Trips to Bolivia

TRIPS TO BOLIVIA: SANTA CRUZ

The department of Santa Cruz is, with a little more 370,000 km2, most extensive of the nine departments that conform the territory of the Republic of Bolivia.

It is located in the east of the country and limits with Brazil and Paraguay. At the moment it has around 1.500.000 inhabitants; the temperature average to the year is of 24,6º C and its medium altitude is of 437 meters on the level of the sea. Its capital is the city of Santa Cruz of the Mountain range that counts on a population of more than 800,000 inhabitants.

In terms of activity and economic production, Santa Cruz is the most important region of the country, being her main headings the petroleum production, natural gas, sugar wood, cane, cotton, soybean, rice, wheat, maize and the cattle operation.

In the city of Santa Cruz of the Mountain range and in the call “integrated region”, that extends about one hundred kilometers towards the north of the capital, also exists a considerable industrial activity. They emphasize the sugar talents, the petroleum refineries, the silos and agro-industrys related to the soybean; the milk industry and its derivatives; the manufacture of construction equipments; furniture, leathers, conserves and drinks.

The vastness of the territory, the generosity of the tropical climate and the diversity of the economic and productive activities have done that the region of Santa Cruz became, in the last thirty or forty years, in pole of attraction as much for the own Bolivians, like for an endless number of immigrants coming from the nearest countries and also of most remote of the world.

The inhabitants of Santa Cruz are called cruceños, although also she knows them like Eastern or cambas (name that usually occurs in Bolivia to all the original inhabitants of the tropical region, that is to say, is applicable also to the departments of the Beni and Pando). The cruceños of more recent generations are people come from Cochabamba and La Paz, Sucre and Potosí, Oruro, Tarija, the Beni and almost all the zones of the country, that now live and work in Santa Cruz.

Also there are original menonitas of the north of Germany, that arrived from Canada, the United States and Mexico; it has Japanese of Okinawa, Kioto and Osaka; Chinese of Taiwan and Hong Khon; Korean of the South and the North; Sijs of the Punjab, Russians, Syrians, Lebaneses, Jordanians, Egyptian, Italian, Jewish, Argentine, Chilean, Brazilian Germans, and many more. But first in arriving at this region from remote earth, they were the Spanish conquerors, attracted by

Legend of the Gilded one, that legendary emporio of inexhaustible wealth that, known with the name Great Paitití, ignited the imagination of the conquerors of Century XVI.

The conquerors did not find the fabulous wealth of the Gilded one but, in exchange for it, they decided to turn to the Christian faith all the dispersed towns that inhabited the region. It was so, from second half of century XVII, the plain cruceña became land of Missions that were founded by Franciscan Jesuits and.

The Indians were reunited in towns or “Missions”, to which they adapted pacifically, learning Earth workings and diverse offices and arts. He emphasized the construction, mainly of religious character. He was so between the native ones they arose, after some years, capable talladores of wood, also musical teachers in carpentry, painters, decorators and, arts all that comprised of the religious instruction that practiced in the Missions.

Of that one remarkable crafts impressive architectonic and artistic testimonies in populations like San jOse are still conserved today, San Miguel, San Javier, Santa Ana, San Ignacio, San Rafael, San Ramon, Conception, Porongo and others. Those magnificent works of art, eloquent witnesses of the colonial history of the Bolivian East, have managed to survive the passage of time and the destruction of an implacable climate.

Generically known like the “Missions”, those populations today constitute one of the main sites of tourist interest not only of the region but of the whole country.