For as long as I have been in Sucre the city has been fixated on its impending bicentennial. On May 25^th the city would celebrate what the giant posters festooning the churches and plazas have advertised as the two hundredth anniversary of the ‘first cry of freedom in the Americas’. In preparation for this grand date the central plaza was fenced off for three months so that its perfectly fine paving could be uprooted and replaced. Buildings all over town were obscured by scaffolding as fresh coats of paint were thrown at every slightly off-white edifice. Other stranger changes occurred; previously blank and chaotic roads received confusing lane markings and other arcane symbols; bright orange trash cans appeared in every street; on the eve of the bicentennial electronic walk/don’t walk signs appeared around the central plaza, twittering and flashing conflicting signals and bewildering the locals.

The bicentennial was to be Sucre’s finest hour; which other South American city could boast of having electronic cross walk signs? Along with everything else, in the lead-up to May the city was bedecked in flags. Bolivian flags hung from balconies in every street, and with them hung the provincial flag – a barbed and medieval red cross on a white field. It was in Sucre in 1809 that Bolivia – then known as ‘Upper Peru’ and little more than a mineral-rich territory caught in the crossfire of the Lima vs. Buenos Aires rivalry – first declared independence. It would take another sixteen years to actually achieve independence.

A sort of historic sleight of hand is involved in this claim to the first cry of freedom in the Americas. By 1809 the American Revolution had already taken place, Haiti had gained independence and early independence movements had already risen (and fallen) in Venezuela. Still, claiming 1809 as the anniversary allows Bolivia to leapfrog all its South American neighbours, whose bicentennaries all fall between 2009 and 2025. Where Bolivia should be the last to celebrate its independence, it has become the first.

The weeks leading up to May 25^th were a jumble of concerts at shifting venues, food fairs and semi-celebrity sightings. The Ms. Bolivia contestants arrived en masse, all of them about two feet taller than the average Bolivian. There was a Ms. for every city and province, and one from the phantom Litoral province, which Bolivia lost to Chile in the War of the Pacific over a hundred years ago. I’m not sure who she was or where she actually came from, but she looked too frail to reclaim the province she was representing. Ms. Chuquisaca (Sucre’s province) unsurprisingly won the title of Ms Bolivia, and Sucre was firmly back in the spotlight. It may have lost two of the three branches of government, it may have very few significant industries or businesses (apart from a cement factory that sponsored many of the celebrations), it may no longer be at the fore of progressive American thought, but Sucre had Ms. Bolivia, and it had the bicentennial.

The celebrity Bolivian most conspicuously absent from the bicentennial was polarising president Evo Morales. He made an appearance at Ravelo, a town close to but not within the boundaries of Chuquisaca, before returning to fortress La Paz. Sucre’s days as one of the progressive centres of the Americas are well and truly over. Nowadays conservatism characterises this city of lawyers and dentists. When Evo was elected the idea of an indigenous president, especially one fixated on reform and wealth redistribution, sat very uncomfortably with Sucre’s white and wealthy. As Evo has shifted power away from Sucre (official capital) and to La Paz (de facto capital), he has earned the ire of not just the elite, but just about every one in Sucre. The hot-blooded spirit of independence no longer means Sucre wants freedom from oppressive colonial powers, but rather from the most radical president in Bolivia’s history (that’s not to say he isn’t at times oppressive…). When those red crossed flags waved and fluttered, they were declaring as much as anything that this was Sucre, not Bolivia.

Officially Evo was boycotting the bicentennial, because one year ago racist thugs in Sucre had beat up indigenous people attending May 25^th celebrations. The real reason is more likely that Evo is so hated here that had he turned up, the violence would have repeated, albeit on a much larger scale. As it was, the long long bicentennial weekend was largely peaceful, all the aggression being worked out in long processions of furious flag-waving.

Bolivia is a nation of marchers and music-lovers, and all its festivities are characterised by these activities. At all hours in the days before the bicentennial, groups would take to the streets, keeping loose time with their drums and horns, chanting their slogans and waving their flags. Representatives from the outlying barrios made the many-kilometered dance-march in full and elaborate costume, flinging fireworks about them. Military bands in elaborate regalia were more formal and subdued. For the first time since I have been here, skirts became common sights on the streets of Sucre, as any woman with a pair of legs was wrapped in one and given a banner to hold.

Among the concerts, the flourishes of amateur fireworks and the endless processions, the highlight of the festivities came on sleepy Sunday morning. Sucre is usually at its most catatonic at this time, but on this particular morning the city awoke to the sound of many many drums and voices. The city was being invaded by campesinos, country-folk of predominantly indigenous heritage. Thousands upon thousands of them marched into town, bearing their banners and their instruments. There were a few red crosses in the crowd, but far more prevalent were the three-coloured flag of Bolivia and the rainbow forty-nine chequers of the indigenous flag. The marchers shouted pro-Evo messages, held placards declaring ‘no to racism’, and cheered for Bolivia (rather than for Sucre) while the sleepy Sucreñas looked on in disbelief. Would this end in violence? It would not; it was a show of strength and unity by the people that had been brutalised one year before. They filled the streets, occupied the central plaza, and then melted away to let the dazed city folk get on with their suddenly miniscule-seeming processions.

By the Monday of the actual bicentennial the celebrations were losing momentum. The midnight ban on alcohol that temporarily came into force with the beginning of the 25^th may have had something to do with this. Still, fireworks were launched, and an enactment of the cry of freedom was enthusiastically followed on the steps of the house in which Bolivian independence was finally ratified in 1825.

Concerts continued to break out from time to time in the ensuing days, but by the 26^th the bicentennial had passed and Sucre was once again its tranquil self. The whole long march to the 25^th had gone off with barely a violent incident. My favourite images from the celebrations come courtesy of some clever or careless vendor who instead of red crosses sold red heart balloons, which hovered over the passionate crowds wherever they gathered around the city.