200 años de grito libertario ….200 years later, La Paz remembers its role in Latin America’s independence from Spain <

What a month! With all this stuff about the new constitution going on, I have had little time to write about anything else. The truth is that approving a new constitution is not something a country does every day. It is certainly something that deserves to be discussed and debated.

This much can clearly be said about Bolivia: the new constitutional text might not be perfect but it has been debated ad nauseam first in the constitutional assembly in Sucre, and then in the media ever since the assembly ended. That is why all this nonsense about this being a constitution ‘imposed’ by MAS or written by Hugo Chavez – a regular accusation from the right – is basically…well… nonsense.

Here we go again. I seem to find it difficult to let go off the constitution. But what I wanted to say is that this year 2009 is an anniversary year and a year of celebrations because, two hundred years ago in May, the first independence declaration in Latin America was made in the city of La Paz.

La Paz wasn’t the first or most important city to be founded in the coyasullo, charcas or Alto Peru, as the area roughly equivalent to today’s Bolivia was originally called. No, the first and most important city was Sucre, then called La Plata (Silver). The city was situated in a valley of low altitude with a benign climate from where the Spanish king’s administrators and soldiers could oversee the exploitation of the richest silver mines ever found in history. They were situated close by in Potosi but, at over 4,000 metres above sea level, the emerging town had too harsh a climate.

La Paz was instead found to protect the road between Sucre and Lima, then the centre of Spanish power in South America. However, at the beginning of the 19th century Latin American criollos – colonials of Spanish descent born in Latin America – began to question their exclusion from high level administrative jobs that were exclusively reserved for Spanish-born migrants. This discontent was fuelled by the successful example of revolt in the United States as well as by ideas emerging from the French revolution. The result was a demand for independence from Spain.

In this, La Paz was the most daring city, declaring independence exactly 200 years ago in 1809. However, Spanish repression kept the area of Alto Peru under control until 1825 when finally, the combined efforts of Bolivar from the north and San Martin from the south, met in Lima to take the last bastion of Spanish power before Antonio Jose de Sucre liberated Alto Peru.

Two hundred years ago La Paz was the first to declare independence from Spain and the last to achieve it. Two hundred years later La Paz launches its second cry of independence, when more than 70 per cent of its population voted yes to a modern, progressive and decolonising constitution. The re-founding of Bolivian begins now.