Santa Cruz de la Sierra

Santa Cruz de la Sierra is the capital of Santa Cruz department, a city on the Piraí River in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia. It is named after the town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Extremadura, the home of its founder. Its carnival before Lent fills the streets with music, costumed troupes and water fights.

The Spanish captain Ñuflo de Chávez founded the city in 1561 far to the east, near the present town of San José de Chiquitos. The settlement was moved west to the Piraí at the end of the 16th century, and for a long time it stayed a small town cut off from the Andean cities by mountains and forest. Jesuit missions in the Chiquitos region around it built churches that are now on the UNESCO list. A road to Cochabamba and railways to Brazil and Argentina reached the city in the 1950s, and oil, sugar and later soy farming brought fast growth from then on.

Soybeans, sunflower and sugarcane from the plains around the city are crushed and refined in its mills for oil, meal and sugar. Sofía, based in Santa Cruz, raises chickens and makes sausages and cold meats sold across Bolivia. Expocruz, the trade fair held each September, brings cattle breeders, carmakers and farm suppliers to its grounds.

The Cathedral of San Lorenzo, a brick church of the 19th century, faces the main square in the center. Güembé Biocenter, on the edge of the city, has a butterfly dome, an orchid garden and natural pools. Lomas de Arena, a regional park to the south, keeps high sand dunes and lagoons surrounded by tropical forest. The people of the city call themselves cambas, a name used across the eastern lowlands of Bolivia.