Santa Cruz & the Lowlands

The lowlands were home to many peoples before the Spanish arrived: Chiquitano and Guaraní groups in the east and south, and in the Llanos de Moxos of the Beni, cultures that built raised fields, causeways, canals and mound settlements across seasonally flooded savanna. At Samaipata, in the foothills, a sandstone ridge carved with channels and niches became a ceremonial centre, later occupied by the Inca at their south-eastern frontier.

Santa Cruz de la Sierra was founded in 1561 by Ñuflo de Chávez, who came up from Asunción in Paraguay, and moved to its present site in the following decades. For two centuries it was an isolated frontier town. From the late 17th century Jesuit missionaries gathered Chiquitano and Moxeño peoples into mission towns, where they built large churches and taught European music and crafts, until the order was expelled from the Spanish empire in 1767.

In the late 19th century the rubber boom drew labourers, often under brutal conditions, into the Beni and the far north, where Nicolás Suárez built a rubber empire. The Acre War with Brazil ended in 1903 with the loss of the Acre territory, and today's Pando is what remained. After the 1952 revolution, a road to Cochabamba, oil and gas, and state-backed colonisation turned Santa Cruz into a boom region of farming and cattle ranching, joined by Mennonite and Japanese settlers. Its demand for autonomy set the region against the Morales government from 2006. The Chiquitano forests suffered major fires in 2019 and 2024.

Lowlanders call themselves cambas, and their Spanish, with its own vocabulary drawn partly from Chiquitano and Guaraní, is a distinct regional variety. The pace is more relaxed, the dress lighter, and Santa Cruz's Carnival, with its costumed comparsas, water fights and dancing through the city, is the biggest party of the year. Taquirari and chovena music, played with violins and drums, are the rhythms of the region.

The lowlands are also home to dozens of Indigenous peoples, among them the Chiquitano, Guaraní, Ayoreo, Moxeño and Tacana, many of them in their own territories. In the former Jesuit missions, baroque church music has survived for centuries; archives of it found in Chiquitos and Moxos are played at the international baroque music festival, and local youth orchestras and choirs play it in the churches. San Ignacio de Moxos keeps the Ichapekene Piesta, its patronal festival, recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage, with dancers in feathered headdresses and masks.

Religion is Catholic, with a strong evangelical presence, and the Mennonite colonies speak their own German dialect. Football and family gatherings over grilled beef fill the weekends, and a hammock is part of every household.

Santa Cruz de la Sierra is Bolivia's largest city, with well over a million people, built in a series of ring roads around its historic centre. It has grown fast with migration from the highlands and elsewhere, and neighbourhoods such as Plan Tres Mil are larger than many Bolivian cities. Other towns are smaller: Montero and Warnes near Santa Cruz, Trinidad, the capital of the Beni, Riberalta and Guayaramerín in the far north, and Cobija, the capital of Pando, on the Brazilian border.

The lowlands produce most of Bolivia's food and farm exports: soya, sugar cane, rice, sunflower and beef, with cattle ranching dominant in the Beni. Brazil nuts are gathered in the forests of Pando and northern Beni, and Riberalta processes much of the harvest. Santa Cruz is also the country's business, industrial and banking centre, and gas pipelines to Brazil cross the department.

Days begin early to avoid the heat, and a long lunch and afternoon rest are common outside the city centre. The main issues are the national economic crisis, fuel shortages that affect agriculture, deforestation and the annual fires, and the long-standing political tension between Santa Cruz and the national government.

Lowland cooking is based on rice, cassava, plantain, maize, beef and cheese. Majadito is rice cooked with dried beef or chicken, often served with a fried egg and fried plantain, and locro de gallina is a chicken and rice soup. Masaco is mashed plantain or cassava mixed with dried beef or cheese, and pacumutu is a large skewer of grilled beef. Beef is at the centre of any celebration, often grilled over wood.

The bakery tradition is built on cassava starch and cheese. Cuñapés are small cheese rolls eaten warm with coffee in the afternoon, sonso is a cassava and cheese mixture baked on sticks or in pans. In the Beni and Pando, river fish such as pacú are grilled or fried.

Tropical fruit is abundant, including achachairú, a small orange fruit with a bittersweet white flesh. Drinks include somó, a sweet maize drink, and fresh juices, and local beers are drunk cold. In Santa Cruz the afternoon coffee with cuñapés is a social ritual.

Santa Cruz de la Sierra has its Plaza 24 de Septiembre, the brick cathedral and the arcaded streets of the old centre, with the Biocentro Güembé nature park on the edge of the city. To the west, Samaipata is a base for El Fuerte de Samaipata, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a huge carved rock at its centre, and for the cloud forests and giant ferns of Amboró National Park. Further south-west, Vallegrande and La Higuera are on the Che Guevara trail, where he was captured and killed in 1967.

East of Santa Cruz, the Jesuit Missions of Chiquitos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, include the churches of San Javier, Concepción, San Rafael, Santa Ana, San Miguel and San José, with painted wooden columns and carved altars, often visited as a multi-day circuit. Further north-east, Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, another UNESCO site, protects the Huanchaca tableland, the Arcoíris and Ahlfeld waterfalls and a wide range of wildlife on the Brazilian border.

In the Beni, Rurrenabaque on the Beni River is the base for boat trips into the pampas along the Yacuma River, known for caimans, capybaras, river dolphins and birds, and for lodges in Madidi National Park, whose rainforest begins on the opposite bank in La Paz department. Trinidad and San Ignacio de Moxos preserve the heritage of the Moxos missions.