San Francisco Cathedral

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As well as preparing for my flight tomorrow, I visited the local San Francisco cathedral museum, which after having passed it several times I felt it was my obligation to learn about it. I arrived just in time to take a tour in Spanish and I joined the tour group. The tour began with the guide describing in detail each one of the series of twelve painted pictures relating to Jesus’ crucifixion. I wasn't interested in this part of the tour, so I took the opportunity to add some new ‘religious’ Spanish vocabulary to my word bank. As the lady went through each picture, testing us to check we were listening and understood the details of the cruxifiction I zoned out and zoned back in again when she mentioned the cock in one of the pictures representing ‘Judas’ or Peter? Betrayal, Francis d’Assisi? who featured in several of the paintings and a cute dog representing fidelity.

I zoned in again when she began talking about the liberation of La Paz, the first church of San Francisco being built in 1549 and the church being destroyed in 1708?. She also mentioned that the city was divided into two parts by the river Choqueyapu. Ihe indigenous Aymara people lived on one side of the river. Here they had made ‘tambos’ ? points to sell their goods and the other side of the river had been colonised by the Spanish who had created squares, parks and buildings. I visited the Spanish part of the town today for the first time not knowing before that it had existed. It was well-paved and very modern, like a developed city.

The upper part of the church was inhabited and still is ?by Franciscos. There is a garden in the courtyard of the church where medicinal plants grow, a wine cellar in which the grapes from the surrounding land were prepared to make wine. The walls inside were painted in a blue colour (the original colour) and the walls of the church had been made of granito granite? On the inside of the walls the indigenous people who were forced to work on the church had inscribed their names in the stones. There was a small dark cellar which was used as a punishment room for people who had stepped out of line. One of the most frequently appearing images in the church was of Madre Tierra, Bolivia’s ‘la virgen’ and as the guide explained - each Catholic country has a different name for the virgin but they all celebrate the same one. Towards the end of the tour we climbed the clock tower and bells which are still rung today.

I also learned a bit about the battle of Chaco, which took place between 1932 between Paraguay and Bolivia. However, I didn’t understand the significance of the event to the church ? When I wanted to go find that out by returning to study that very room again the tour guide wouldn’t let me go back. As I had paid good money to enter the museum I thought about the woman:

‘what a rotter!’

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