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History of Bolivia

Pre-Hispanic Culture

Tiawanaku.

This culture has been divided into three great epochs: The Village Period, the Urban Period and the Imperial Period. The for st period, contemporary with Warkarani and Chiripa, began about 1,200 BC and lasted until the first century of our era, when there occurred a radical change which scholars call “the Urban Revolution”. One of the principal characterists of the evolving city was the presence of ceremonial centers along with a population stratified into social classes. The village lands at these centers were cultivated by means of “suka – kollus” or channels which allowed the retention of rain water for cultivation in the dry season.

The urban period lasted unto the seventh century AD, when the state of Tiawanaku began to expand, thus commencing the imperial period. There are area zones closely related to Tiawanaku, like Wari, near Ayacucho, Peru. Tiawanaku expanded to the south over the desert of Atacama and Cochabamba, reaching the north of present-day Argentina.

The city of Tiawanaku had ceremonial centers, such as Akapana, Kalasasaya, Puma-Punku and the Small Subterranean Temple.
In the eighth century AD, Tiawanaku expanded politically over the base of the preexisting enclaves. This expansion is evidenced by the diffusion of symbols and elements from Tiawanaku which appear in the ceramics and textiles of the whole conquered domain.

In the twelfth century the collapse was inevitable, probably due to climatic causes in the area where Tiawanaku had flourished. .

The Inca history

The Inca Empire stands out as one of the principal Pre-Hispanic American civilizations in virtue of its great territorial scale and the size of the population dominated by it. It emerged about the eleventh century AD after the collapse of Tiawanaku. The first Incas are wrapped in legend, above all the figure of Manco Capac. The expansion of power of Cusco took place beginning with Viracocha, the eighth Inca. This expansion was consolidated by Pachacutec, with whom we enter an historical period with a chronology and specific facts. This monarch was succeeded by Tupac Inca Yupanqui, Huayna Capac, Huáscar and Atahuallpa. Though of short duration, the Inca Empire became a sociopolitical structure which integrated multiple peoples and social units in heterogeneous ecological zones. Its vastness extended from the north of Ecuasor to the center of Chile, taking in the mountains of Ecuador and Peru, the Bolivian Antiplano and the northeast of Argentina.

The Spanish conquest of 1532 cut short a process whose possible future developments it is difficult to imagine. The thousand years of strategies realized by the kingdoms, ethnicities and communities of the Andes to integrate, diversify and complement their forms of production formed, under the final confirmation by the Inca rule, a complete net of centers and regional cities ever more interconnected.

Certain facts, such as the continuing development of a privileged nobility, the population growth in the urban centers and the need for greater production which this implies, place in doubt a continued equilibrium which might have been sustained between the Andean communities and their environment and within the state power structure.

The Spanish Conquest

When the Inca Empire still had not reached its maturity and was weakened by the civil war between Huáscar and Atahuallpa, the Spanish conquest took place. This, after initial beginnings, began in 1531, when Pizarro, in command of 180 men, encountered the Inca emperor at Cajamarca. Atahuallpa, the Inca emperor, had just assumed power and was at civil war with his half-brother Huáscar. Pizarro took advantage of the situation and captured Atahuallpa. Pizarro then ordered the execution of Huáscar. Huáscar offered a large quantity of gold and silver for his liberty. Pizarro accepted his offer, but condemned him to death in 1533. In the same year the Spaniards took power over the Inca empire.

The conquerors advanced rapidly, exploiting the confidence (and later the lack of union) of the Indians to secure a territory which in a few years came to be know by the name of High Peru (Alto Perú). In 1544 were discovered deposits of silver in the region of Potosi. The wealth generated by this find sustained the Spanish economy (and the extravagance of its monarchs) for more than two centuries.

Independence

The liberal currents of the eighteenth century, which led to the independence of the United States and preceded the fall of the French monarchy, had repercussions in the countries of Latin America in the form of protests, revolts and rebellions.

Ferdinand VII, king of Spain, had managed to check all attempts to liberate the colonies. It is thus, that at the beginning of 1816, there remained only two focal centers of agitation for liberty, the United Provinces of the River Plata (Argentina) and the Region of the Eastern Plains of the Orinoco (Venezuela). It was from these two historical locations that the currents of Liberty converged towards Peru and Bolivia, the liberation of the south, by the leadership of Don José de San Martín and Simon Bolivar.

High Peru, later Bolivia, had, since 1776, been dependent upon the Viceroyalty of the River Plata.