Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
The Spaniards conquered the Incans and drew wealth from the silver mines of Potosi. It was called Upper Peru until the independent state was named Bolivia after Bolivar. Since 1825, its neighbors have reduced the size of Bolivia by more than a half. [Furtado: 1001 Days] "It took Bolívar two years to equip an army equal to the task, but resounding victories in 1824 made Bolívar the liberator of two more countries, one of which, Bolivia, even took his name. In the second of these battles, Ayacucho, fought at an exhausting altitude of over ten thousand feet, the patriots captured the last Spanish viceroy in America. Everything after the battle of Ayacucho was essentially a mop-up operation. The long and bloody Spanish American wars for independence were finally over. Only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish control, where they would stay for the rest of the 1800s. . . . Bolivia’s defeat in the Chaco War was another bitter blow . . . " [Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 4th Ed., p. 115, 190] "Landlocked, physiographically bisected, culturally bifurcated, and economically divided, Bolivia is a severely challenged state." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 129]