Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, warm valleys, high-altitude Andean plateaus, and snow-capped peaks, encompassing a wide range of climates and biomes across its regions and cities. It includes part of the Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland in the world, along its eastern border. It is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay to the southeast, Argentina to the south, Chile to the southwest, and Peru to the west. The seat of government is La Paz, which contains the executive, legislative, and electoral branches of government, while the constitutional capital is Sucre, the seat of the judiciary. The largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located on the Llanos Orientales, a mostly flat region in the east of the country with a diverse non-Andean culture.
This is a demography of the population of Peru including population density, ethnicity, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
The Bolivian Gas War or Bolivian gas conflict was a social confrontation in Bolivia reaching its peak in 2003, centering on the exploitation of the country's vast natural gas reserves. The expression can be extended to refer to the general conflict in Bolivia over the exploitation of gas resources, thus including the 2005 protests and the election of Evo Morales as president. Before these protests, Bolivia had seen a series of similar earlier protests during the Cochabamba protests of 2000, which were against the privatization of the municipal water supply.
Beni, sometimes El Beni, is a northeastern department of Bolivia, in the lowlands region of the country. It is the second-largest department in the country, covering 213,564 square kilometers, and it was created by supreme decree on November 18, 1842, during the administration of General José Ballivián. Its capital is Trinidad.
Bolivia is a unitary state consisting of nine departments. Departments are the primary subdivisions of Bolivia, and possess certain rights under the Constitution of Bolivia. Each department is represented in the Plurinational Legislative Assembly—a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Each department is represented by four Senators, while Deputies are awarded to each department in proportion to their total population.
Santa Cruz de la Sierra, commonly known as Santa Cruz, is the largest city in Bolivia and the capital of the Santa Cruz department.
Cochabamba, from Quechua qucha or qhucha, meaning "lake", pampa meaning "plain", is one of the nine departments of Bolivia. It is known to be the "granary" of the country because of its variety of agricultural products from its geographical position. It has an area of 55,631 km2. Its population in the 2024 census was 2,005,373. Its capital is the city of Cochabamba, known as the "City of Eternal Spring" and "The Garden City" because of its spring-like temperatures all year.
Santa Cruz is the largest of the nine constituent departments of Bolivia, occupying about one-third (33.74%) of the country's territory. With an area of 370,621 km2 (143,098 sq mi), it is slightly smaller than Japan or the US state of Montana. It is located in the eastern part of the country, sharing borders in the north and east with Brazil and with Paraguay in the south.
Cochabamba is a city and municipality in central Bolivia in a valley in the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cochabamba Department and the fourth largest city in Bolivia, with a population of 630,587 according to the 2012 Bolivian census. Its name is from a compound of the Quechua words qucha "lake" and pampa, "open plain." Residents of the city and the surrounding areas are commonly referred to as cochalas or, more formally, cochabambinos.
The demographic history of Peru shows the structure of the population in different historical periods. Peru's population drastically increased in the 1900s, with a diverse range of ethnic divisions living in the country. Lima is its capital city situated along the Pacific Ocean coast, where most of its population lives, and its population size is around 9.75 million. Major cities are located near the coastal areas of Peru. In terms of population and area size, it is the fourth and third largest country in South America, a place where the ancestral transcends and all forms of art combine. Peru became an independent country on July 28, 1821. However, Peru did not have a proper national census until 1876, more than a half-century after independence. They took the data before the federal census through different mediums but not on a national level. The significant migration in Peru consisted of Indigenous people, Europeans, enslaved Africans, and Asians; Spaniards were the first European who came to Peru, arrived in 1531, and discovered the Inca culture. The Incas established pre-Columbian America's greatest and most advanced kingdom and monarchy. However, native Americans were still in a larger proportion to total population.
The Media Luna or Media Luna Ampliada refers to a group of four departments – Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija – in Bolivia which are home to a greater proportion of opponents to the national government led by Evo Morales and the Movement for Socialism (MAS) than the rest of the country. Pando has seen increasing support for MAS since 2009, while Tarija was initially supportive but has opposed MAS in every election after 2014. In contrast to the predominantly Indigenous Andean populations of the Andean region such as La Paz and Cochabamba, the departments in the Media Luna are majority mestizo, as well as being made up of the remaining 26 groups of lowland indigenes with white minorities, specifically in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Bolivia:
Totora, Tutura or T'utura is a town in the Carrasco Province of the Cochabamba Department in Bolivia. It is the capital and most-populous place of the Totora Municipality. As of the 2012 census, the population is 1,925. The first settlers were the Inca. Totora was officially settled in 1876, and declared a town by the Government of Bolivia in 1894.
Vacas Municipality is the second municipal section of the Arani Province in the Cochabamba Department in central Bolivia. Its capital is Vacas known as the "Land of the potato". During the Inca Empire Vacas served as a tampu along the Inca road system that led to Inkallaqta and Pocona.
Bolivians are people identified with the country of Bolivia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Bolivians, several of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Bolivian.
The history of the Jews in Bolivia goes back to the colonial period of Bolivia in the 16th century. In the 19th century, Jewish merchants came to Bolivia, most of them taking local women as wives and founding families that merged into the mainstream Catholic society. This was often the case in the eastern regions of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando, where these merchants came either from Brazil or Argentina.
The Baháʼí Faith in Bolivia begins with references to the country in Baháʼí literature as early as 1916. The first Baháʼí to arrive in Bolivia was in 1940 through the beginning of the arrival of coordinated pioneers, people who chose to move for the growth of the religion, from the United States. That same year the first Bolivian joined the religion. The first Baháʼí Local Spiritual Assembly was elected in La Paz in 1945 and the first native Bolivian formally joined the religion in 1956 which soon began spreading widely amongst indigenous Bolivians. The community elected an independent National Spiritual Assembly in 1961. By 1963 there were hundreds of local assemblies. The Baháʼí Faith is currently the largest international religious minority in Bolivia. The largest population of Baháʼís in South America is in Bolivia, a country whose general population is estimated to be 55%-70% indigenous and 30%-42% Mestizo, with a Baháʼí population estimated at 217,000 in 2005 according to the Association of Religion Data Archives.
White Bolivians, also known as Caucasian Bolivians, are Bolivians who have total or predominantly European or West Asian ancestry, most notably from Spain and Germany, and to a lesser extent, Italy and Croatia.
The Indigenous peoples in Bolivia or Native Bolivians are Bolivians who have predominantly or total Amerindian ancestry. They constitute anywhere from 20 to 60% of Bolivia's population of 11,306,341, depending on different estimates, and depending notably on the choice Mestizo being available as an answer in a given census, in which case the majority of the population identify as mestizo, and they belong to 36 recognized ethnic groups. Aymara and Quechua are the largest groups. The geography of Bolivia includes the Andes, the Gran Chaco, the Yungas, the Chiquitania and the Amazon Rainforest.
