of genial temperature. The most important of the mines is
the San José, which produces both tin and silver.
La Paz by the stage route is 160 miles from Oruro. When the railroad
is completed, the distance will be shortened a little, though the
same general course will be followed. I left Oruro one September
morning in the diligencia. The transportation had been controlled by
a pair of Scotchmen, and it was generally praised for the service,
but they turned it over to local management and then there was
nothing to praise. We had a dozen passengers, though only room
for ten. They included a Peruvian gentleman and his Chilean wife;
two Chilean rotos, or rough-and-ready workers who were going to
La Paz to take jobs; a party of Italian pedestrians who walked in
this manner; a German drummer; a native merchant, and myself. The
route followed the pampa along the edge of the mountain range,
and as there had been local snow-storms the regular line of white
silhouettes glistening in the sunlight presented a most exquisite
sight. But the road was very heavy, and our six mules had difficulty
in pulling the stage from one mud hole to another.
At noon we were mired. It rained and hailed throughout the afternoon.
One of the Italians, after a long parley with the driver and the
Indian postilion, took a mule from the traces and started for the
hamlet, which lay eight miles farther on, to see if means could
not be found for transferring us.
About nine o’clock through the darkness we heard shouts, and found
that a _carreta_, or two-wheeled cart, with four mules had been
sent to our rescue. No promise was held out to us of reaching the
village, but the stage was so uncomfortably crowded that some of
us felt bound to make room for those who preferred to remain. We
clambered out, and the outrider took us on his shoulders and waded
through the mud till he was able to drop us into the cart. He had
been picked up somewhere along the way. Without him we would have
had to pass the hours till morning in the open _carreta_. The wind
was biting, and though wrapped in heavy overcoats and blankets, we
could not keep the chill from our marrow-bones.
The night was so black that nothing could be seen ahead except the
moving silhouette of the Indian guide. I learned on this occasion of
the endurance of this class of natives. Our postilion was barefoot,
clad only in thin cotton trousers and some kind of shirt, yet he
plunged through the ponds, waded the creeks, and marked out a
course for the mules, urged by their hoarse, screeching driver,
to follow. When they got mired, he was at their heads or at their
heels, yelling at them in the Aymará tongue with the heartiness
that a muleteer on the Western frontier will put into his coaxing
of the same animals. After seeing him set the pace, I could readily
understand how these men could travel all day on foot and keep the
animals going at a good pace. Two or three times we thought we
were hopelessly lost, but at last he brought us into the village
of Caracollo and to the _tambo_, or inn. The breakfast had been
waiting since eleven o’clock in the morning. We sat down to it at
a quarter of an hour before midnight. After enjoying the repast we
went to bed commiserating our companions who were huddled together
in the stage somewhere back on the pampa.
The next morning I made a little study of native life as seen at
Caracollo, chiefly in the plaza, which was more in the nature of a
market-place. It was under water, but the Indian women were squatted
about selling their wares with stoical indifference to personal
comfort. The priest was fat, good-natured, and more intelligent than
others of his class whom I met. He told us that the Indian tombs
or tomb dwellings which we saw on the edge of the village were at
least four centuries old and were still venerated by the natives. I
strolled up the hillside to have a closer view of them, and found
that they are now put to baser uses. The veneration of the natives
apparently is shown by finding the shady side in order to take a
snooze at mid-day. Half a score of the Indians were enjoying their
siestas.
The tombs are oblong in form, from six to twelve feet high, and
are hollow. Some are open at the top, but more are closed and have a
kind of arched roof. All that I noticed opened or faced toward the
east. Some have openings on each side. The straw and mortar seemed
to be so fresh that it was hard to conceive of these monuments of
the past being centuries old, but of the fact there is no question.
The stage managed to pull itself out of the mud and reach Caracollo
at noon. We set off at once. At Villa Villa, a dreary spot, the
eating-house had nothing ready for us because we were running off
schedule time. Yet the Frenchman and his wife who kept it managed
to provide us a mouthful. They were from Marseilles. “How did you
get away off here?” I incautiously asked him. He shrugged his
shoulders.
We reached Pandura at nightfall to find that the stage coming from
La Paz, also running off schedule time on account of the rains
and the bad roads, had arrived there ahead of us. Pandura, which
consists of three or four mud structures, by squeezing itself
could just shelter one set of passengers. There was no possibility
of accommodations for us, nothing we could do except to continue
our journey over dangerous roads. The more fortunate passengers,
however, were very considerate. We could not ask them to give up
their beds, but they themselves volunteered to forego their dinner.
It had been ordered before our arrival and would be ready in an
hour. Since they had the whole night before them, they could wait
for another dinner to be prepared. We accepted their offer, and
after the meal had been eaten with gluttonous appetites, we plunged
off in the darkness. The animals were utterly worthless and could
barely drag us along. Where fresh mules were in waiting they were
already blown, and the local _tambo_-keepers refused to let us have
the animals which were reserved for the government mail. Usually
after alternate threatening and cajoling we would get the post
mules, sometimes taking them forcibly, and then proceed a little
better. But it was a nightmare of a journey.
In the morning we reached Sicasica. Sicasica is a town of consequence
and the centre of a silver-mining district. It is one of the highest
inhabited places in Bolivia, the altitude being 14,000 feet. It
has an old Jesuit church, built in 1622, notable for the fantastic
carving on the lava stone exterior and for some passable paintings
on the interior walls as well as a fine altar.
Sicasica is notable in another way. It is the meeting-place, as
it were, where the two distinct Indian races, the Aymarás and the
Quichuas, come front to front. Heretofore in southern Bolivia it
was the Quichua race I had met and their language I had heard, but
from Sicasica on the Aymarás were my study. Both these Indian idioms
are spoken, and neither race learns the tongue of the other, nor do
they have a common medium in Spanish. The local innkeeper told me
that few of them knew any Spanish, and that the little intercourse
they had with one another was more sign language than anything else.
Aymará was predominant, and its barking sounds were heard in sharp
contrast to the softer accents of the Quichua. I wandered into a
girls’ school, where the little maids were seated on vicuña skins
and, rocking forward and backward, were conning their lessons aloud
while the woman teacher accompanied their sing-song, standing. There
was neither bench nor desk of any kind. The primer was in Aymará,
and seemed to correspond to Noah Webster’s spelling-book.
[Illustration: Bolivian Indian Women Weaving]
[Illustration: Aymará Indian Woman and Child]
In the afternoon we reached Ayoayo, where a small garrison of
soldiers is maintained. Ayoayo is historic for an uprising which
was instigated by the priests against foreigners. It resulted in
a massacre. The place also was the headquarters of a stubborn
Indian uprising against the authority of the Bolivian government.
That was many years back, and I do not know that the maintenance
of a garrison at this time has anything to do with past history.
The officers were bright, fine-appearing men; the soldiers were
stolid-looking, but apparently were under excellent discipline.
There are Indian tombs in the neighborhood of Ayoayo, though not
so many as at Caracollo.
After leaving Ayoayo is the sublime sight of the peerless
Illimani,--a vision to my mind equal to that of the famed Sorata
seen from Lake Titicaca, and unsurpassed among the many glorious
panoramas of mountain grandeur which the Bolivian Andes afford.
The Continental Andes fork northwest of Lake Titicaca in latitude
14°. The Occidental Cordilleras trend south to the Pacific coast. The
Oriental Cordilleras extend in a general direction from northwest
to southeast. They are marked by three series of peaks,--the
Cololo, which is in Peru; the Illampu; and the Quisma Cruz, or
Three Crosses. The greatest of these are the Illampu, which begin
with the towering glacier peak of Sorata and end with the grouped
pinnacles of the Illimani. The heights of the summits according to
the best estimates vary from 21,200 feet to 21,700 feet. It is this
region which entitles Bolivia to be called the roof of the world
fully as much as Thibet.
On the Illimani the snows of yesterday are the snows of to-morrow.
Their sublimity cannot be grasped at close view. It is necessary to
see them at a distance such as that afforded after leaving Ayoayo
in order fully to appreciate their magnificence, for from this
point the lower flanks, brown and barren, are not visible. A great
wall of marble whiteness, with turrets and minarets surmounting
it, stretches along the horizon. When the turn in the road is made
and the sloping sides are in sight, the view is grand enough, but
nothing like the first vision. The chain extends more than a hundred
miles. The cold from the Illimani is felt very sensibly, yet it is
a clear and crisp cold and is not disagreeable.
The night was spent at Calamarca, where we found an unusually
good _tambo_ with the rarest of innovations--two or three camp
bedsteads--and excellent food, well cooked by the wife of the
innkeeper, a very intelligent _chola_.
We left Calamarca on the fourth day, though we should have been in
La Paz at the end of the second day. The approach to the capital is
across a great _meseta_, or mountain plain. It swarms with Indian
life. All the region between Oruro and La Paz seems to be as thickly
populated as the land will sustain. The stage road not only passes
through many villages, but there are more of these to the right
and to the left a short distance from the highway. Some of them
are not unattractive collections of adobe huts, and several of the
groups are rendered picturesque by the big oval ovens or kilns
almost as large as the cabins themselves.
The life is a primitive, pastoral one. Sheep and some cattle,
alpacas, llamas, and burros are raised and graze on the plain and
in the valley. Maize, or Indian corn, and a little wheat are grown
along with barley, and the native cereal known as _quinua_, which
is like millet. The crops appear scanty, and the vegetation at this
height is not exuberant.
[Illustration: A Drove of Llamas on the Pampa]
The native existence, while not a joyous one, does not appear to be
too sombre. The religious festivals are celebrated with undeviating
punctuality. No matter how small the collection of huts, somewhere
among them is a church, and each group of cabins has its own _curé_.
I remarked everywhere the grass cross over the dwellings. It was very
rare to find a hut without this symbolism. It seemed to indicate
great devoutness, but what I had already seen of the _curés_ and
their flocks made me doubt whether this was the correct explanation.
The cross, I was told, was blessed by the priest, and then it kept
out the rain, which at times is very heavy. One old man, who, after
pretending that he knew nothing but the Aymará tongue, had talked
very well in Spanish, was asked if the crosses really did keep out
the rain. He replied gravely, “Yes, if the roof is a good one.”
Whether the orthodoxy of the Indians is more than a crust of
superstition I do not profess to know, but I have the conviction
that a true missionary priesthood would work a vast improvement
in their condition, and would produce the evidences of genuine
belief in the doctrines of the Church which is demonstrated by the
practice of those doctrines. They have had Roman Catholicism for
four hundred years, and another form of worship would be meaningless
to them; but what they need is the vital principles of the Catholic
worship, and not the abuses of unfaithful servants of the Church.
I had heard that the Indians in the depths of their natures preserved
the old traditions, and that they still secretly worshipped the
White Spirit of the Illimani. Several persons whom I asked replied
that they knew nothing of this belief. One of them, a Peruvian who
had spent much time among the Indians, said the only spirit they
worshipped was the spirit of alcohol.
Among the native population the _cholos_ are easily distinguished.
They are the migratory classes who live in the larger towns and
some of whom work in the mines. Many of them are freighters. They
have charge of the pack trains to and from the mines. They have a
distinctive dress,--the loose cotton trouser, widening below the
knee and with a V-strip of different cloth in either side. They
are a political power, for, while they take little part in the
elections, they are not unready to share in a disturbance.
The aboriginal native yet preserves many customs distinct from the
_cholo_. He wears a cap, or _gorro_, which was worn in the time
of the Incas, and he contents himself with a blanket instead of
trousers if he cannot afford the latter. The pure-blood Indians are
the best for the freight caravans where the llamas are employed,
for they can manage those whimsical beasts of burden as no one
else can. The llama feeds as it goes along, and a born manager of
animals is needed to handle a _tropa_, or drove, of them, and keep
them moving in regular order. The life of the freighter is a hard
one, tramping all day and at night sleeping in the corral with the
beasts.
The Indian woman in Bolivia occupies a plane on an equality with
the man. She has no lord and master, as has the American Indian
woman in the noble red man of the West. She works, but he also must
work. She accompanies him with the pack trains, all the while that
she is trudging along twirling her spools and winding the wool
into yarn. It is rare to see an Indian woman without her spools
unless she is weaving at the loom. Walking and talking, gossiping
and scolding, shouting at the llamas, tramping over the sharpest
mountain-pass or plunging down into the gorges, she manages to keep
the spool always twirling. It is a most peculiar process, and would
drive a small boy who has a notion of spinning a top on the end of
his finger wild with emulation, though he hardly would be able to
imitate the process.
Marriage bonds among these Indians are not loose ties. In all the
settled communities where the little church has been planted, the
priest sees that the ceremony is performed, for it means a fee to
him. But when the man wanders away for work and is gone for years,
as sometimes happens, it is no interruption to the family bond
that on his return a brood of children greet him. He resumes the
matrimonial relation and accepts the children without question.
There is a prevalent delusion that in these altitudes the birth
rate is very low, and, moreover, that many of the children come
into the world deaf or lose the sense of hearing soon after birth.
While the families are not so large as in the tropics or lower
altitudes, they are numerous enough, and I was not surprised to be
told that the report about deafness and the excessive rate of infant
mortality does not bear the scrutiny of scientific investigation.
To reach La Paz from Calamarca it is necessary to cross several
_quebradas_, or wide ravines. Then the gravelly plain spreads out
and stretches to the precipice of the circular basin in which
lies the city. La Paz spreads along the inner sides of a rocky
amphitheatre, a panorama of red roofs, blended blue and white
buildings, church towers, and parks of willow and eucalyptus trees.
The greenest and most refreshing spot in the mountain bowl, the one
which gladdens the eye and rests the mind while filling it with
pleasing anticipations, is the cemetery. But from the Heights no
one guesses that this oasis is a graveyard.
A splendid highway leads down to the city, which is 1,400 feet below
the level of the great plain. At first it is a straight slanting road
at an angle of 45 degrees. Then it winds and becomes very crooked
and abrupt. This is the coachman’s hour of triumph. He sends the
mules at a full gallop, and if a spill does not happen the plaza is
reached in half an hour. In passing, there is a blurred impression
of steep mountain-sides with burros, llamas, and men and women
slowly climbing the precipitous paths. This vision becomes more
substantial when the level is reached and it is possible to look
back and see what appear to be countless processions of two-legged
and four-legged ants losing themselves on the ridges and steep
slopes.
La Paz has a plaza and an alameda and two or three smaller parks
which are not uninviting. The Chuquiyupu, or La Paz, River winds
through the town. The hillsides on which the buildings are located
are very steep. The Plaza Murillo is a sort of terrace or level
between the river and the ridge. There is an old cathedral,--one of
the few in South America about which I know nothing, for I did not
even enter it. The market-place in front affords the best examples
of native life. La Paz, notwithstanding it is the commercial centre
and has the largest Spanish and foreign element, is still the home
of the native race. The town has a population of 60,000, of whom
40,000 are said to be Aymarás, 10,000 _cholos_, and the remainder
of European, chiefly Spanish, origin. The _cholos_ learn to speak
Spanish, but the Aymarás will not.
[Illustration: View of the Cathedral, La Paz]
Though no act of Congress has formally made effective the provision
of the Constitution which allows the capital to be shifted, Sucre no
longer is the seat of government. The President has his residence in
La Paz, it is the headquarters of the army, the national custom-house
is there, and the Congress meets there. When Sucre was the actual
capital, it was isolated from the rest of the country. The foreign
ministers lived at La Paz. Some of them during their term of office
never visited Sucre, but contented themselves by sending their
credentials by messenger or through the mails.
La Paz is notable for the international character of its society.
At a dinner at the home of Minister Sorsby I met a Bavarian mining
capitalist and his wife, an English railway manager married to an
Argentine lady, the wife of a Greek mining engineer who had come
out from Constantinople on her bridal trip, a French financier, a
Spanish merchant, two or three Peruvian gentlemen, as many Americans,
and a Brazilian. This is the cosmopolitanism of a mining country
in any part of the world. Mr. Mathieu, the Chilean Minister, I
had known in Washington when he was Secretary of the Legation.
Mr. Ignacio Calderon, afterwards Bolivian Minister to the United
States, at the time of my visit was the Secretary of the Treasury.
A pleasant incident was a breakfast with his family and a talk of
home affairs, for his wife was a Baltimore lady.
A resting-place after weeks of wayfaring, a vantage point for
digesting information and maturing impressions of the imprisoned
country and her people, a preparation place for further
wayfaring,--all these La Paz was for me.