The Spanish conquistadores numbered in the low hundreds, going up against the thousands-men force of the separate Incan rulers, but the Spaniard were better armed, better prepared, and had the advantage of Incan infighting. With horses, they were able to move about incredibly fast, in just five months spreading over the entire state of Peru into modern-day Bolivia, high in the Andes mountains, which turned out to be overflowing with silver. They would hold the territory for nearly three centuries until their own empire started to crumble.

On this day, August 6, in 1825, Upper Peru, as it was known then, declared independence from Spain, who by that time was militarily sapped with wars against their neighbors in Europe and against the United States.

For about a decade before their independence, as the Spanish garrisons in Peru were left without any support by their home country, Bolivia fell under a series of military juntas, who divided up the land into a series of semi-independent republics. Only after the great military leader Simon Bolivar defeated the last of the Spanish royalist troops did the country unify, and in gratitude renamed the land after him.