Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
FIESTAS IN SUCRE
Sucre's main religious celebration is the
Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadeloupe
, held annu-
ally on September 8 and marked by a procession and folkloric dances. In the second half of
September each year the city hosts an
International Cultural Festival
, with performances
by local and international theatre and dance groups.
Theanniversaryofthe1809“
Primer Grito Libertario de America
”,thefirstdeclaration
of independence in South America, is marked every May 25 with civic and military
parades, and is a public holiday throughout the Department of Chuquisaca. The depart-
ment's most famous annual fiesta, however, is the indigenous celebration of
Pujjlay
,
staged on the third Sunday of March in Tarabuco, 60km southeast of Sucre.
Brief history
Sucre was founded some time between 1538 and 1540 (the exact date is still hotly disputed
by Bolivian historians) by the conquistador Pedro de Anzures during the second major Span-
ish incursion into the Andes south of Lago Titicaca. Initially named
Chuquisaca
(prob-
ably a Spanish corruption of the original indigenous name Choquechaca, meaning “Golden
Bridge”), it was given the official title
Villa de la Plata
(“City of Silver”) after significant
quantities ofsilverwerefoundnearby.Thetitle provedprescient, asthemassivesilverdepos-
its of Potosí were discovered soon after, and the city quickly emerged as the administrative
headquarters for the mines and the centre of Spanish political, religious and military power in
the region. In 1559 the
Audiencia de Charcas
- an independent court representing the Span-
ish crown, with judicial and executive power over an area comprising modern-day Bolivia,
Argentina and part of Peru - was established here. The city became home to the first bishop-
ric in Alto Peru in 1552, and in 1624 the
Universidad de San Francisco Xavier
- only the
third university in all the Americas - was founded here to train the religious and administrat-
ive specialists needed to manage the vast conquered territories.
The silver boom
The first half of the seventeenth century was La Plata's golden age, as the
wealth
from Po-
tosí's mines funded the construction of lavish churches, monasteries, palaces and adminis-
trative buildings. Its power waned with the flow of silver, however, and in 1776 it was made
subject to the rule of the new Spanish Virreinato de la Plata in Buenos Aires, reverting to the
name of Chuquisaca to avoid confusion. The university retained its importance, and became
a centre in developing the
liberal ideas
that led to the first qualified declaration of independ-
ence from Spain, which was made here on May 25, 1809.
Post independence
After independence in 1825 the city was made the
capital
of the Republic of Bolivia and
renamed Sucre in honour of Antonio José de Sucre, the Venezuelan general who completed
