One day during our stay, a government proclamation was heralded about town in the usual fashion. The local regiment of infantry paraded through the principal streets, stopping at the important corners while the colonel read the proclamation in a loud voice. The colonel seemed so strong and healthy that I was greatly surprised to learn on my return to Oruro a few weeks later that he had been taken down with one of the sudden pulmonary fevers of this altitude and died in less than twenty-four hours.
A pleasant German-American, in charge of the local agency of a large New York commercial house, told us that it was not at all uncommon for a man to get a chill on his way home from an evening party and die the next day of galloping pneumonia. The explanation seems to be that at this altitude (13,000 feet) one needs all the lung capacity one has, as the air is so rare. A congestive chill is followed by such a dangerous loss in the capacity to receive oxygen, that the patient soon succumbs and dies.
The shops of Oruro, as might be expected of a mining city that has been for several years in communication by rail and steam with the outside world, contain a great variety of imported merchandise. One, owned by Spaniards, is devoted almost exclusively to the manufactured products of Spain. Another, owned by a German, contains an indefinite variety of goods “made in Germany.” Two or three book shops contain several thousand volumes of Spanish and French literature, law and medicine. There is also a small public library and reading-room and the city hopes to have a large accession to the number of its books in the near future.
I called on one of the local physicians, not professionally, but because I had heard of a remarkable collection of Bolivian pamphlets and manuscripts that he possessed. One gets so accustomed to shiftlessness and uncleanliness in South America that I could scarcely believe my eyes when I found myself in an office whose spotless white furniture and aseptic glass cases of modern surgical instruments would not have been considered out of place on Madison Avenue. The surgeon had been educated at the Chilean Medical School in Santiago although he was a Bolivian by birth. His collection of manuscripts and prints was an extraordinary one, but I must confess that his up-to-date professional methods interested and surprised me more than his extensive bibliographical learning. After having witnessed unspeakable conditions in the leading hospital of Venezuela at Caracas where, as readers of my “Journal” will recollect, surgeons educated in Paris and New York worked in an operating theatre that had for its motto, “Those who spit are requested not to stand near the table during operations,” I am afraid my views of South American surgery, outside of such cities as Buenos Aires and Santiago, had hitherto been decidedly uncomplimentary.
Oruro owes its importance to valuable silver and tin mines in its vicinity. There are several large smelters on the outskirts of the town, and the offices of a number of important mining companies are to be found here. Certain parts of Oruro are not pleasant places in which to take a walk. In fact, I never felt more uncomfortable in my life than I did on a solitary expedition in which I found myself among a lot of half-drunken miners of all nationalities who were hanging about the doors of a choice collection of grog-shops. The fearless, impudent stare of the Aymarás was no less unpleasant than the menacing looks of three or four burly Anglo-Saxon miners who had spent their last cent for drinks and were looking for more.
The silver mines have largely been abandoned and the principal industry is connected with the tin deposits. No mines were discovered here until some years after those of Potosí and they never produced as much silver, although, during the colonial epoch, they ranked easily second.
Oruro was founded about the time that the Dutch landed on Manhattan Island. In the latter part of the seventeenth century there was already a population of 76,000. In the eighteenth century, the city stood next to Potosí in wealth and importance.
Some of the churches still show the marks of that elegance with which they were ornamented during the period of Oruro’s palmy days. There are, however, few remains of any fine edifices. Indeed, we are told by “El Lazarillo” in 1773 that “in this great city one will not encounter a single building that corresponds at all to the immense fortunes which have been spent here, during the past two hundred years, in an excess of parades, shows, games, and banquets.”
When the price of tin went up, a few years ago, Oruro enjoyed a boom. Old buildings were torn down and pretentious new ones begun. Some of them were only partly completed when tin fell and the boom collapsed. The population now is about sixteen thousand, although during the boom it rose to over twenty thousand, of whom more than five thousand were foreigners. A good percentage were Chileans.
Apart from its importance as a mining centre, Oruro has for some time been distinguished as a railroad terminal. A line from here to Potosí is planned. A line from Oruro to Cochabamba, on whose fertile valleys Oruro depends for its food-supply, is in course of construction. The Bolivia Railway’s line to La Paz has recently been completed. The road to Antofagasta has been running since 1892.