188 CultureShock! Bolivia
Oruro
If La Paz, Potosí and El Alto have not met with your approval,
this cool Altiplano city of 160,000 inhabitants, at 3,702 m
(12,140 ft), is your last chance for life at the top before we
descend to the eternal spring, high valley cities.
In Latin America, sometimes the most taciturn, melancholic
and distressed places engage in the most intense and
passionate annual festivals. Oruro is Bolivia’s unoffi cial folk
capital, with a yearly Carnaval in late February, featuring
La Diablada, an ornate mestizo allegory in which masked
dancers act out the victory of good over evil. Carnaval is no
ordinary parade; it is a total experience, and the audience is
just as entertaining as the impressive dancers.
Like Potosí, Oruro has been hit hard by the decline of the
mining industry. Visits to mines, the old Patiño mansion and a
mining museum, make this history come alive. The tin mines
around Oruro made Patiño the wealthiest man in the world,
but no one knew about trickle down economics at the time
and most of Patiño’s profi ts were siphoned off to Europe.
Other features of Oruro include an interesting Museum of
Anthropology and the old fashioned Palais Concert cinema,
with its stone Rodinesque mask hanging over the entrance.
Outside the small city, delicious pejerrey (kingfi sh) are waiting
to be caught beneath wading fl amingos in nearby Lake Uru
Uru, a 3 km (1.8 mile) walk from the university.
When I bring up the subject of Oruro to my Bolivian
friends, the consensus adjective is ‘sombre.’ In one couple’s
Oruro ordeal, the husband, with a well paying, prestigious
job, suffered from such a potent case of ‘ culture shock Oruro’
that he’d drive to La Paz every weekend for an escape. Finally,
against the material needs of his family, he ditched his Oruro
job and took a lesser position in another city.
His friends believe he was never willing to give the closed
society of Oruro a chance. Sometimes, a place that seems
more insular simply requires more time in order to establish
rapport with the locals. Learning to play an indigenous
instrument (the zampoña is easier than the charango or quena)
or getting involved in Oruro’s fervent football tradition, are
two possible bridges in communication.