A landslide caused by heavy rains in La Paz has destroyed more than 400 homes in nine poor neighborhoods and has left more than 100,000 people without running water, the authorities said. There have been no deaths in the slide, which began over the weekend, but thousands have sought refuge in schools and on sports fields, the city said. WORLD...

President Evo Morales seemed assured of an easy victory in a referendum on Sunday over a sweeping new Constitution aimed at empowering Bolivia's Indians. The vote capped three years of conflict-ridden efforts by Mr. Morales to overhaul a political system he had associated with centuries of indigenous subjugation. Citing preliminary vote counts,...

THE highway drops precipitously down the mountainside, and the pavement is slick with rain and hail. Cars pass in both directions, forcing me to pedal tight to the thousand-foot drop at the road's edge. Fog obscures the tops of the striated olive-green and black cliffs on the other side of the valley. Below, it is raining, but at 15,000 feet our...
La Paz er den administrative hovedstad for den sydamerikanske stat Bolivia. Ifølge folketællingen i 2001 har byen ca. en million indbyggere. La Paz ligger i dalen skabt af Choqueyapufloden. På et nærliggende plateau, som ligger ca. 4000 m.o.h. ligger byen El Alto og La Paz' internationale lufthavn. Byens navn betyder direkte oversat "fred" eller "freden".
Byen blev grundlagt i 1548 af Alonso de Mendoza på det sted, hvor der havde været en bebyggelse kaldet Chuquiago. Byens fulde navn var oprindeligt Nuestra Señora de La Paz (som betyder "vores frue af freden"). Navnet hyldede genoprettelsen af freden efter oprøret ledet af Gonzalo Pizarro og andre conquistadorer to år tidligere mod Blasco Núñez Vela, den første vicekonge af Peru. I 1825, efter den afgørende sejr for republikanerne ved Ayacucho over den spanske hær, blev byens navn ændret til La Paz de Ayacucho (som betyder "freden ved Ayacucho"). Fold ud