In the evening of the second day we reached Ocurí, eighty miles from Sucre. Just outside the town we crossed a very swampy plain where cattle, horses, and pigs were feeding in treacherous bogs.
Ocurí is a brown little Indian town of perhaps two thousand inhabitants, with houses of sunburned brick and thatched roofs, lying high up on the side of a mountain whose peak shelters it somewhat from the easterly winds. It is higher than Potosí and has much the same cold, dismal climate. It likewise owes its existence to the presence of mines of silver and tin. There are several small smelters just outside the town. We could get nothing to eat in the poste, but a pleasant-faced mestiza woman who kept a sort of boarding-house near by, gave us a supper of beefsteak and fried eggs, a welcome change from the canned food which was our mainstay.
The principal street in the town was lined with small shops where a considerable variety of domestic and foreign merchandise was offered for sale. This does not mean that there were any attractive window displays but that when Mr. Smith felt brave enough to venture to step over the little Aymará brats and the fierce Bolivian dogs who were playing around the prostrate forms of drunken arrieros, he found hidden away in the dark recesses of dusty shops, quite a variety of articles. Cigarettes, onions, eggs, bread, canned salmon, sardines, home-made woollen ponchos, imported cotton cloth, candles, cheap domestic pottery, straw hats, shoes, belts, gloves, and condensed milk. It is a very poor place indeed in Bolivia where one cannot buy a small can of Swiss condensed milk, the one thing that is generally good.
At Ocurí, we entered the country of the Aymarás for whom this is a kind of outpost town. Our first evidence of their being here was the fact that the postillons in the tambo unloaded our mules very carelessly, allowing the bags to fall with a crash to the ground. They seemed to think it a great joke to treat us as ignominiously as possible. From here to Oruro, La Paz, and Lake Titicaca the Aymarás are in full sway. They seem to be inserted like a wedge between the Quichuas of Peru and those of southern Bolivia.
The Quichuas are a mild and inoffensive folk, but the Aymarás, heavier in build, coarser featured, and more vigorous in general appearance, are brutally insolent in their manner and unruly in their behavior. We were even regaled with stories of their cannibalism on certain occasions, but unfortunately had no opportunity of proving the truth of such statements. Neither Quichuas nor Aymarás are at all thrifty, and we were everywhere impressed with their great poverty. Their clothing is generally the merest rags and their food is as meagre as can possibly be imagined. Coca and chicha (i. e., cocaine and alcohol) seem to be beginning and end of life with them. We rarely ever saw one riding, although occasionally we met a postillon returning to his poste with a mule that had been placed in his charge.
A great majority of the population show little or no desire to vote or to have anything to do with politics. They are uneducated, but have very fixed ideas with regard to their absolute rights over land which they have occupied for any length of time. Their ideas of squatter sovereignty sometimes interfere with the desires of the government to develop the resources of the country.
It is unfortunate that no efforts are being made to establish a good system of public schools and enforce attendance. One of the greatest difficulties in the way of such an undertaking is the fact that the Indians not only have no interest in securing the education of their children, but also that they find it to their advantage to speak their own tongue rather than Spanish. Probably less than fifteen per cent of the population speak Spanish with fluency. They are lacking in ambition, seem to have no desire to raise produce, bear ill-will towards strangers, and prefer not to assist travellers to pass through their country. Even if a man has plenty of chickens and sheep, he will generally refuse to sell any although you offer him an excellent price. With coaxing and coca you may succeed. Sometimes he pretends not to understand Spanish and replies to all questions in guttural Quichua or Aymará.
So large a percentage of the population are Indians that nearly all the whites are actively interested in politics and would like to be office-holders. It is said that all elections are merely forms through which the party in power goes, in order to maintain its supremacy.
The majority of the inhabitants are in no sense fitted to be the citizens of a republic. However much the theoretical lover of liberty may bemoan the fact that Bolivia is in reality an oligarchy, one cannot help feeling that that is the only possible outcome of an attempt to simulate the forms of a republic in a country whose inhabitants are so deficient both mentally and morally. Mexico has given a splendid example of what can be accomplished in a region populated largely by Indians and descendants of Spanish monarchists. The benevolent despotism which President Diaz has exhibited now for more than a generation has done wonders. The great San Martin foresaw the advantages of oligarchy or monarchy and advocated something of the kind for the Spanish provinces of South America when they secured their independence. Unfortunately, his far-sighted statesmanship ran counter to the bombastic notions of “liberty” held by the uneducated creoles who had secured control of the reins of government and the result was the creation of republics. The extreme difficulty of communication throughout Bolivia has made the way of revolutions fairly easy. An entire province can rise against the government before sufficient troops can be sent to quell the disturbance.
Whenever we got an early start from a poste, we were pretty sure to come upon a llama camp before long; the drivers engaged in slowly rounding up their grazing beasts and inducing them to receive their loads for another day’s work. In the absence of rain, the loads are merely piled up on the ground so as to form a shelter from the wind during the night. If showers threaten, ponchos and tarpaulins are thrown over the heap of merchandise.