The Bolivian People 79than with another Ecuadorian from the highland capital
of Quito.
In a similar way, but with its own quirks, Bolivian
highlanders, referred to as Kollas, and lowlanders from the
Santa Cruz tropics, called Cambas, are as much rivals as they
are compatriots.
A relatively insignifi cant football match was to decide
whether the Santa Cruz squad, Blooming, or the La Paz team,
Chaco, would gain the fi nal opening in the fi rst division of
the football league. Crowd enthusiasm was more spirited for
this lesser contest than for other league games with superior
teams. It was the Kollas against the Cambas, and never mind
that most players on Kolla teams are Cambas anyway.
General Hugo Bánzer’s presidency in the 1970s helped to
catapult the Camba city of Santa Cruz to a fi nancial position
that rivals Kolla La Paz. Today, the Cruceños are widely
believed to have become more dynamic capitalists than
the Paceños.
The Blame Game
Guillermo Gutiérrez, a Cruceño who had been awaiting trial on charges
of violations of Bolivian banking laws, complained to me in a jail cell
interview that his imprisonment was the result of a conspiracy of the
La Paz bankers club against Santa Cruz banks. Kolla entrepreneurs
responded to his charges by alleging that Camba business people
were dodging taxes through favourable loopholes created by Bánzer
and other politicians.Upward social mobility for a Kolla in Santa Cruz may
be more diffi cult than for a so-called ‘illegal immigrant’
in California!
Throughout the Latin American highlands, which in Bolivia
would also include the high valley cities of Cochabamba
and Sucre as well as La Paz, Potosí and Oruro, the Spanish
language is spoken more methodically, with every syllable
distinctly pronounced. On the other hand, in the lowlands,
from Acapulco to Havana, from El Salvador to Panamá, from
Guayaquíl on the Ecuador coast to Bolivia’s departments of
Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando, Spanish is spoken at a faster