Oruro

Oruro or Uru Uru is a city in Bolivia with a population of 264,683, located in the Altiplano about equidistant between La Paz and Sucre at approximately 3709m above sea level.It is the fifth-largest city in Bolivia by population, after Santa Cruz de la Sierra, El Alto, La Paz, and Cochabamba. It is the capital of the department of Oruro and the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oruro. Oruro has been subject to cycles of boom and bust owing to its dependence upon the mining industry, notably tin, tungsten , silver and copper.HistoryThe city was founded on November 1, 1606, by Don Manuel Castro de Padilla. as a silver-mining center in the Urus region. At the time it was named Real Villa de San Felipe de Austria, after the Spanish monarch Philip III. It thrived for a while, but it was eventually abandoned as the silver mines became exhausted.Oruro was reestablished by European Bolivians in the late nineteenth century as a tin mining center. It was named after the native tribe Uru-Uru. For a time, the La Salvadora tin mine was the most important source of tin in the world. Gradually, as this resource became less plentiful, Oruro again went into a decline. Its economy is still based on the mining industry.