On December 7, 2014, our city of La Paz, Bolivia, was named one of the Seven New Urban Wonders of the World by the New7Wonders Foundation of Switzerland. The global competition was a combination of expert judging and popular voting, and remains a great badge of honor for the people of La Paz. Though most residents and visitors certainly don’t need such a distinction to appreciate this amazing place, it was really the long, drawn-out effort of paceños and other Bolivians to launch and drive a global campaign that brought the city to the top of a list of 1,200 entries.
In winning this distinction, La Paz has joined six other cities around the world that offer their own unique attributes and distinct flair. Today La Paz stands beside the modern megaprojects and glossy architectures of Doha, Qatar; the mixing of the old and the new in the ‘Paris of the Mediterranean’, Beirut, Lebanon; the bustling ports and promenades of Durban, South Africa; the preserved, cigar-smoke-stained old quarters of Havana, Cuba; the mass flows of people below the towers of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and the quaint colonial streets of tiny Vigan, Philippines.
To all these winning cities, La Paz sends a heartfelt ‘felicidades’ for achieving such a prestigious recognition for all the work you and your citizens have done to showcase the beauty and intrigue of your respective homes. The people of La Paz are honored to be amongst such impressive locales as we all share the global stage in showing off the wonders of our cities.
July 16 is an important day for our city. It commemorates the 1809 mestizo revolt against the Spanish, led by Pedro Domingo Murillo. This event, in which paceños ousted the governor and the bishop of La Paz during celebrations of the Virgen del Carmen, helped launch the years-long struggle for independence of Upper Peru, what is now Bolivia. This year, the city of La Paz is commemorating this day with nearly a week’s worth of cultural activities and celebrations. And our place as one of the world’s Seven Wonder Cities is taking center stage.
Paceños know this city deserves this global recognition. In the areas of culture, people, topography, history, food, heritage and urbanism, residents here have a lot to be proud of. So in this issue of Bolivian Express, we explored these themes as a way to showcase the amazing things La Paz has to offer its citizens and the world. With our writers from many corners of the globe, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria and Australia, we hope their visitors’ points of view provide new ways to see our city that will both enchant travelers passing through and enlighten the city’s residents to new perspectives on what makes La Paz so amazing.
So again, we raise our glass in congratulations to our fellow Wonder Cities, and encourage visitors and residents alike to join us as we offer our top reasons why La Paz is, without a doubt, a Ciudad Maravillosa!
Download
Illustration : Oscar Zalles
Local eats in the wonderful city
Paceña cuisine, relatively unknown on the international tourist track, is a hugely ingrained part of the identity of the city. Hearty, unpretentious and cheap, the dishes served up on every street corner tie La Paz to its local producers and its citizens to their traditions. It’s not just meat, potatoes, and more potatoes. Food-loving foreigners have plenty of praise to give, and will almost certainly leave with a favourite dish or a regular vendor.
MERCADO LANZA:
Ensalada de Frutas
Vivid piles of fruit burst on the uninviting concrete interior of Mercado Lanza, promising refreshment and nutrition. The star of the show here, though, will satiate your sweet tooth rather than your vitamin levels. As if your inner child had been given free reign over the tedious fruit salad, prepare to gorge on an assortment of fruits suffocated in jelly and yoghurt, and piled high with ice cream, whipped cream, wafers and chocolate sauce.
Price: 10 Bs.
When to go: After lunch
Choripan
Choripan, a fusion of chorizo and pan, can be found all over La Paz at most times of day, and beats your average sandwich with its warm, freshly fried sausage. Mercado Lanza houses Doña Elvira’s famous kiosk, discoverable by the inevitable queue outside. It’s the fresh bread and the use of pickled vegetables which sets her choripan apart. Trying to get your mouth around the bursting roll and overflowing sauces is a challenge to the inexperienced, but well worth the mess. Let the bread absorb the juices of the chorizo for a minute before attempting this greasy delight.
Price: 8 Bs.
When to go: All day
MERCADO RODRIGUEZ:
Chirimoya
Mercado Rodriguez is the place to go for stacks of fresh eggs, fruit and vegetables. The cherimoya is one of the sweetest fruits around, encased in a deceptively rough-looking green skin. As the white flesh melts on your tongue you may agree with Mark Twain that it is ‘the most delicious fruit known to man’. An indulgent hybrid of melon, pineapple, mango and pear that earns its nickname as the ‘custard apple’.
Price: 10 Bs.
When to go: Morning
LAS CHOLAS:
Sandwich de Chola
This small stage of vendors is easy to miss being outside of the main residential areas, but many make the trip just for the sandwich. Lighter than most paceño street food, the ladies at Las Cholas fill crusty bread with succulent pork, pickled onions and carrots, and a mysterious spicy sauce. Try some crackling from the towering piles of roasted pork hind stacked on each counter and wash it all down with a Paceña beer sat at the brightly coloured plastic tables for the full experience.
Price: 15 Bs.
When to go: Lunchtime
PLAZA VILLARROEL:
Caldo de Cordero
Meals in Bolivia have an unfair reputation for being oversized, basic, and meaty. Sometimes this is the perfect formula. Some may balk at the idea of having a huge hunk of boiled lamb for breakfast, but after a marathon night out, this hearty piece served with chuño, potatoes, rice and seasoned broth, will hit the spot. The ultimate recovery food for the worse-for-wear partygoer is best appreciated amongst friends as the sun slowly rises.
Price: 17 Bs.
When to go: 6am
CALLE MEXICO:
Tucumana
A more filling take on the salteña, the tucumana is stuffed with ground beef, potatoes and egg, and infused with a heavy meaty stock. It is deep fried in oil, lending its outer pastry a slightly bubbly appearance. The best tucumana stall will offer a rainbow selection of sauces. The heavy savoury flavour is best balanced with the green sauce, which is pepper-based, light, and fragrant.
Price: 15 Bs.
When to go: Breakfast
PLAZA ESPAÑA:
Salteña
The salteña is the holy grail of street food in La Paz: cheap, delicious and available everywhere. There is a vendor on most streets with an army of warm salteñas ready to grab on the move. They are most comparable to Cornish pasties, with a slightly sweet buttery crust encasing a savoury chicken or pork mix in a spiced sauce. It’s difficult to find a bad salteña, but the kiosk on the corner of Plaza España is particularly respected with a subtly melt-in-the-mouth pastry.
Price: 5 Bs.
When to go: Breakfast or mid-morning snack
LAS VELAS:
Anticuchos
This meaty delicacy is surprisingly tasty and can normally be found just outside nightclubs, tempting anyone feeling peckish in the early hours. Small slices of cow’s heart are skewered and engulfed in an intense burst of fire, before being served with, of course, potatoes and spicy sauce. Don’t be put off by the unusual cut of meat – the anticucho is tender and rich in a meaty flavour; more of a hearty snack than a meal.
Price: 9 Bs.
When to go: 11pm – 3am
PLAZA EGUINO:
Tripitas
Not for the weak-stomached, this dish, which doesn’t let anything go to waste, isn’t prepared or garnished to disguise in any way what you’re eating. On the side of the Plaza, are six women with huge white bowls of roughly chopped and boiled small intestines, or twisted lengths of fried large intestines. Served with spicy sauce and potatoes, tripe is widely loved amongst the locals and worth trying for the experience at such a low cost.
Price: 4 Bs.
When to go: 6 – 10pm
Photo: Iván Rodriguez Petkovic
The role of museums in conserving national identity
‘Our heritage is in information, in making our own society conscious of the place that it occupies in history and in the world.’
- Cergio Prudencio
On the corner of Plaza Murillo stands a solid, imposing, colonial structure emblazoned with huge posters that read: REAPERTURA, 10 AGOSTO. The placard outside will tell you that the building houses the Museo Nacional de Arte, a national institution dedicated to the preservation and display of Bolivian art. But for the past three years, this institution has been closed to visitors, with only a temporary hall displaying various small and non-permanent exhibitions.
The Museo Nacional de Arte is known for its strength in two main areas. The first, an extraordinary collection of colonial art that is unmatched across Bolivia, not just for its historical significance but also for the pure beauty of the pieces. The second, a wide collection of 20th and 21st Century art, mainly paintings and sketches, which is also the most representative collection across the country. Due to the closure, these works have been hidden from public view and will only be redisplayed when the museum opens in August.
And what an opening it will be. The project of renovating the museum, as with any colonial structure, has been complicated and drawn out, but the rewards will be great. The interior of the museum has been completely restored and areas that were previously administrative offices have been opened to the public as new exhibits. This will give the museum more space for its current exhibits and make room for the art in the archives.
The extensive restoration of the museum has been carried out by the Fundación Cultural del Banco Central de Bolivia. This foundation was set up 20 years ago by the central bank in order to manage the cultural heritage of the country, largely through different museums. Although at first it managed only four museums, it now runs six institutions, including: Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folclórica in La Paz and the Archivo Nacional in Sucre.
According to the foundation’s President, Cergio Prudencio, its mandate is very specific. ‘We are concerned with the preservation, the conservation and the administration of six repositories in Bolivia,’ he says. This involves the day to day management of the institutes, the provision of funds, and the coordination of the centres so that their cultural activities can be developed. The ultimate goal is protecting the heritage of Bolivia.
As a country, Bolivia has a lot of heritage to protect. As Prudencio stresses, ‘Our heritage is in information, in making our own society conscious of the place that it occupies in history and in the world.’ The rich history of Bolivia has given its culture a legacy full of different nuances, with pre and post colonial societies that contribute to the tapestry that is the modern country. La Paz as a city is central to this preservation and to the spread of public awareness because it is here where the threads of influence converge, making it an important place of heritage.
In contrast to the Museo Nacional de Arte, with its collections of traditionally pure artistic forms (such as oil paintings, canvases and sketches), the foundation supports another institute in La Paz that is dedicated to something much more representative of the current and former inhabitants of Bolivia. El Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore, known as MUSEF, is full of collections of native art and traditional crafts.
Although it is based around a colonial house just off Plaza Murillo, MUSEF has expanded into a sprawling modern structure with several floors that link different exhibitions. One of the principal aims of the museum is to explain the stories of the people through the objects and artifacts that are on display.
MUSEF uses a technique called the ‘operative chain’, which explores the history behind an object from the forging of the raw materials, through its creation, and to its usage by the people. This can be seen clearly in the one of the halls featuring displays of textiles throughout the centuries from different areas and ethnic groups, not just from Bolivia but also extending into the lower reaches of Peru. Along with the finished products, the display highlights the changes in the tools, dyes and cloth through physical items and various video screens. For the visitors, this form of presentation is striking and the contents are memorable.
The most impressive exhibit, however, is the long, dark, atmospheric hall of masks. The notice at the start reads that the masks are a way of showing ‘the diverse faces of the collective soul’, and the skillful curation of this exhibition is such that the masks seem to come to life, telling the stories of those who made them, wore them, and danced in them.
This last exhibit provides a sense of the magical, the creative, the intangible. It is in displaying this that MUSEF, and the foundation as a whole, has shown its most skillful side. It allows the visitor to connect with their imagination and picture those who created the heritage that the public can now admire. This connection enables the heritage to be explored in a way that stretches beyond the museums and lingers long in the memory, even after stepping out into the bright Bolivian sunshine. As Prudencio underlines, ‘Our aim is to make the patrimony of our country more accessible to the public.’ These two museums are evidence that the goals of the foundation are being met, and even surpassed.
La Paz as a city is central to this preservation and to the spread of public awareness because it is here where the threads of influence converge, making it an important place of heritage.
Photo: Isabel Cocker
A Passageway Back Into Colonial Times
The buildings are what bring tourists here, and after that they come into our shop.
A hidden alleyway tucked up in the maze of streets that lie above the cathedral on Plaza Murillo, Calle Jaén is lined with myriad museums, stores and cafés. These are mainly aimed at the touristic crowd, but although this street is one of the most visited in La Paz by guidebook followers, it is not that trade that draws many in. Rather, it is the impressive architecture with which the street is filled. In a city full of ramshackle buildings, newly built towers and bare-brick blocks, this small street stands out for the quality of the preservation of its colonial façades.
The day I visited was, like the majority of those in the capital’s dry winter, a bright one. The sun reflected off the gleaming white walls lining the street and made the colours of the vibrant shops glow. The carved wooden railings of the balconies stood proud and straight, and immaculate lanterns hung silently in rows to light the narrow thoroughfare. This is remarkable in a city which is constantly moving forward, that has rejected the majority of the structures of its colonial age.
The top of the street is dedicated to different small museums, from the Museo de Instrumentos Musicales, which in addition to displaying native instruments dating from before the Spanish conquest also offers music classes and various concerts using the display pieces, to the incredibly beautiful Casa de Murillo. This museum offers an in-depth exploration of the history of Pedro Domingo Murillo, a champion of the Bolivian independence movement who is often credited with lighting the spark – el primer grito – which ultimately led to the secession of Latin America from the Spanish crown. Set in a low, cool building around a pretty courtyard, this museum also displays collections of colonial-era furniture and art to fill in the life behind the figure of the hero.
Appreciation for those first rebels against the Spanish authority is clear in this little alleyway. Previously a market street called Cabra Cancha, in the early 19th century it was a hotbed of radical sympathisers, as its position in the old town near the governmental square placed it in the area of the rich, land-owning classes who first incited revolt against the Spanish Empire. Its full current name – Calle Apolinar Jaén – refers back to another of the leading criollos who raised an army in 1809 to try and defeat the rulers. He and Murillo both lived on this street and they were both ultimately hung for their treason, but the renaming of this street shows the gratitude that paceños still feel for their first champion.
Some workers were busy sweeping outside the Casa de Murillo when I visited, and they told me about how the city works to ensure that all the municipal buildings here are kept in their original condition. All of the museums along the street are maintained by the Direccion Patrimonial, a body of workers controlled by La Casa de Cultura. This, ultimately, is controlled by the alcaldia. The team is constantly kept busy, not only inspecting the exteriors of the buildings but also ensuring the upkeep of the courtyards and the interiors of the rooms. One man told me, proudly, that ‘each museum gets a complete renovation every two to three years.’
A worker in a tour-guide shop told me that ‘The buildings are what bring tourists here, and after that they come into our shop.’ However, the preservation of the street is not maintained only because of the money and trade it promotes. The pride of the residents is obvious when they talk about why they like the atmosphere, why they have their studios and workshops there as well as their shops despite it being a busy tourist attraction. It is a street unlike any other in La Paz and it merits the attention it receives, not just for the buildings, but also for its history and for the various institutions that have been established inside its narrow walls.
