[Marxism] 1 million Bolivians just say "no" to move of capital

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

From:           	David Walters <dave.walters en comcast.net>
To:             	marxism en lists.econ.utah.edu
Date sent:      	Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:01:31 -0700
Send reply to:  	Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
	<marxism en lists.econ.utah.edu>
Subject:        	Re: [Marxism] 1 million Bolivians just say "no" to 
move of capital

> Bolivia, along with Holland, is a country with two historic capitals, as
> Nestor pointed out. I think most sources of this sort of data still
> indicate La Paz as the capital or state both are.
> 

The whole thing is rooted in the late 18th Century.

In 1776 Spain created the Vice Royalty of the River Plate.

This administrative unit of the Spanish empire in South America 
included, roughly, Bolivia (which extended over a vast area to the 
East, now in the hands of Brazil, and had a large chunk of coast on 
the Pacific around today's Chilean Antofagasta), Paraguay (which by 
those times extended further to the North and East than today), 
Uruguay, a large swath of land in what today is Southern Brazil, 
roughly extending from a point some 100 km to the East of the 
Easternmost point of Argentina, the tiny province of Misiones which 
can be seen on the maps as a wedge between Brazil and Paraguay like a 
small finger pointing North-East, and Argentina. The latter was, 
however, composed of three distinct sections: to the South of a 
frontier area running on a roughly East-West direction some 150/200 
kilometers South of Buenos Aires or Mendoza there lay a vast expanse 
where the sovereignty of Spain was nominal, and it was known as the 
Desierto (Desert). Same thing happened with the triangle that, with a 
Southern vertex at the Santa Fe (a port on the Paraná River some 450 
kilometers straight to the NNW of Buenos Aires) leaned on the Paraná 
to the East and the Salado to the West up to the area extending from 
Santa Cruz de la Sierra to the East down to the shores of the 
Paraguay river. This wedge was known as the Chaco.

Thus, the Vice Royalty included mainly the Bolivian uplands, a long 
corridor linking them to the port of Buenos Aires, the former 
Missions of Paraguay and the large cattle (and mule) raising areas in 
the Northern section of the Pampa.

The stretch of coast on the Pacific cut the Vice Royalty of Perú in 
two. To the North there lay the Lower Perú proper, to the South the 
Capitanía General of Chile. The Capitanías Generales were special 
military governments in particularly sensitive regions, but they were 
not independent from some Vice Royalty (thus, that of Venezuela 
depended on Nueva Granada -with Bogotá for capital- and that of 
Guatemala depended on the Vice Royalty of the New Spain, that is 
México with its original extension).

The Viceroyalty of the River Plate was created as a part of the 
general modernizing thrust of the first Spanish Borbones under what 
was known as the Illustrated Despotism ("all for the people, without 
the people" was their motto). This was a paramount (and in the end, 
luckless) effort to establish a bourgeois Spain by means of Royal 
Absolutism. The Vice Royalty intended to (a) curb and control the 
centrifugal tensions originated in Buenos Aires, a nest of smugglers 
and British agents, (b) counter the offensive of Lisbon on the 
Atlantic shores of South America, (c) allow for traffic to and from 
the mines in the High Peru (Alto Perú) by way of Buenos Aires, which 
had been forbidden before the reforms, (d) keep united the cattle and 
mule raising areas around the Paraná and de la Plata rivers, together 
with those on current Uruguay and the mining areas in the High Peru 
(mules were the horsepower in the whole High Peru mining activity).

The economic core of the construction was the High Peru. Buenos 
Aires, primarily, was the political center and the outlet/inlet as 
well as the capital of the cattle raising areas. Paraguay and the 
Western (Cuyo) provinces (up to that moment dependent on Peru by way 
of Chile) provided some equilibrium in what in the end was just a 
funnel-like structure with an intake in the High Peru and an outlet 
in Buenos Aires.

In this complex construction, Buenos Aires was designed as the 
capital in order to keep it under control, but the House of Justice 
(the Audiencia), the Universities and the legal profession were 
centered in Charcas (also known as Chuquisaca, today's Sucre). La Paz 
and Potosí were the economic nuclei of the High Peru, but the 
Audiencia de Charcas -in the far from perfect structure of the 
Spanish empire on America- had an important measure of executive 
control. In fact, Sucre was the second capital of the Vice Royalty.

And it was one of the cradles of the anti-Absolutist revolution which 
ended up with the Independence of South America. It is in the halls 
of the University, and particularly at the Academia Carolina where 
young lawyers began to labor in their trade, as a subsidiary of the 
imposing Audiencia, where the basic ideas of our Revolution of the 
early 1800s were created. And it was in Chuquisaca and La Paz where 
the first rebellions in the South took place. In fact, the program of 
the Chuquisaca uprising of May 25, 1809 is the same Jacobin plan that 
Mariano Moreno, himself an alumnus of Chuquisaca, attempted to deploy 
from the First Council (Primera Junta) of Government in the 
revolution in Buenos Aires that was to take place exactly 365 days 
after these two burst only to be washed out in blood.

So that there are some reasons for the capitality of Sucre, which 
also have to do with the history of Bolivia, but these latter ones -
important as they are- can be spared for this time. It's too late, 
and I am quite tired.



Este correo lo ha enviado
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro en fibertel.com.ar
[No necesariamente es su autor]
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"La patria tiene que ser la dignidad arriba y el regocijo abajo".
Aparicio Saravia
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