Oruro

Oruro sits at 3,700 metres on the bare altiplano and was built on tin and silver, a mining city that has known booms and long declines, and for most of the year it is a working place with little for visitors. For a week in February it is something else entirely. The carnival centres on a procession lasting some twenty hours in which tens of thousands of dancers move four kilometres to the sanctuary of the Virgin of Socavón, patron of miners, led by the Diablada, the devil dance, in which masked devils and the archangel Michael enact a struggle that layers Christian imagery over older Andean figures, the mountain spirit Tio among them. UNESCO proclaimed it a masterpiece of intangible heritage in 2001.

History

The Uru people lived here before the Aymara kingdoms and then the Incas, who governed the region from Paria, and the Spaniards explored the province for silver from 1535; in 1568 Diego Alemán made the first mining claim in the Uru-Uru hills, and around 1605 the priest Francisco Medrano and others found rich silver in a hill they named San Cristóbal. On 1 November 1606 the judge Manuel de Castro del Castillo y Padilla founded the town as the Real Villa de San Felipe de Austria, in honour of Philip III, laid out on a grid, with some 15,000 people at its founding, and its fortunes then rose and fell with the price of silver (Wikipedia, Oruro).

The main sights

• The Diablada - masked devils and the archangel in the great dance.
• The twenty-hour procession - dancers moving to the Socavón sanctuary.
• Mask workshops - the makers producing the elaborate costumes.
• The mining city - the altiplano town the carnival belongs to.

When to go

February, on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday, for the main procession; dates shift with Easter. Accommodation books out months ahead and prices multiply. Outside carnival the city is quiet.

Things to know

During carnival the city is overwhelmed: accommodation must be booked far in advance, seats on the stands are ticketed and expensive, and the water and foam fights are relentless. Outside carnival there is little to see beyond the mining museum and the sanctuary. Altitude and cold are significant.

Nearby

Curahuara de Carangas lies west; the Salar de Coipasa is southwest.

Key facts