Cachuela Esperanza is a village in the Bolivian

Departamento A ' () is a country subdivision in several Latin American Latin Americans ( es, Latinoamericanos; pt, Latino-americanos; ) are the citizens of Latin American countries (or people with cultural, ancestral or national origins in Latin America) ...

Beni is a Japanese R&B singer, who debuted in 2004 under the Avex Trax label. In 2008, Arashiro left Avex Trax and transferred to Universal Music Japan where she started to perform as simply Beni (stylized as BENI). She was initially best known fo ...

Location

''Cachuela Esperanza'' ("rapids of hope") is situated on the right bank at the rapids of

Beni River The Beni River ( es, Río Beni) is a river in the north of Bolivia. It rises north of La Paz and flows northeast. The Madre de Dios River is where its mouth is at. In the upper portion of its course it flows through highland forest and rainforest ...

, 30 km before its confluence with Mamoré River which both form the

Madeira River The Madeira River ( pt, Rio Madeira, link=no ) is a major waterway in South America. It is estimated to be in length, while the Madeira-Mamoré is estimated near or in length depending on the measuring party and their methods. The Madeira is ...

there. The village is only accessible on dirt roads and is located at an elevation of 134 m.

History

The place at the Beni rapids was discovered in 1846 by the Bolivian scientist

José Agustín José Agustín Ramírez Gómez (born 19 August 1944) is a Mexican novelist, short story writer, essayist and screenwriter. He is considered as one of the most influential and prolific Mexican writers of the second half of the 20th century. Caree ...

Palacios. Attracted by the

rubber boom The Amazon rubber boom ( pt, Ciclo da borracha, ; es, Fiebre del caucho, , 1879 to 1912) was an important part of the economic and social history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, being related to the extraction and comm ...

, Nicolas Suárez Callaú set up his company's headquarters of a multinational rubber empire at ''Cachuela Esperanza'', with branches at Acre, Manaus,

Belém Belém (; Portuguese for Bethlehem; initially called Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão-Pará, in English Our Lady of Bethlehem of Great Pará) often called Belém of Pará, is a Brazilian city, capital and largest city of the state of Pará in t ...

, and

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. He had a theater and tennis courts built, a luxury hotel overlooking the rapids, and a modern hospital. ''Cachuela Esperanza'' had the first

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

unit of Bolivia, and millionaires from

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

und

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...

were flown in by

seaplane A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing (alighting) on water.Gunston, "The Cambridge Aerospace Dictionary", 2009. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their technological characteri ...

s. In the 1920s, when natural rubber was substituted by synthetic rubber gradually, the importance of ''Cachuela Esperanza'' declined, and with the Bolivian Revolution of 1952 the artificial jungle town sank into insignificance once and for all.

Population

Today, ''Cachuela Esperanza'' has a mere 200 inhabitants. In the past, the most significant personality of the town was ''Nicolas Suárez Callaú'', the "rubber king", along with the tin barons Patiño, Hochschild and Aramayo one of the most influential tycoons of Bolivia. Moreover, in 1925 ''Cachulea Esperanza'' was the birthplace of

Eugen Gomringer Eugen Gomringer (born 20 January 1925 in Cachuela Esperanza, Bolivia) is a Bolivian-born German concrete poet. He is head of the Institut für Konstruktive Kunst und Konkrete Poesie (IKKP) in Rehau, Germany. Between 1977 and 1990, he was a profes ...

, son of a Swiss and a Bolivian girl, who is seen as the father of "

Concrete Poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct me ...

References

National Institute of Statistics of Bolivia
{{Authority control Populated places in Beni Department