Marriage bonds among these Indians are not loose ties. In all the settled communities where the little church has been planted, the priest sees that the ceremony is performed, for it means a fee to him. But when the man wanders away for work and is gone for years, as sometimes happens, it is no interruption to the family bond that on his return a brood of children greet him. He resumes the matrimonial relation and accepts the children without question.
There is a prevalent delusion that in these altitudes the birth rate is very low, and, moreover, that many of the children come into the world deaf or lose the sense of hearing soon after birth. While the families are not so large as in the tropics or lower altitudes, they are numerous enough, and I was not surprised to be told that the report about deafness and the excessive rate of infant mortality does not bear the scrutiny of scientific investigation.
To reach La Paz from Calamarca it is necessary to cross several quebradas, or wide ravines. Then the gravelly plain spreads out and stretches to the precipice of the circular basin in which lies the city. La Paz spreads along the inner sides of a rocky amphitheatre, a panorama of red roofs, blended blue and white buildings, church towers, and parks of willow and eucalyptus trees. The greenest and most refreshing spot in the mountain bowl, the one which gladdens the eye and rests the mind while filling it with pleasing anticipations, is the cemetery. But from the Heights no one guesses that this oasis is a graveyard.
A splendid highway leads down to the city, which is 1,400 feet below the level of the great plain. At first it is a straight slanting road at an angle of 45 degrees. Then it winds and becomes very crooked and abrupt. This is the coachman’s hour of triumph. He sends the mules at a full gallop, and if a spill does not happen the plaza is reached in half an hour. In passing, there is a blurred impression of steep mountain-sides with burros, llamas, and men and women slowly climbing the precipitous paths. This vision becomes more substantial when the level is reached and it is possible to look back and see what appear to be countless processions of two-legged and four-legged ants losing themselves on the ridges and steep slopes.
La Paz has a plaza and an alameda and two or three smaller parks which are not uninviting. The Chuquiyupu, or La Paz, River winds through the town. The hillsides on which the buildings are located are very steep. The Plaza Murillo is a sort of terrace or level between the river and the ridge. There is an old cathedral,—one of the few in South America about which I know nothing, for I did not even enter it. The market-place in front affords the best examples of native life. La Paz, notwithstanding it is the commercial centre and has the largest Spanish and foreign element, is still the home of the native race. The town has a population of 60,000, of whom 40,000 are said to be Aymarás, 10,000 cholos, and the remainder of European, chiefly Spanish, origin. The cholos learn to speak Spanish, but the Aymarás will not.
View of the Cathedral, La Paz
Though no act of Congress has formally made effective the provision of the Constitution which allows the capital to be shifted, Sucre no longer is the seat of government. The President has his residence in La Paz, it is the headquarters of the army, the national custom-house is there, and the Congress meets there. When Sucre was the actual capital, it was isolated from the rest of the country. The foreign ministers lived at La Paz. Some of them during their term of office never visited Sucre, but contented themselves by sending their credentials by messenger or through the mails.
La Paz is notable for the international character of its society. At a dinner at the home of Minister Sorsby I met a Bavarian mining capitalist and his wife, an English railway manager married to an Argentine lady, the wife of a Greek mining engineer who had come out from Constantinople on her bridal trip, a French financier, a Spanish merchant, two or three Peruvian gentlemen, as many Americans, and a Brazilian. This is the cosmopolitanism of a mining country in any part of the world. Mr. Mathieu, the Chilean Minister, I had known in Washington when he was Secretary of the Legation. Mr. Ignacio Calderon, afterwards Bolivian Minister to the United States, at the time of my visit was the Secretary of the Treasury. A pleasant incident was a breakfast with his family and a talk of home affairs, for his wife was a Baltimore lady.
A resting-place after weeks of wayfaring, a vantage point for digesting information and maturing impressions of the imprisoned country and her people, a preparation place for further wayfaring,—all these La Paz was for me.