Santa Cruz Department (Bolivia)

The current Constitution of Bolivia came into effect on 7 February 2009 when it was promulgated by President Evo Morales, after being approved in a referendum with 90.24% participation. The referendum was held on 25 January 2009, with the constitution being approved by 61.43% of voters.

The president of Bolivia, officially known as the president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is head of state and head of government of Bolivia and the captain general of the Armed Forces of Bolivia.

Chiquitos Province is one of the fifteen provinces of the Bolivian Santa Cruz Department, situated in the center of the department. Its capital is San José de Chiquitos.

Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainforest, but other types have been described.

The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is 8,900 km (5,530 mi) long, 200 to 700 km wide, and has an average height of about 4,000 m (13,123 ft). The Andes extend from north to south through seven South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.

Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America and in Latin America. At 8.5 million square kilometers (3,300,000 sq mi) and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the seventh most populous. Its capital is Brasília, and its most populous city is São Paulo. The federation is composed of the union of the 26 states and the Federal District. It is the only country in the Americas to have Portuguese as an official language. It is one of the most multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to over a century of mass immigration from around the world, and the most populous Roman Catholic-majority country.

Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the twentieth century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output.

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor percentages of waxes, fats, pectins, and water. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds.

Rice is the seed of the grass species Oryza sativa or less commonly O. glaberrima. The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera Zizania and Porteresia, both wild and domesticated, although the term may also be used for primitive or uncultivated varieties of Oryza.

Natural gas is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and helium are also usually present. Natural gas is colorless and odorless, so odorizers such as mercaptan are commonly added to natural gas supplies for safety so that leaks can be readily detected.

Liquefied petroleum gas is a fuel gas which contains a flammable mixture of hydrocarbon gases, specifically propane, propylene, butylene, isobutane and n-butane.

A referendum is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a new policy or specific law, or the referendum may be only advisory. In some countries, it is synonymous with and also known as plebiscite, votation, popular consultation, ballot question, ballot measure, or proposition.

Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals it occurs naturally only in combination with other elements and it almost always has an oxidation state of +2. It reacts readily with air to form a thin passivation coating of magnesium oxide that inhibits further corrosion of the metal. The free metal burns with a brilliant-white light. The metal is obtained mainly by electrolysis of magnesium salts obtained from brine. It is less dense than aluminium and is used primarily as a component in strong and lightweight alloys that contain aluminium.

The Gran Chaco or Dry Chaco is a sparsely populated, hot and semiarid lowland natural region of the Río de la Plata basin, divided among eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina, and a portion of the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, where it is connected with the Pantanal region. This land is sometimes called the Chaco Plain.

The Pantanal is a natural region encompassing the world's largest tropical wetland area, and the world's largest flooded grasslands. It is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and portions of Bolivia and Paraguay. It sprawls over an area estimated at between 140,000 and 195,000 km2. Various subregional ecosystems exist, each with distinct hydrological, geological and ecological characteristics; up to 12 of them have been defined.

The Río Grande in Bolivia rises on the southern slope of the Cochabamba mountains, east of the city Cochabamba, at 17°26′11″S 65°52′22″W. At its source it is known as the Rocha River. It crosses the Cochabamba valley basin in a westerly direction. After 65 km the river turns south east and after another 50 km joins the Arque River at 17°42′10″S 66°14′45″W and an elevation of 2.350 m.

Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex history, including a number of different languages, both indigenous and local linguistic descendants of the Roman-imposed Latin language, of which Spanish is the largest and the only one that is official throughout the whole country.

The Flemish or Flemings are a Germanic ethnic group native to Flanders, Belgium, who speak Dutch. Flemish people make up the majority of Belgians, at about 60%.

The Portuguese people are a Romance nation and ethnic group indigenous to Portugal who share a common culture, ancestry and language. The Portuguese people's heritage largely derives from the Indo-Europeans and Celts, who were Romanized after the conquest of the region by the ancient Romans. A small number of male lineages descend from Germanic tribes who arrived after the Roman period as ruling elites, including the Suebi, Buri, Hasdingi Vandals and Visigoths. The pastoral Caucasus' Alans left small traces in a few central-southern areas. The Umayyad conquest of Iberia also left Moorish, Jewish and Saqaliba genetic contributions in the country.

Jews or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the ethnic religion of the Jewish people, although its observance varies from strict to none.

Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.4 billion followers representing one-third of the global population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories, and believe that Jesus is the Son of God, whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible and chronicled in the New Testament.

The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, but convictions of unrepentant heresy were handed over to the secular courts, which generally resulted in execution or life imprisonment. The Inquisition had its start in the 12th-century Kingdom of France, with the aim of combating religious deviation, particularly among the Cathars and the Waldensians. The inquisitorial courts from this time until the mid-15th century are together known as the Medieval Inquisition. Other groups investigated during the Medieval Inquisition, which primarily took place in France and Italy, include the Spiritual Franciscans, the Hussites, and the Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order, replacing the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges.

Mestizo is a term used for ethno-racial classification to refer to a person of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European even though their ancestors are not. The term was used as an ethno-racial exonym for mixed-race castas that evolved during the Spanish Empire. Although, broadly speaking, mestizo means someone of mixed European/Indigenous heritage, the term did not have a fixed meaning in the colonial period. It was a formal label for individuals in official documents, such as censuses, parish registers, Inquisition trials, and others. Priests and royal officials might have classified persons as mestizos, but individuals also used the term in self-identification.

The Russian Mennonites are a group of Mennonites who are the descendants of German-speaking Anabaptists who settled in the Vistula delta in West Prussia for about 250 years and established colonies in the Russian Empire beginning in 1789. Since the late 19th century, many of them have emigrated to countries which are located throughout the Western Hemisphere. The rest of them were forcibly relocated, so very few of their descendants currently live in the locations of the original colonies. Russian Mennonites are traditionally multilingual but Plautdietsch is their first language as well as their lingua franca. In 2014, there were several hundred thousand Russian Mennonites: about 200,000 live in Germany, 74,122 live in Mexico, 70,000 in Bolivia, 40,000 live in Paraguay, 10,000 live in Belize, tens of thousands of them live in Canada and the US, and a few thousand live in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.

The Mennonites in Bolivia are among the most traditional and conservative of all Mennonite denominations in South America. They are mostly Russian Mennonites of Frisian, Flemish, and North German descent. As of 2013, there were about 70,000 Mennonites living in Bolivia.

Andrés Ibáñez Province is one of the fifteen provinces of the Bolivian Santa Cruz Department, situated in the western part of the department. Its capital is Santa Cruz de la Sierra which is also the capital of the department.

Ignacio Warnes is one of the fifteen provinces of the Bolivian Santa Cruz Department and is situated in the department's central parts. The province name honors Colonel Ignacio Warnes (1772–1816), a military leader in the South American war of independence.

José Miguel de Velasco or Velasco is a province in the Santa Cruz department of Bolivia. Its capital is San Ignacio de Velasco. The province is named after the Bolivian president José Miguel de Velasco Franco. It was created by law on October 12, 1880, during the presidency of Narciso Campero. Until its creation it was integrated into Chiquitos Province.

San Ignacio de Velasco, is the capital of the José Miguel de Velasco Province and the San Ignacio de Velasco Municipality in the Santa Cruz Department of Bolivia.

Ichilo is one of the fifteen provinces of the Bolivian Santa Cruz Department and is situated in the department's north-western parts. The province was founded by a decree of 8 April 1926 and is named after Río Ichilo which is forming the province border in the West.

Chiquitos Province is one of the fifteen provinces of the Bolivian Santa Cruz Department, situated in the center of the department. Its capital is San José de Chiquitos.

San José de Chiquitos or simply San José is the capital of Chiquitos Province in the Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia. It is known as part of the Jesuit Missions of the Chiquitos, which is declared in 1990 a World Heritage Site, as a former Jesuit Reduction.

Florida is a province in the Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia. Its capital is Samaipata. The province was created by law on December 15, 1924.

Samaipata or Samaypata is a small town in the Florida Province of the Santa Cruz Department in Bolivia. It has a subtropical climate and an altitude of 1600–1800 m. It lies about 120 kilometers to the southwest of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in the foothills of the Andes on the way to Sucre. It is a popular resort for inhabitants of Santa Cruz due to its much cooler climate. As such, there is regular bus and taxi service to Santa Cruz. The town is small with numerous colonial buildings and narrow cobbled streets. It is located near several tourist attractions such as El Fuerte de Samaipata, the Amboro National Park, El Codo de los Andes, Cuevas waterfalls, vineyards, rapids and lagoons, as well as well-preserved colonial towns such as Vallegrande, Pampagrande, Postrervalle, Santiago del Valle, Pucará, and others. It is also the first stop in the several tourist trails to Sucre, Potosi, and the Che Guevara route.

Obispo Santistevan is one of the fifteen provinces of the Bolivian Santa Cruz department and is situated in the department's western parts. The province was founded on 2 December 1941, and its name honors Obispo Santistevan (1843–1931), famous supporter of the building of Santa Cruz Cathedral.

Montero is a city and a municipality in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, about 50 km north of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Montero had a population of 137,931 as of 2020 and has experienced growth in recent decades, becoming an important city in the region.

Samaipata or Samaypata is a small town in the Florida Province of the Santa Cruz Department in Bolivia. It has a subtropical climate and an altitude of 1600–1800 m. It lies about 120 kilometers to the southwest of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in the foothills of the Andes on the way to Sucre. It is a popular resort for inhabitants of Santa Cruz due to its much cooler climate. As such, there is regular bus and taxi service to Santa Cruz. The town is small with numerous colonial buildings and narrow cobbled streets. It is located near several tourist attractions such as El Fuerte de Samaipata, the Amboro National Park, El Codo de los Andes, Cuevas waterfalls, vineyards, rapids and lagoons, as well as well-preserved colonial towns such as Vallegrande, Pampagrande, Postrervalle, Santiago del Valle, Pucará, and others. It is also the first stop in the several tourist trails to Sucre, Potosi, and the Che Guevara route.

The Virgen de Cotoca is the patron saint for the Department of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Her image is located in a shrine built in her honor and located in the City of Cotoca in the Department of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The Virgin of Cotoca is venerated by thousands of Bolivians who ask for her intercession for blessings and other petitions.

Tucavaca Valley Municipal Reserve is a protected area in Bolivia situated in the Santa Cruz Department, Chiquitos Province, Roboré Municipality. The reserve is located at an altitude between 200 m and 1250 m above sea level. It comprises the Santiago mountain range and the Tucavaca valley.