Tarija

Before the Spanish, the valley was home to the Tomatas, although some documents suggest the early conquerors found them further west, around the San Juan del Oro River, and brought them here. In 1574 the conquistador Luis de Fuentes founded San Bernardo de la Frontera de Tarixa and resettled Tomatas in the largely depopulated valley. The town was a frontier post facing the Chaco and its peoples, and religious orders soon left their mark: the chapel on the Loma de San Juan dates from 1576, the Franciscan convent from 1606 and the church of San Roque from 1632, and the Franciscans planted the first vines in the valley.

During the wars of independence Tarija's gaucho militias, linked to the Argentine leader Martín Miguel de Güemes, fought under Eustaquio Méndez, whose house in San Lorenzo is now a museum. After independence the city's ties to the south were strong, and the chapacos voted to belong to Bolivia rather than Argentina, a loyalty reflected in the cueca "Chapaco Soy".

For much of its history Tarija was a remote, agricultural corner of the country. In recent decades the natural gas fields of the Chaco, in the east of the department, made it one of Bolivia's richer regions; the falling output of recent years has squeezed public budgets. The population of the municipality more than doubled between 1992 and 2024.

Bolivians and visitors alike call Tarija the Bolivian Andalusia: its founder came from Seville, and its river, the Guadalquivir, is named after the Spanish river. Its people, the chapacos, hold contests of coplas, sung verses, at Carnival, and play the erque and the caja, typical instruments of Tarija.

The year is shaped by festivals. The Fiesta Grande de San Roque, one of the most important displays of religious faith in Bolivia, begins on 16 August with chunchos, dancers in colourful costumes, processing through the streets in honour of the saint; in December 2021 UNESCO inscribed it on the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Carnival brings the Carnaval Chapaco and the Entrada de Comadres, and the pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Chaguaya is another major religious event.

Wine is part of the identity as much as music. An annual Festival of Wine celebrates the vineyards, and singani, the national spirit, is treated as cultural heritage. In the east of the department, Guaraní communities of the Chaco keep their own language and customs.

About 240,000 people lived in the municipality of Tarija at the 2024 census, and the city is the capital of the department and its largest urban centre. It has grown fast, helped by the gas economy.

The main activities are tourism, the wine industry and food. Besides vineyards, the valley grows gherkins, garlic, blueberries, oregano and flowers for the national market and for export, and wineries and singani distilleries work in the surrounding countryside. The city has invested in new markets — the Mercado Central, rebuilt in 2018 and more than 120 years old, alongside the La Loma, Bolívar, Abasto del Sur and San Martín markets. The Juan Misael Saracho Autonomous University brings students to the city, and its television station was the first in Bolivia to broadcast in colour.

The days are relaxed: long lunches, evening walks around the plazas and weekends in the valley towns. The main worries are the national economic crisis, with its dollar and fuel shortages, the decline of gas revenues on which the department's budget depends, and water shortages in a dry valley that keeps growing.

Tarija has dishes of its own. The signature dish is saice, a spicy stew of minced beef, peas and potatoes. Bakeries and cafés around the main square sell cakes and empanadas, and the Mercado Central sells groceries and food.

The Tarija valley is Bolivia's main wine-producing region, home to around 80 per cent of the country's wine industry. Bolivian law requires the vineyards for singani to be planted at 1,600 metres or higher, and the term "de altura", of altitude, is applied to the country's wines as well. Wineries lie around the city and in the Valle de la Concepción.

Singani is the drink that matters most: a clear brandy distilled from Muscat of Alexandria grapes, produced only in the high valleys of Bolivia since the 16th century, when religious orders first distilled it. It is drunk neat or as the base of the chuflay cocktail, and singani and wine are the drinks of every local celebration.