🇧🇴 Bolivia · Valleys
Tarata is a colonial town in Cochabamba's valle alto, a short way from the departmental capital, with a charming historic center of old mansions, quiet streets and churches. Temperate and easygoing, it's one of the most traditional-feeling towns in the Cochabamba valleys and a standard destination for a half-day or full-day trip from the city of Cochabamba.
The town is known for its religious heritage and for its links to Bolivian history: it was the birthplace of presidents and other notable figures, and it holds the revered Franciscan convent and church of San José, tied to the devotion to San Severino, patron saint of the rains, whose festival draws crowds of pilgrims. Its plaza, its arcades and its architecture give it an air of time standing still.
This guide gathers the essentials of Tarata: its colonial and religious heritage, its traditions and festivals, how to get there from Cochabamba, where to eat and practical tips for enjoying one of the most distinctive towns of the valle alto.
Tarata is an old town in the Cochabamba valle alto, with colonial roots and considerable importance in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was the birthplace of prominent figures in Bolivian history, among them the presidents Mariano Melgarejo and René Barrientos Ortuño, and a center of a rich Franciscan religious tradition around the convent of San José, founded at the end of the 18th century. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The department of the central valleys and the granary of Bolivia: Quechua land of temperate climate, gastronomic capital of the country, cradle of the Heroines of La Coronilla and of the Water War, gateway to the Inca ruins of Incallajta and to the caves and dinosaur footprints of Torotoro.
Read the history of Cochabamba →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
On 13 April 1820 a boy named Mariano Melgarejo was born in Tarata, the natural son of a relationship outside marriage; 44 years later he would proclaim himself president of Bolivia by force of the sword and end up shot dead by his lover's brother on a street in Lima. Between that humble birth and that violent end unfolds much of the turbulent history of 19th-century Bolivia, and the small colonial town of the Cochabamba valle alto was its starting point. Tarata sits in Cochabamba's valle alto, one of the most fertile and populated farming regions of colonial Bolivia. The Cochabamba valleys, with their temperate climate and rich soils, were an important granary from pre-Hispanic times, and under Inca and then Spanish rule they became food suppliers — maize, wheat, potatoes — for the mining centers of the altiplano, above all for prosperous Potosí.
In that farming and trading context Tarata flourished as a valle alto town, laid out around a plaza, with its adobe-and-tile mansions, its arcades and its churches. It grew as the center of a productive rural area and as a hub of the valley's social and religious life, gaining considerable importance within the department through the 18th and 19th centuries.
That importance showed in its architecture and in its institutional life. Tarata came to carry real weight in the region, a standing it keeps in local memory and in the heritage you can still walk through: a historic center that holds the flavor of the valley's colonial towns, and which today is its main draw.
One of the things that sets Tarata apart is its link to prominent figures of Bolivian history. The town is known for being the birthplace or home town of presidents of the republic and of other notable 19th-century figures, which gave it political and symbolic weight remarkable for a place its size.
The most famous of them all is Mariano Melgarejo Valencia, born in Tarata on 13 April 1820, the natural son of Justo Valencia and Ignacia Melgarejo. His humble origins didn't stop a meteoric career: he joined the Bolivian army as a private at 16 and, in barely two and a half decades, rose to become general of the entire army. On 28 December 1864 he proclaimed himself de facto president, opening one of the most turbulent, authoritarian and controversial governments in Bolivian history, remembered for his personal excesses, his ruinous territorial treaties — the 1866 boundary treaty with Chile, which set the border at the 24th parallel and shared the revenues of the nitrate zone with its neighbor, and the 1867 treaty of Ayacucho with Brazil, which handed over tens of thousands of square kilometers in the Amazon — and a caudillo style of rule that became legendary in the popular imagination. Overthrown in 1871 and already exiled in Lima, he was shot dead that same year by José Aurelio Sánchez, brother of his lover Juana Sánchez: an end as dramatic as his rise.
Alongside Melgarejo, Tarata is also the birthplace of René Barrientos Ortuño, a soldier and president of Bolivia in the 1960s, a key figure of the period of military governments that shaped the country in those years. The presence of these two figures — a century apart but bound to the same home town — gave Tarata political and symbolic weight remarkable for a place its size, and left its mark on its mansions and on local memory, which the town keeps with a mix of pride and ambivalence, given how contentious Melgarejo's legacy is.
This past ties the small valle alto town to the great events of the republic's formation. Walking Tarata with this historical layer in mind adds interest to the visit: behind its quiet streets and its peaceful plaza lies the birthplace of men who came to steer the country's fate, for better and for worse.
Religious heritage is one of Tarata's great treasures, and its centerpiece is the Franciscan convent and church of San José. The Franciscan order did notable evangelizing and educational work in the Cochabamba valleys, and the Tarata convent became an important spiritual and cultural center for the region, with its sacred art, its altarpieces and its rich devotional life.
Around the convent grew the veneration of San Severino, a 5th-century Roman soldier who, assigned to guard imprisoned Christians, converted to the faith of his captives and died a martyr. His relics and his image reached Tarata from Italy in the first half of the 19th century — the records mention 1835 and 1843 — brought by Father Andrés Herrero as a gift from Pope Gregory XVI to Tarata's 'Propaganda Fide' missionary college; to this day they are venerated in a glass case in the side nave of the church of San José, with bone fragments set into the image. The valley's farmers took him up as the 'saint of the rains': tradition tells that in 1972, a drought year, the procession with the saint's case ended under thunder and heavy clouds, sealing a fame that every year draws thousands of pilgrims who come to ask for or give thanks for the water for their crops.
So the religious and the historical intertwine in Tarata: the Franciscan convent isn't only a monument but the heart of a popular devotion that still calls the faithful in. Together with its colonial center and its memory as a birthplace of presidents, this spiritual heritage makes Tarata one of the most singular and endearing towns of the Cochabamba valleys.
The convent of San José, founded in 1792, wasn't only a place of worship: for a time it served as the head of the church administration of the Franciscan missions of eastern Bolivia, the Moxos and Chiquitos regions. Mission work in those lowlands was coordinated from Tarata, and the convent itself came to house a printing press producing books and religious materials for the missions, a striking detail that speaks to the role of this small valley town as a cultural and administrative hub with very wide reach.
The festival of San Severino, patron of the rains, cemented the town's religious identity. Every last Sunday of November, thousands of pilgrims from the valley come up to Tarata to ask for or give thanks for the rains for their crops, in a celebration that mixes Catholic liturgy with the deep relationship of farming communities to the cycle of water and land. It's one of the best attended festivals of the Cochabamba valle alto.
Today Tarata lives above all off the valley's agriculture and off nearby tourism arriving from Cochabamba, drawn by its colonial center, its convent, its food — the famous Tarata chorizo — and its air of time standing still. Declared of heritage interest for its architecture, the town combines its historical memory as a birthplace of presidents with the calm of a place that keeps, almost intact, the flavor of the Cochabamba valleys of old.