Sucre owes its importance to its comparatively pleasant climate. The average temperature is 56° F. Bolivianos, accustomed as they are to one of the worst climates in the world, say that Sucre has “the finest climate in existence,” which means, being translated, that it is fairly tolerable. Nevertheless, we found it very agreeable to be down at this lower elevation, and we could scarcely sympathize with Castelnau, who, coming up from the eastern plains in 1845, thought Sucre very “triste.” He and his associates had been for many months in the warm regions of Brazil and found it difficult “to resist the cold and the effects of the altitude.” Most of them suffered severely from soroche although few people now-a-days think of being troubled at an altitude of anything less than twelve thousand feet and Sucre is only a little over nine thousand.
If the miners had felt as Castelnau did, the old Indian city of Chuquisaca would never have become the social and literary capital of upper Peru. Its name was changed to La Plata in recognition of the stream of silver that flowed to it from Potosí. Here resided an important bishop who looked after the souls of countless thousands of Indians scattered up and down the Bolivian plateau and in the tangled jungles east of the Andes. The citizens of Chuquisaca, or La Plata, acquired before long a reputation for wealth and intelligence which spread far and wide. They called their city the “Athens of Peru” and they established here a university where students still come to study law and medicine.
After the great battle of Ayacucho in December, 1824, when General Sucre won the memorable victory that defeated the last Spanish army in South America, Upper Peru was erected into an independent Republic, taking its name from the great General Bolivar and giving to its capital city the name of its first president.
President Sucre was living at the capital when Edmond Temple came here in 1826. That entertaining writer describes him as tall and thin with mild, prepossessing manners and diffident address. Temple had lived in Bolivia for nearly a year and was moved to say that General Sucre was the best choice that could have been made to fill “the arduous, troublesome, and thankless office of Supreme Chief of the new republic of Bolivia.” Temple attended a session of Congress where he was unfavorably impressed by the custom of remaining seated during the whole debate and by the constant practice of spitting, “which is a breach of decorum which no Englishman can patiently witness!” The innkeeper must have been a descendant of a Congressman.
As long as Congress sat here the representatives came mostly from this region and were naturally influenced by the aristocratic society of the capital. The wealthy politicians of Sucre succeeded in diverting a large part of the national revenues to beautifying their city, building extravagant public works, and neglecting the just claims of La Paz. La Paz, far more populous, and enjoying a much more important situation commercially, was overlooked. Little of the public revenue found its way thither. The result was a revolution in which La Paz emphatically proclaimed its desire to share in the distribution of the public moneys and public offices. The then President gathered the Government forces together in Sucre and proceeded to march on the rebellious metropolis. He was defeated not far from La Paz with great losses, and the war-like Aymarás of La Paz followed up the victory with orgies of a disgusting and barbaric if not cannibalistic character. The result was that while Sucre retained the Supreme Court and the title of Capital, La Paz became the actual seat of government, and few foreign diplomats have ever undertaken the five days of hard travel which separates Sucre from Challapata, the nearest railway station.
Nevertheless the wealthiest people in Bolivia live in Sucre. They are very aristocratic and extremely exclusive, and they feel very superior to the citizens of La Paz although that place is really much more important than Sucre. The great land-owners have established here the headquarters of the most important banks in the country.
At the largest of all, the Banco Nacional de Bolivia, I drew some money on my letter of credit. Among the coins which I trustfully accepted were seven or eight that proved to be bad. The Indians always ring a coin before accepting it. The result was I found myself the victim of a clever bank cashier. The coins were probably not counterfeit. The Bolivian government has not been above issuing “silver” coins, particularly “half pesos,” that contain so much “alloy” as to be valueless.
These debased half dollars have long been a subject of annoyance not only to travellers but to the neighboring Peruvians. Sir Clements Markham says that at the time of his visit to Peru in 1859, when he was on that famous mission that secured Chincona plants from eastern Peru for transportation to India, war was imminent between Peru and Bolivia and one casus belli was that the Bolivian government persisted in coining and deluging Peru with debased half dollars. These ill-omened chickens have certainly come back to roost, for one never sees them now in Peru and they are all too frequent here. Perhaps that is one reason why the local banks are so unusually well built.
There is also a pretentious “legislative palace,” and at the time of my visit a large theatre was in the course of construction. It was hoped to have this completed in time for the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the War of Independence.
The market-place is neither so interesting nor so picturesque as that of Potosí. A few of the men wore curious helmet-like hats with small visors turned up in front and back. It would be interesting to know whether this were the original hat of the vicinity or whether it had been copied from the head-gear of the armored Spaniard conquistadores of the sixteenth century. The corresponding women’s hats were twice as large as the men’s but the brim was turned up in the front and back in the same fashion.