THE GUIDE - The Rough Guide to Bolivia - page 300

Convento-Museo La Recoleta
On the southeast side of Plaza Pedro de Anzares, a 20min uphill walk southeast of Plaza 25 de Mayo • Mon-Fri
9-11.30am & 2.30-5.30pm, Sat 3-5pm • Bs10
The Convento-Museo La Recoleta , a tranquil Franciscan monastery, houses an interesting
little museum of colonial religious art and materials related to the missionary work of the
Franciscan order in Bolivia. Visits are by guided tour only, so it's best to turn up shortly after
the museum opens so that you don't have to wait long for a tour - if you do have to wait, the
nearby Café Mirador is a good place to pass the time.
Founded in 1538, La Recoleta was for nearly three centuries the headquarters of Franciscan
efforts to convert the indigenous peoples of Bolivia. Set around a series of delightful flower-
filled colonial patios lined with arched cloisters, the museum is home to a substantial collec-
tion of colonial religious paintings . More interesting is the display of items relating to Fran-
ciscan missionary efforts, including bows and arrows, feather headdresses and plant-fibre
clothing given to the missionaries by the different lowland tribes they contacted, and photo-
graphs of early twentieth-century missionaries.
Though it dates back to 1600, the monastery church was remodelled in rather anodyne
style in the nineteenth century: the one noteworthy feature is the exquisite set of Baroque
wooden choir stalls in the upper choir, beautifully carved in 1674 with gruesome images of a
massacre of Franciscan missionaries in Nagasaki, Japan. Though it is now back in Franciscan
hands,intheearlynineteenth centurythemonastery wasbrieflyrequisitioned bytheBolivian
authorities and used as a barracks; in the corridor outside the choir a plaque and portrait mark
the spot where the Bolivian president Pedro Blanco was murdered during a successful coup
in 1829,just five days after taking office. Beside the monastery stands the Cedro Millenario ,
a great, gnarled cedro tree over a thousand years old and 5m in diameter.
Museo de Arte Indigena
Three blocks southeast from Plaza 25 de Mayo on the corner of calles San Alberto and Potosí • Mon-Fri
8.30am-noon & 2.30-6pm, Sat 9.30am-noon & 2.30-6pm • Bs22 • 04 6453841, asur.org.bo
In an elegant colonial building, the fascinating Museo de Arte Indigena is dedicated to
the distinctive weavings of two local Quechua-speaking indigenous groups: the Jalq'a , who
number about 26,000 and live in the mountains west of Sucre, and the Tarabuceños , a more
numerous group who live around the town of Tarabuco to the east. The museum is run by an
NGO, ASUR (Antropologos del Sur Andino), which works with Jalq'a and Tarabuceño com-
munities to revive traditional weaving designs and techniques that had been dying out. This
renaissance of indigenous art has seen both the quality and market value of the weavings of
both groups rise dramatically, turning the craft into a source of income for hundreds of des-
perately poor campesino families.