La Paz: An Indigenous City

An aspect of life in Bolivia that has been somewhat disorienting for me as a visitor is the unexpected level of indigenous presence and influence in the city. Even though I was aware that Bolivia was a country proud of its indigenous heritage, I did not expect to see so many native Bolivians in a major urban area, riding the public transportation in traditional garb and walking out of upscale stores with fine new bowler hats. In the United States, less than 1% of the population is of Native American heritage, and almost all of these citizens live in reservations in rural areas of the Great Plains or the Southwest. Even in the small town I hail from, which proudly announces to visitors its connections to historic tribes that lived in the area, there is no aspect of our city’s culture that speaks to its first inhabitants. Even those citizens of Native American descent are indistinguishable from their neighbors. In La Paz, on the other hand, there seems to be a continuous and deeply-seated desire to preserve their roots and traditional heritage, not only as a means of constructing one’s personal identity-a tactic employed to some degree by people of every ethnic stripe-but also as a political statement and an act of defiance that rejects previous societal models that have marginalized this group.

Likewise, most of the Latin American cities I have either seen or read of have emphasized the amount of Spanish influence that remains in the cities, not only through architecture and other physical remnants of the colonial era, but also in the manners and presentation of the population. In various Latin American countries (such as Argentina and Uruguay), this is certainly true, and the public espouses a vision and outlook that is thoroughly more European than those of their neighbors. However, in La Paz, the public attitudes possess some marked differences. Though the city certainly bears the tangible markers of Spanish ownership, the public seems to have definitely focused its cultural energies inward, to the indigenous heritages and histories of its past. Being used to a society that is definitely European in its history and practices, coming to Bolivia has been an informative experience about a crystallizing indigenous identity in a former colony.