De facto or de jure.
This description of La Paz requires you to make a judgment. If you search the internet for the term “highest capital in the world”, you will almost certainly see La Paz heading the list. The site infoplease tells you this,
The highest capital in the world, before the domination of Tibet by China, was Lhasa, with an elevation of 12,087 feet above sea level. La Paz, the administrative and de facto capital of Bolivia, stands at an altitude of 11,913 feet above sea level.
The key phrase here is ‘administrative and de facto capital’. (You can see the Presidential Palace and administrative tower in the photo below.) However, according to Bolivia’s constitution, the national capital is Sucre. Here’s how this came to be:.
The Bolivian war for independence from Spain began with the ringing of a bell at the Basilica de San Francisco in Sucre on 25 May 1809 about the same time Napoleon was busy in Europe deposing the King of Spain. (You might recall that the Portuguese royal family abandoned Lisbon for Rio in 1808.) That rebellion was quashed relatively quickly but this didn’t deter people (especially those of Spanish descent) from continuing the fight and the country officially gained its independence on 6 August 1825.
At the time, the main driver of Bolivia’s economy was the silver mines at Potosi which is located in the south-central part of the country about 150 kilometers southwest of Sucre. So, when President José Miguel de Velasco changed the name of the country from Alto Perú to Bolivia on 12 July 1839 he sensibly designated Sucre as the capital.
By the end of the 19th century, the economic situation had changed dramatically. The mines were largely depleted and both Bolivia and Peru had suffered significant territorial losses to Chile in the Guerra del Salitre also known as the Saltpeter War or the War of the Pacific (a war we’ll encounter again near the end of this trip). As the balance of economic power shifted north, so did the political capital. The judicial and constitutional capital, however, remains in Sucre.
So here is the judgment you need to make: Are we visiting the highest capital city in the world or do you want to allow Sucre to claim its rightful position according to the Bolivian constitution thus ceding to Quito, Ecuador the title of highest capital. De facto or de jure. Which claim will you choose?
Taking ownership of a slur and inverting it.
In some parts of the U S the words cholo, chola, or even cholita, will evoke an image of a Latino or Latina, often of Mexican descent, who is low-income, ‘tough’, and is associated with or at a minimum wears clothes associated with gangster culture. Even in this usage, it is not often a compliment. (Cholo is the masculine form, chola is feminine and cholita adds the -ita suffix which makes it the diminutive little chola. It’s often used as a term of endearment or affection.)
Its derogatory use was not (and perhaps is not) uncommon in much of Latin America where it generally refers to indigenous people who have mixed European and native heritage and who more politely are called mestizos. Its American equivalents might be half breed versus mixed race. Some linguists believe cholo is derived from the Nahuatl word xolotl which means dog or mutt.
As Bolivia’s economy changed and mestizos and indigenous people began migrating to the cities, local residents used the term cholo to mock them. The urbanites saw these rural peasants as pretenders trying to scale the social ladder but that has begun to change with, perhaps, an unexpected driving force.
It is, in fact, the women who have moved closer to the center of the stage. For decades, these indigenous Aymara and Quechua women faced deep stereotypes and discrimination. They were servants and street hawkers. They were the maids to the middle classes. Prohibited from entering certain restaurants, they also couldn’t ride in taxis, were barred from some public buses, and could not walk freely in La Paz’s central square – Plaza Murillo.
For reasons I couldn’t discover (after admittedly minimal effort) most indigenous Bolivians don’t like being photographed. Still, I managed this shot
of a typically dressed cholita.
The classic “uniform” for a working cholita consists of a pollera (the heavy multi-layered skirt with petticoats), a bowler hat, and the aguayo – that colorful piece of cloth embroidered in indigenous patterns wrapped around her shoulders and resting on her back. As they have grown in affluence and influence, the more middle class cholita replaces the aguayo with a shawl that’s more decorative than practical, low-heeled pumps, and accessorizes with sometimes gaudy and often quite valuable jewelry. The look has come to be called cholita chic.
As far as I can tell, the bowler hat, which seems to be the most incongruous element, came to Bolivia sometime in the 1920s. They were manufactured in England and shipped to Bolivia where they were intended to be sold to British railway workers there. Unfortunately for the hatmaker, the bulk of the hats were too small. In an effort to salvage their investment, the importers began circulating a rumor that this was the latest fashion trend for women in Europe. (There’s another story that says that they promoted the myth that women who wore bowler hats were more fertile.) Whatever the reason, their marketing succeeded and the bowler became part and parcel of cholita style.
[Photo illustrating Cholita style from BBC.]
Their skirts are every bit as big as they look. The typical pollera of the Bolivian altiplano (high plains) is made from at least eight meters of material. The petticoats underneath the skirt are often embroidered and, like the skirt, are worn as high up as possible to enhance the apparent size of the wearer’s hips and buttocks to advertise her potential fecundity.
The aguayo is meant to be both functional and beautiful. Wrapped around a cholita’s shoulders, tied at the front and resting on her back, it’s seen throughout the Andes. While it’s evident when she’s carrying a child in it, at other times it might be filled with goods for sale, goods she purchased, or it might contain some other surprise.
I am in no position to judge whether the rising fortunes of the cholitas are more closely linked to Bolivia’s economic growth, the election of Evo Morales Bolivia’s first indigenous president, or some other factor but I am convinced that the first two factors have played some role in their ascension.
Women identifying themselves as cholitas are now found in a range of professions and in many strata of Bolivian society. In an interview with the BBC, Maria Isabel Cordova, who set up a new society magazine for La Paz’s Aymara community said, “Just 10 years ago it was almost impossible to think of a chola being a lawyer or a journalist, or in front of a television camera, leading a national program.”
Their new status has even received some official recognition. In October 2011 the council in La Paz passed a municipal law declaring that the Chola Paceña (cholita of La Paz) was a central part of the city’s cultural heritage and, rather than merely occupying the informal market and domestic service, they now fill political, media and business roles.
Of course, social mores don’t change overnight and Bolivia is still a relatively poor country. On my visit I saw many cholitas “occupying the informal market” (another surreptitious photo)
and it’s clear that many of them remain at the lower end of the economic spectrum. It’s also clear, however, that they have claimed ownership of the term cholita and transformed it from a slur to a point of pride.