Metro La Paz - History

History

Control from the Inca lands had been entrusted to Pedro de la Gascaa Spanish governor of Peru who was said by the Spanish king (and Holy Roman Emperor) Emperor Charles V to found a new city. Gasca commanded captain Alonso de Mendoza to found a new city commemorating the end of the civil wars in Peru; the city of La Paz was founded on October 20, 1548.

Founded in 1548 by the Spanish conquistadors at the site of the Native American settlement of Laja, the full name was originally Nuestra Señora de La Paz (meaning Our Lady of Peace). The name commemorated the restoration of peace after having a civil war between Gonzalo Pizarro and Blasco Núñez Vela the first viceroy of Peru. The city was later moved to its present location in the valley of Chuquiago Marka in where the metropilitan area begun.

In 1549, Juan Gutierrez Paniagua was ordered to design an urban plan that would designate sites for public areas, plazas, official buildings, and a cathedral. "La Plaza de los Españoles", which is known today as the Plaza Murillo, was chosen as the location for government buildings as well as the Metropolitan Cathedral.

After the city was built Spain controlled La Paz with a firm grip and the Spanish king had the last word in all matters political. In 1781, for a total of six months, a group of Aymara people laid siege to the no longer peaceful city of La Paz. Under the leadership of Tupac Katari, they destroyed churches and government property. Thirty years later Indians laid a two-month siege on La Paz - where and when the legend of the Ekeko is set. In 1809 the struggle for independence from the Spanish rule brought uprisings against the royalist forces. It was on July 16, 1809 that Pedro Domingo Murillo famously said that the Bolivian revolution was igniting a lamp that nobody would be able to turn-off. This formally marked the beginning of the Liberation of South America from Spain. Pedro Domingo Murillo was hanged at the Plaza de los Españoles that night, but his name would be eternally remembered in the name of the plaza forever, and he would be remembered as the voice of revolution across South America.

In 1825 after the independence of Bolivia, the city's full name was changed to La Paz de Ayacucho (meaning The Peace of Ayacucho) in commemoration of the decisive victory over the Spanish army at Battle of Ayacucho in the course of the Spanish American wars of independence.

In 1898, La Paz was made the de facto seat of the national government, with Sucre remaining the nominal historical as well as judiciary capital. This change reflected the shift of the Bolivian economy away from the largely exhausted silver mines of Potosí to the exploitation of tin near Oruro, and resulting shifts in the distribution of economic and political power among various national elites.

When the new built railways from Lake Titicaca and Arica reached the rim of the canyon, where the La Paz terminus, railyards and depots were built along with a settlement of railway workers (a spur line down into the canyon opened in 1905). In 1925 the airfield was built as base for the new air force, which attracted additional settlement. In 1939 El Alto's first elementary school opened. El Alto started to grow tremendously in the 1950s, when the settlement was connected to La Paz' water supply (before that all water had to be transported from La Paz in tank vehicles) and building land in the canyon became more and more short and expensive. In an administrative reform on March 6, 1985 the district of El Alto and surroundings was politically separated from the City of La Paz (this date is officially referred to and celebrated as the city's "founding day"). In 1987 El Alto was formally incorporated as a city. In 1994, the city became the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of El Alto.

From 2003 to 2005, access from La Paz to the International Airport, as well to oil and gas supplies, were frequently blocked by protesting El Alto social leaders, who have become some of the most powerful players in the politics of Bolivia. El Alto was - and remains - one of the major centers of the Bolivian gas conflict, during the conflict 70 civilians were killed under police repression ordered by President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.