Oruro, Bolivia
Oruro is a city in
Bolivia with a population of about 200,000, located about equidistant between
La Paz and
Sucre. It is the capital of the department of
Oruro.
The city was first founded in
1606 as a
silver-mining-center in the
Urus region. At the time, it was named Real Villa de Don Felipe de Austria after the
Spanish monarch
Philip III. It was eventually abandoned as the mines became exhausted, but was reestablished in the late nineteenth century, this time as a
tin-mining-center. For a time, the La Salvadora tin-mine was the most important source of tin in the world. Gradually, this resource was also exhausted, and Oruro again went into a decline. The city does manage, however, to attract tourists to its carnival, considered one of the great folkloric events in
South America for its masked "devil-dances".
Oruro was named after the native tribe "Uru-Uru".
*
Information and photos on the Diablada, the Anata Andina and the indigenous culture
