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Bolivia

Bolivia

The Republic of Bolivia, named after Simón Bolívar, is a landlocked country in central South America. It is bordered by Brazil on the North and East, Paraguay and Argentina on the South, and Chile and Peru on the West. At 1,098,580 km² (424,135 mi²), Bolivia is the world's 28th-largest country (after Ethiopia). It is comparable in size to Mauritania, and it has about 1.5 times the area of the US state of Texas. Bolivia has been a landlocked nation since 1879, when it lost its coastal department of Litoral to Chile in the War of the Pacific. However, it does have access to the Atlantic via the Paraguay River.

An enormous diversity of ecological zones is represented within Bolivia's territory. The western highlands of the country are situated in the Andes Mountains and include the Bolivian Altiplano. The eastern lowlands include large sections of Amazonian rainforests and Chaco. The highest peak is Nevado Sajama at 6,542 metres (21,463 ft) located in the department of Oruro. Lake Titicaca is located on the border between Bolivia and Peru. The Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat, lies in the southwest corner of the country, in the department of Potosí. Major cities are La Paz, El Alto, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and Cochabamba.

Bolivia 's 2002 gross domestic product (GDP) totaled USD $7.9 billion. Economic growth is about 2.5% a year. Bolivia's ethnic distribution is estimated to be 30% Quechua-speaking and 25% Aymara-speaking Amerindians. The largest of the approximately three-dozen native groups are the Quechuas (2.5 million), Aymaras (2 million), then Chiquitano (180,000), and Guaraní (125,000). So the full Amerindian population is at 55% and the remaining 30% is Mestizo (mixed Amerindian and European) and around 15% are Whites.

The white population consists mostly of criollos, which in turn consist of families of relatively unmixed Spanish ancestry, descended from the early Spanish colonists. These have formed much of the aristocracy since independence. Other smaller groups within the white population are Germans who founded the national airline Lloyd Aereo Boliviano, as well as Italian, American, Basque, Croatian, Russian, Polish and other minorities, many of whose members descend from families that have lived in Bolivia for several generations. Also noteworthy is the Afro-Bolivian community that numbers more than 0.5% of the population, descended from African slaves that were transported to work in Brazil and then migrated westward into Bolivia. They are mostly concentrated in the Yungas region (Nor Yungas and Sud Yungas provinces) in the department of La Paz, some three hours from La Paz city. There are also Japanese who are concentrated mostly in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and Middle Easterners who became prosperous in commerce.

Agriculture accounts for roughly 15% of Bolivia's GDP. Soybeans are the major cash crop, sold into the Andean Community market. Except around Lake Titicaca, about two-thirds of the cultivated land on the Altiplano lies fallow each year. Dry agriculture is the rule, and the most important crops are potatoes, corn, barley, quinoa (a milletlike grain), habas (broad beans), wheat, alfalfa, and oca (a tuber). The potato is the main staple; dehydrated and frozen to form chuño or tunta, it keeps indefinitely. The Yungas and Valles contain about 40% of the cultivated land. The eastern slopes, however, are too steep to permit the use of machinery, and erosion is a serious problem despite the practice of terracing. The most lucrative crop in the Yungas is coca, which is chewed by the local population and from which cocaine is extracted. The net production of coca leaf was estimated at 20,200 tons in 2001, down from 89,800 tons in 1994. Coca leaf production represents about 20% of world production. Coffee, cacao, bananas, yucca, and aji (a widely used chili pepper) are also important. In the fertile irrigated valleys, the important crops are corn, wheat, barley, vegetables, alfalfa, and oats. The Tarija area is famous for grapes, olives, and fruit. The region east of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where most of the nation's unused fertile lands lie, is considered the "promised land" of Bolivian agriculture. Lowland rice production is increasing rapidly and already satisfies domestic need. The sugar grown there is used mostly for alcohol, but in the 1960s, the mills increased their refining capacity, thus meeting internal consumption requirements. In the tropical forests of the northeast, the Indians practice slash-and-burn agriculture.

The leading commercial crops are soybeans, cotton, sugar, and coffee. Production for area harvested in 1999 for selected crops was soybeans, 762,000 tons produced on 632,000 hectares; seed cotton, 56,000 tons produced on 50,000 hectares; sunflowers, 95,000 tons produced on 102,000 hectares; wheat, 141,000 tons produced on 161,000 hectares; coffee, 24,000 tons produced on 25,000 hectares; sugar, 4.15 million tons produced on 90,000 hectares; and rice, 189,000 tons produced on 128,000 hectares. Droughts and freezing weather in the west during the 1990s caused harvests to fall for basic crops like quinoa, potatoes, barley, and garden vegetables. (Sources: Wikipedia and Encyclopedia of Nations).