Hola todos and Happy Easter Sunday desde Sucré, the *true* capital of Bolivia! After we left off in Potosí I decided to make my visit there short and get on over to Sucré, several reasons for this, firstly my mate who’s not Ed Sheeran was also headed there and there was a good chance for us to hang out again for a while, also the altitude is a bit lower there so be a bit easier for the breathing and also it just looked like a nice place to be if you were looking to get off the high Altiplano for a bit of R&R, so yes I got myself over there rápido.
Arrival in Sucré the place has quite a nice vibe to it, it is a whitewashed city in its historic centre very similar to Popayán back in Colombia minus the general sketchy feeling that place had at night. This is a very laid back place and a decent spot to rest a while but it also had quite an interesting bit of history to it.
Sucré was a major economic hub back in the colonial era having much of its wealth come from silver mines nearby and being an administrative centre for a lot of the silver coming from Potosí, in fact a lot of it was minted here although Potosí also had its own mint house.
As I usually do I got on a walking tour of the city and learned some more about the history of this place. Sucré was the original capital of newly independent Bolivia and it was here where the declaration of independence was signed in 1825 in Casa de la Libertad (Freedom House), which can be found in the main square of Plaza 25 de Mayo, named as that was the date of the uprising for independence.
Why does Bolivia have technically two capitals today? Well the answer to that was civil war. In 1898-1899 the country had a civil war fought between the liberal faction based out of La Paz and the Conservative faction based out of Sucré. Initially the conservatives had the upper hand having more of the army on their however the liberals won out after cutting a deal with the numerous indigenous population to get their support in exchange for promises of land. The liberal faction won and the old elite lost much of their power but the promise of land to the natives ultimately doesn’t get honoured and the indigenous do not begin to see any upward social mobility until the late 1950’s, which is likely why we have El Alto growing separate to La Paz today.
Because of this struggle Bolivia technically has two capitals, the administrative Capital being La Paz, where the government sits today and Sucre being Constitutional and historical though this is more of a concession today. Fact there is a presidential palace here that you can go into and climb to the top for a good view of the city for a small fee, only 1 president ever actually ran the country from Sucré.
That pretty much wraps up the first few days here. After this my pal who is totally not Ed Sheeran arrived and we hanged out a lot over the next few days doing several visits to places including a castle of sorts and “Jurassic Park”, of which I highly recommend you check out the video I did on.
Overall I have quite enjoyed Sucré. Will be another blog to come on our castle excursion then I head for Uyuni, might even make another tiktok when I get there since it’s meant to be pretty interesting.
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