Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Santa Cruz
Set among the steamy, tropical lowlands just beyond the last Andean foothills, SANTA
CRUZ is Bolivia's economic powerhouse. An isolated frontier town until the middle of the
twentieth century, the city has since become the biggest in the country, a sprawling metro-
polis with a booming oil, gas, timber, cattle and agro-industry economy. This rapid growth
- and the availability of land - has attracted a diverse range of immigrants to Santa Cruz,
including Japanese rice farmers, German-speaking Mennonites and, far poorer, indigenous
migrants from the Andes.
Native Cruceños , however, still dominate the city. Known as cambas , they are culturally
a world apart from the rest of Bolivia (they in turn refer with mild contempt to the highland
immigrants as collas - the two terms being old Inca words for lowland and highland peoples
respectively). Generally loud, brash and happy-go-lucky, their language, music and outlook
are infused with a tropical ease and sensuality, which feels closer in spirit to Brazil or Colom-
bia. Santa Cruz has few conventional tourist attractions, and some find its brash commercial-
ism and pseudo-Americanism unappealing. However, others enjoy its dynamism and tropical
insouciance.
The city continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, spreading inexorably in a mixture of
ragged shantytowns, commercial developments and exclusive residential districts where oil
executives, businessmen and made-good drug-traffickers relax in opulent mansions and drive
aroundinimported4WDs(knownas“narcocruisers”).Theoldcolonial city centre ,however,
is still dominated by whitewashed houses with tiled roofs that extend over the pavements,
and when everything closes up in the middle of the day for an extended lunch break the city
is suffused with a languid tropical indolence.
 
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