Sucre sweet and bitter

The steep streets of Sucre

Teetering here at 13,000+ feet in Potosí, I thought I´d follow the advice to rest at a high elevation and so am catching up with another blog post, this time about Sucre. Marty has already done some great posts, but I couldn´t resist chiming in. (This will surprise no one.)

Sucre is a lovely tranquil city, full of narrow cobbestone lanes, whitewashed buildings, red tile roofs, and teenagers. (OK, sometimes it´s not so tranquil -- especially when on Saturdays at siesta time the teenagers in the brass band practice a song that lasts 2 hours.)

Its streets are steep -- it´s sometimes reminiscent of San Francisco -- and the sidewalks are narrow. So narrow that it´s not uncommon to actually bump into people when rounding a corner!

The city is at about 9,000 feet in elevation, which until today seemed quite high; when I arrived a week ago I had to walk much slower than usual. It´s very dry, as well, which makes for gorgeous blazing midday temperatures and cold, starry nights.


A sunny afternoon (like most) at the Recoleta mirador


The always-tranquil cementario

Sucre is a very old and proud city. It was founded in 1538 and is full of churches that actually date back to the 1500s. The declaration of Bolivia´s independence from Spain was signed here in 1825, and Sucre residents call their city the heart of Latin American independence, saying that the first cry for independence was uttered here in 1809. Sucre also is home to a very old and famous university that was founded in 1624; for centuries, the city has produced doctors, lawyers, and other professionals.

Perhaps partly because of a class schism, Sucre residents are on the whole not happy with their president, Evo Morales, widely lauded as the country´s first indigenous president.



Sucre is the original capital of Bolivia and is the seat of its judiciary. It claims the status of ¨constitutional capital¨and doesn´t recognize the move of the capital to La Paz as legitimate.
This may seem like a quibble but is a serious dispute.

Morales declared La Paz the capital in 2007 (among other changes to the consitution) and the residents of Sucre protested. The protests escalated, the military came in, miners came in from Potosí bearing (and throwing) dynamite, and it got very ugly. Three young Sucre residents died.

The way I was told the story, a mob took over the streets, burning buildings. All the prisoners were released for their own safety. The police, overpowered, actually left the city. They walked to Potosí, I was told, as no cars or trucks were allowed in or out by the protesters. They told Sucre residents that everything would descend into chaos, but people actually organized themselves, the mob dispersed, people fed each other, and generally kept order until the situation ended. The prisoners even went back to the jail of their own volition (presumably because without it they were homeless).

Unfortunately, about a year later there was some very ugly retaliation against campesinos supporting Morales.

I heard about all of this from my Spanish teacher, who said that many people don´t like to talk about it. There isn´t much confidence in the government here, though.



It´s hard to know how to evaluate all of this -- some may be class resentment and some may be real fear of repression and autocracy -- but I was grateful to find out more about what goes on beneath the surface of what is, no matter what, a beautiful place.
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