In previous issues of Bolivian Express we have talked about La Paz and its transport system, its rivers and its people. We’ve also written about El Alto, about its exuberant cholets and unbridled expansion. For this October issue we are commemorating La Paz by looking at its newest transportation infrastructure and architecture.
Back in its infancy, La Paz was an assemblage of chozas spread along the Choqueyapu River. Brick by brick, the city grew, and bigger houses made of adobe were built by the original (and enslaved) inhabitants of the area. And here, on 16 July 1809, the first independence of Latin America was declared by Pedro Domingo Murillo. (It would last only six months.)
The city’s first larger structures were in the colonial style, but few of these buildings are still standing in La Paz. Charles Bladon explains why (p.11). Nowadays, you will most likely stumble upon Republican Architecture – such as the Palacio Quemado on Plaza Murillo – and Art Deco buildings, a part of the larger Modernist movement, which Josephine Zavaglia delves into (p.27). These two very different styles, which exist side by side today, date from the 19th and 20th centuries, from when the city experienced its most intense growth.
In the early 1900s, about 50,000 people lived in La Paz; 50 years later the population reached 300,000. The city had to adapt to the incoming flow of migrants and needed a new cityscape. Visionaries such as architect Emilio Villanueva made this possible. Villanueva was the first to bring the notion of urbanism to Bolivia and reinvented the city between 1910 and 1925 by designing whole neighbourhoods and avenues.
Today, the paceño is impressed by el teleférico and its modernity – as Matthew Grace uncovers (p.14) – but back then, it was all about the tramway. In 1909, the first line opened. It served the areas of Obrajes, Miraflores, the General Cemetery and Plaza España amongst others; there was a first and a second class for passengers, and in 1936 the network extended throughout 20 lines. The tramway was el teleférico of yesteryear. It closed quietly in 1950 for financial and safety reasons. Then the automobile began to invade the city’s arteries, causing more and more accidents. Now the only way to avoid the traffic is above the skyline, riding the cable cars.
The city kept on growing, with another wave of rural migration from the 1970s to the 1990s that brought the population to current levels – about 800,000 people. Neighbourhoods spread towards the south and onto the slopes of La Paz’s surrounding canyon, but since the 1990s, La Paz is, in terms of population, the city we know today. However, the city’s stunted growth is something that could be remedied. I interviewed Xavier Iturralde, an entrepreneur and urban visionary, who is working on reconceptualising the city (p.32).
If you take a walk in the city centre, chances are you will walk past Plaza Murillo, named after the aforementioned revolutionary. As Bolivian writer Jaime Saenz described it, ‘La Plaza Murillo resume la historia de Bolivia en su totalidad.’ (‘Plaza Murillo sums up Bolivian history in its totality.’) There couldn’t be a more apt description. The square is encircled by buildings that have seen Bolivia’s history unfold, by walls against which ex-presidents have been executed and by cobblestones where many have fallen dead fighting for democracy. And the buildings themselves tell a story. On one corner is a decaying house meant to be demolished soon, next to it is the Legislative Assembly with its clock running backwards and across the square is the Palacio Quemado. Behind the cathedral the towering Casa del Pueblo is growing, intended to house the current government and to represent modernity and the future of Bolivia.
Matthew Grace asked the people of La Paz what they thought about this ‘house of the people’ (p.20). From passers-by’s reactions, paceños don’t seem convinced by this giant concrete-and-brick monolith. But paceños are the sort that look ahead and embrace modernity. Looking at the city when perched up in a cable car, one sees an improbable combination of bricks and glass, old and new, historical and modern. The city and its architecture are a fitting representation for the diverse people who inhabit it.
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Photos: Adriana Murillo
Preserving the Buildings of an Aging La Paz
Tucked away around the corner of Plaza Murillo, a mere stone’s throw away from the Legislative Assembly, a structure that bears familiar marks of colonial inspiration lays in decay. Decrepit and facing the prospect of lying in ruins, it is still recognised for its intricate design. Its origins are unknown, but it can be seen in photos dating to the 1870s. Its age shows. One portion of the building’s corrugated iron roof collapsed in January of this year due to heavy rain. An elderly couple walks by, gazes fixed, perhaps dreaming of what the structure once was, but shaking their heads for what it now is. In a plaza that draws in visitors from the farthest reaches of the world, it is a wonder how this could simply be allowed to happen.
According to Gastón Gallardo Dávila, dean of the department of architecture at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, it is also a wonder that most of us label these buildings as ‘colonial’. Apparently there are only a few buildings in La Paz that are actually from the colonial era. ‘There are some churches,’ Gallardo explains, ‘maybe two or three houses left, but nothing more. Nothing else is colonial architecture, it’s Arquitectura Republicana.’ In contrast to the cities of Potosí and Sucre, which are brimming with colonial edifices from the 16th and 17th centuries, La Paz is instead filled with intricate and charming buildings that pry inspiration from Architectural Rationalism and the Art Deco movements of the 20th century, both of which traceable to the Classical and Neoclassical schools so easily mistaken for colonial architecture. Regardless of their mistaken roots, these buildings are historic. They are pieces of history listed and protected by the government, and yet some of them stand neglected.
Gabor Prudencio, a demolition engineer who works in the city, hints at La Paz’s reluctance to look after these buildings saying, ‘It’s too late to become Cusco.’ Prudencio has worked in La Paz over the past year in a business that is growing due to Bolivia’s burgeoning economy and the constant demand to rip down town houses to replace them with larger, more practical and profitable office blocks. Prudencio says that cases similar to that of the house in Plaza Murillo are quite common. ‘Unfortunately,’ he adds, ‘it’s just left like that until more sections of the house start coming off. The authorities only do something if it’s an emergency.’
Marcelo Arroyo, La Paz’s municipal secretary of planning and development, says that there is a system in place. ‘We have a project for a law regarding heritage buildings, and we are working with the Ministry of Culture,’ he says. ‘In the law there are different categories for buildings that define the type of interventions one can do on each of them.’ Despite a system being in place, a lot more can be done to ensure the preservation of these structures. Intervention from the authorities is often in question.
‘According to the law,’ Gallardo says, ‘landowners are responsible for the maintenance of their house. But often, when they have old properties, they justify the neglect by saying it’s too expensive to maintain them. If the state wanted to, it could take care of it, but often it just lets buildings fall down and sees what it can do with the ruins. Then it invests money to build something new and washes its hands, justifying the process.’
In this Bolivian rendition of the classic debate between aesthetics and utility, Gallardo takes a side, favouring aesthetics. He questions the idea of replacing old buildings with new ones. ‘The Hospital de Clínicas in La Paz was built in 1914 by Emilio Villanueva, a prominent and visionary Bolivian architect,’ Gallardo explains. ‘The plan is to destroy it and build a new one. People who defend the city’s heritage ask why they need to build on top of the old one. Why can’t they preserve the old structure and pick a new site for the future building?’ Pointing to another case study, he mentions the old football stadium in Miraflores that was knocked down in 1975, its Tiwanaku influences destroyed with it. Although the stadium couldn’t accommodate the desired amount of people, what Gallardo questions is the act of demolishing architectural heritage. He sustains that, after all, these features could have been preserved in the remodelling.
Built in the 1950s and inspired by colonial architecture, this building is stubbornly fighting decay and age.
Despite these trends that favor demolition, there is a structure behind Plaza San Francisco, on Calle Murillo, that could guide others by setting an example. Built in the 1950s and inspired by colonial architecture, this building is stubbornly fighting decay and age. Its inner courtyard and beautified patio, encompassed in old brick and wooden railed verandas, draw on the colonial or Republican style that once dominated the city. Owner Daisy Vega de Arce refuses to let her property decay. With the help of her head administrator, Oscar Espejo, she has been busy developing the building. ‘Our project is to turn the house into a hostel, respecting all the architectural details that define its style,’ Espejo says. The patio is already playing host to restaurants, cafés and a distillery, whilst preserving the original structure.
Espejo shows what once was a chapel and is now being converted into a restaurant and points out the rotten wooden railings he has been meaning to replace. What I’m seeing isn’t a destruction of heritage but a renewal: archaic surroundings renovated and reinforced, decaying interiors infused with new life and purpose. Overall, this is deeply compliant with the drive to modernise La Paz and the need to make use of the structures. The house on Calle Murillo provides a middle ground. It seeks rejuvenation, not abolition – relevancy instead of disuse.
Gallardo believes that paceños don’t value preservation. ‘There is the orgullo paceño,’ he concedes. ‘The paceño is proud to have a city that is 450 years old. However, in daily life, it seems better to destroy something old. Only when it’s lost do people realise it’s too late.’ This is clearly the case with Mercado Lanza. It was once a traditional market and is now a white concrete structure next to the San Francisco Church, its potential only realised too late. But Gallardo understands that ‘each historic period wants to have its own expression and style. With La Paz reaching modernity, it is no surprise that this is the case,’ he says. It is practical, inevitable and logical that the old makes way for the new.
Espejo shows sentiment towards these crumbling structures that he thinks people of La Paz generally undervalue. ‘It seems that architectural heritage has been left behind,’ he says. ‘If we are not going to value our history, I do not know what we are going to value.’
Photos: Iván Rodriguez - Matthew Grace
Orgullo Paceño for the Ultramodern Cable-Car Mass-Transit System
On September 29, the newest line of La Paz’s state-of-the-art cable-car system – el teleférico – was inaugurated in a raucous celebration in Plaza Villarroel in the Miraflores neighbourhood, just north of the center of the city. Thousands of paceños thronged the public square. The new teleférico station shone in the strong spring sunlight; vendors taking advantage of the festive crowd hawked choripan, sodas and trinkets; and children waved Bolivian flags while musicians entertained the celebrants from a large stage set up under the gossamer cables upon which the new orange cable cars dangled.
The Línea Naranja is the newest addition to the teleférico system, which now comprises five lines – the Amarilla, which connects working-class southern El Alto with the upscale neighbourhood of Sopocachi; the Verde, linking Sopocachi with the even more upscale Zona Sur district; the Azul, which connects the dusty northern El Alto neighbourhood of Río Seco with La Ceja, on the edge of the canyon in which the city of La Paz rests; the Roja, linking the Azul line to central La Paz; and now the Naranja, which joins the Azul and the Roja lines from Miraflores.
Mi Teleférico, the governmental transit agency, runs the largest urban cable-car system in the world – and it’s not even half-built yet, with six more lines due to open by 2019, when el teleférico will officially be at full capacity. It’s being constructed by the Austrian cable-car firm Doppelmayr, which arrived in Bolivia five years ago with only three employees. Today, there are 100 Doppelmayr architects and civil and industrial engineers involved in the design and planning of the cable-car system, along with an additional 800 to 900 other employees engaged in construction, maintenance and training – but not for long. According to Torsten Bäuerlen, the coordinating manager at Doppelmayr in Bolivia, the company’s contract includes all construction and on-site operational management for a year after each line is completed. After that, Mi Teleférico takes over fully. In fact, that’s already happened with the system’s oldest lines – the Línea Amarilla, for example, having opened in May 2014, is now already a strictly Bolivian-run enterprise. And, according to Bäuerlen, it’s running better than expected.
At first, Bäuerlen says, ‘We were a little worried’ about constructing such a high-tech system and handing it over to the Bolivian agency. While Austria has employed cable-car systems successfully for decades – think of all those ski resorts in the Alps – in Bolivia, which has a stunted infrastructure and little technological capacity, such a transit system was a quantum leap into the future. But, says Bäuerlen, the Mi Teleférico agency ‘does a really good job; they’re really good operators and maintenance technicians.’
Bäuerlen conveys a sense of pride about his role in establishing el teleférico in La Paz and sharing a bit of his country’s technological patrimony with another country that, while similar in topography to his own, is so culturally distinct. Paceños, too, express pride when speaking about el teléferico. Edgar Sánchez, a celebrant at the Línea Naranja’s inauguration ceremony, said, ‘It’s 21st-century progress. It allows us to travel as rapidly as possible. It’s an example at the international level.’
Although the topography of La Paz adds to the city’s beauty, it also contributes to its pollution and traffic congestion. Extremely rugged hills and impenetrable rocky peaks create magnificent vistas, yet they also form bottlenecks for ground travel – not to mention trapping in car exhaust. Few roads connect the city of El Alto, which is on the altiplano and has a population of nearly a million, with La Paz, a city equal in size but more rugged in terrain. Light rail, subways, even articulated buses are unable to tackle the extremes of elevation here, leaving transit, until now, a mishmash of minivans and the occasional larger Pumakatari bus – a relatively new transit solution.
Now, however, it’s possible to travel quickly without suffering traffic snarl-ups, far above the choking pollution that frequently fills the canyon in which La Paz sits. In only three years, La Paz and sister city El Alto have seen a modern transit system grow from an incipient idea to a nearly fully realised functioning network. But not without a price.
Because Mi Teleférico is a federal agency, with the backing of the central government, communication with municipal authorities can be fraught. ‘It was difficult to work at first with Mi Teleférico on the first three lines,’ says Marcelo Arroyo, the city’s secretary of planning for development. ‘The company was allowed to intervene directly and expropriate as a national priority without taking into account [the municipality’s] planning model. That’s why many of the stations of the first three lines weren’t conceived with such an integral vision. They weren’t linked with the Pumakatari [bus] stops, for instance,’ he adds. Arroyo does, however, acknowledge that communication between the two parties has improved. They’ve now created a joint commission so new lines can be planned in a more coherent way with other urban development projects.
Still, el teleférico has its critics, even if the objections are less than full-throated. Gastón Gallardo Dávila, dean of the department of architecture at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, says, ‘El teleférico is modernity. This city has always been one of the less known in South America. Now it has a teleférico and it’s a very modern city in America.’ That said, Gallardo believes that el teleférico is essentially ‘not a good mass-transit system. It transports very few people,’ he says. He argues that Mi Teleférico inflates the numbers of people that use the system, and that the figure is much less than what’s publicised. ‘But,’ he adds, ‘paceños are proud to have a teleférico because it’s modern.’
And not just because it’s modern. Some paceños love its convenience. Gonzalo Rivero, who was attending the Línea Naranja opening ceremony on 29 September, said, ‘Here in La Paz there is a lot of traffic, blockades, strikes – things that create problems. El teleférico is safer, quicker, more reliable.’ And safety is exactly what Doppelmayr’s Bäuerlen likes to emphasise. He says that the teleférico system was designed to be redundant in its safety mechanisms. According to Bäuerlen, it is designed and built to provide hospital-grade protections in case of a natural disaster – for example, in the unlikely event of an earthquake. ‘We have calculated all foundations with maximum earthquake acceleration in mind,’ says Bäuerlen. ‘In fact, it’s statistically safer than plane travel. You are more likely to die from getting stung by a bee,’ he says, adding that el teleférico was built to conform to maximum industry safety standards.
It’s 21st-century progress. It allows us to travel as rapidly as possible. It’s an example at the international level.’
—Edgar Sánchez, celebrating the opening of the Línea Naranja
With two years until el teleférico is fully completed, it seems to have won out already with the people who live near it and use it frequently. The final verdict, however, will come once its disparate lines are connected into a coherent whole. At the moment, vast swaths of the cities of La Paz and El Alto are unaffected by the new cable-car system – the routes simply do not go where lugareños want to go. But work is starting on a new line in El Alto to link the north and the south of that city together, and the Línea Blanca, which will connect north-central La Paz to Sopocachi is largely completed. An inflection point, at which travel convenience pushes a critical mass of people to use the system, could be just over the horizon. As Cristina, who lives on the periphery of El Alto in the remote neighbourhood of Río Seco and works in La Ceja, on the edge of La Paz, says, ‘It’s a very good service, it helps us travel very rapidly.’
It’s possible to travel quickly without suffering traffic snarl-ups, far above the choking pollution that frequently fills the canyon in which La Paz sits.
Photos: Matthew Grace - Iván Rodriguez
A Blight to Some, an Inclusive Building Project to Others
Can a casa del pueblo be a ‘house of the people’ if the people revile it? That’s the question facing La Paz and the administration of Bolivian President Evo Morales as construction continues on a monolithic tower behind the Palacio Quemado near Plaza Murillo.
The building is easy to spot: Stand in the middle of historic Plaza Murillo, turn southwest and face the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace and the Palacio Quemado, and look up. You’ll see the half-finished façade of the 28-story-tall modern rectangular building jutting up behind the colonial curves and muted colours of the governmental palace and the baroque dome of the basilica. It’s a jarring juxtaposition of architectural styles that has many paceños up in arms.
The Casa del Pueblo and a smaller but no less controversial new building will house the executive and legislative branches, respectively. They were conceived in a piece of national legislation that declared their construction a ‘national priority.’ The legislation was a political maneuver, according to Universidad Mayor de San Andrés Architecture Dean Gastón Gallardo Dávila, intended to sidestep city regulations and preservation efforts. ‘These are exceptional laws that allow the construction of these buildings,’ he says. ‘They go above all the municipal regulations.’ Indeed, Marcelo Arroyo, the city’s secretary of planning for development, says, ‘The [federal government] never asked us or started a dialogue to plan these massive constructions without breaking the [municipal] regulations.’
But it’s not only the political expedience that has earned the Casa del Pueblo its share of criticism – it’s also the building’s aesthetics. Former Bolivian president Carlos Mesa has called the edificio an ‘unprecedented aggression’ that ‘destroys’ the historic centre of La Paz. Javier Espejo Brañez, the president of the College of Architects of La Paz, said the Casa del Pueblo ‘breaks the central urban center and the architectural heritage of the city.’
The building is a monument to the ego…. It’s a phallic building.’
—UMSA Architecture Dean Gastón Gallardo Dávila‘
In response, Vice President Álvaro García Linera accused Mesa of harboring a ‘racist, classist, and exclusive’ aesthetic. According to the Bolivian Ministry of Planning and Development, the Casa del Pueblo is an homage to ancient Tiwanaku architecture, highlighting the ‘solidity, simplicity, monumentality and symmetry’ demonstrated in the ruins of the ancient civilisation that existed millennia ago on the shores of Lake Titicaca – and of which Bolivians are rightfully so proud.
Gallardo disagrees. ‘No, I don’t think they were thinking about Tiwanaku when they designed this building,’ he says. ‘The building is a monument to the ego…People say it in the street. It’s a phallic building. You can see it from all sides. You can see it from all around the city. It’s an iconic object, badly done.’ He also defends former president Mesa from Vice President Linera’s accusations of racist aesthetics: ‘Carlos Mesa has a Eurocentric view,’ he says. ‘But that doesn't mean that he is racist…Carlos Mesa doesn’t think that way.’
Aesthetics aside, there are many that question the economic feasibility of a building that’s budgeted in at US$36 million – and its necessity. Scheduled to open in January next year, the Casa del Pueblo will reportedly come equipped with medium-grade armour and a helipad.
Susana, an unemployed woman walking by the building’s construction site, looked at its rising façade and said, ‘The money is being wasted. A lot of people don’t have money. We don’t have money to buy bread for our children.’ Another Bolivian, who declined to be named, agreed: ‘Honestly, it’s a waste of money, it could have been used for the poor instead of building this monstrosity.’
Not everyone is opposed to the edificio nuevo, though. Miriam, a secretary who works nearby, said, ‘Yes, it’s good…The doors [of the building will be] open for us to talk, to value our culture…It’s the house of the people; it’s our house – for all.’
But most people’s opinions of the new Casa del Pueblo were concerned with how it looks. And the reviews from el pueblo – those the building is presumably being built for – are decidedly negative. Eriberto, an accountant who works near the new building, said, ‘They say it will be the house of the people [laughs]. I don’t like it very much. It doesn’t match the architecture. It clashes.’
Curiously, according to Gallardo, the names of the architects who designed the building are being kept from the public. Perhaps for good reason: ‘No architect wants to claim that work,’ Gallardo says.
‘The issue of the architectural beauty of La Paz has been ruined by these ghosts, because these are not buildings. They have no use at all.’
—Suárez, in Plaza Murillo
Most agree that the building clashes horribly with the surrounding architecture. In a city like La Paz, in which older buildings are frequently demolished to make way for newer constructions, what feeble architectural heritage remains is centered around Plaza Murillo. And, people say, the Casa del Pueblo undermines it. According to Suárez, a man who was sunning himself on the steps to the basilica on Plaza Murillo last month, ‘This place used to be our national heritage, and the government has usurped it for its personal ambitions. This goes against our city.’
Suárez squinted and looked up at the half-finished high-rise that loomed over the 16th-century plaza in which La Paz’s ofttimes turbulent history has played out. Children were running nearby, women were selling drinks and pigeons were flocking in the sky. An early-evening after-work crowd was starting to fill the sidewalks as the presidential guard, dressed in their ceremonial red uniforms, stood at attention at the entrance of the Palacio Quemado. ‘The issue of the architectural beauty of La Paz has been ruined by these ghosts, because these are not buildings,’ Suárez said of the Casa del Pueblo and the new legislative building. ‘They have no use at all. This is a city that can’t be called a city, because these ghosts are offices for people who don’t do anything.’
