La Paz, Bolivia
La Paz is the administrative capital of Bolivia. The full name of the city upon foundation was Nuestra Señora de La Paz. Its name commemorated the restoration of peace after the civil war following the insurrection of Gonzalo Pizarro during the early phase of the Spanish colonization of the Andes. In 1825, after the decisive victory at Ayacucho over the Spanish army in the course of the Latin American independence wars, its full name was changed to La Paz de Ayacucho.
La Paz was founded at the site of a Native American settlement called Chuquiago by Alonso de Mendoza in 1548.
The city is situated in a chasm below a plateau at an altitude of 3600m alongside the La Paz river. On the plateau is the city of El Alto; the international airport is also located there.
According to census data from 2001, its population is at roughly 1,000,000.
In 1898, it was made the seat of the national government, with Sucre remaining the nominal capital of Bolivia. This change reflected the shifting of the center of Bolivian economy away from the by then widely exhausted silver mines of Potosí to the exploitation of tin in and around Oruro, as well as concommitant changes in the distribution of economic and political power among various sectors of the national elites.
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La Paz (department)
The department of La Paz comprises 133.985 km² with approx. 2.2 million inhabitants. It is situated at the western border of Bolivia, sharing Lake Titicaca with Peru. It contains the mighty Cordillera Real that reaches altitudes of 6600 meters. North of the Cordillera Real are the Yungas, the steep eastern slopes of the Andes that make the transition to the Amazon basin.
