Data Periodismo de Datos
The myth of rabbits
The highest fertility rate in the country is in Beni and Pando, and the stereotype claiming otherwise exists to frame internal migration as an invasion.
By Violeta Ayala — Tecnóloga Creativa
Sheet 02 · Demography
A phrase has circulated in eastern Bolivia for decades and almost nobody bothers to check it: that collas, the highlanders, breed like rabbits. It is the popular explanation for why the Andean west holds most of the country's population, and for why that population keeps turning up in Plan 3000, in Yapacaní, in San Julián, in the Chiquitanía.
| Department | Position vs replacement |
|---|---|
| Potosí | Above 2.1 |
| Beni | Above 2.1 · lowland east |
| Pando | Above 2.1 · lowland east |
| Cochabamba | Above 2.1 |
| La Paz | Below 2.1 |
| Oruro | Below 2.1 |
| Santa Cruz | Below 2.1 |
| Tarija | Below 2.1 |
| Chuquisaca | 1.8 — lowest in the country |
La Paz and Oruro sit below replacement. Beni and Pando, the heart of the east, are among the highest in the country.
| Department | Change | |
|---|---|---|
| Pando | +21.5% | |
| Santa Cruz | +17.5% | |
| Beni | +15.7% | |
| Oruro | +15.5% | |
| Cochabamba | +14.4% | |
| La Paz | +11.5% | |
| Tarija | +10.5% | |
| Chuquisaca | +4.3% | |
| Potosí | +4.0% |
INE director Humberto Arandia explained the mechanism when presenting the survey: urban fertility is 1.9 and rural fertility 2.9, so growth in the large urban areas depends largely on rural-to-urban migration rather than on births in those cities. Santa Cruz grew because people arrived. Not because they were born.
Who counts as Indigenous in Santa Cruz
Bolivia does not measure race. The census asks about self-identification with Indigenous, originary and peasant nations and peoples, and with Afro-Bolivian identity, in yes-or-no form. That instrument decides everything that can be known. The 2024 census recorded four million three hundred and two thousand four hundred and eighty-four people, 38.7% of the country. In 2012 it was 42%; in 2001, 62%. But in absolute terms the Indigenous population went from 4.2 to 4.3 million. What falls is the percentage, pushed by growth in the denominator and by the effect of urbanisation on how people name themselves.
| People | Count | Region |
|---|---|---|
| Quechua | 1,646,811 | Andes / valleys |
| Aymara | 1,595,045 | Altiplano |
| Guaraní | 103,712 | Lowlands |
| Chiquitano | > 100,000 | Lowlands |
| Toromona | 14 | Lowlands |
| Paunaca | 7 | Lowlands |
The city with the most Quechua people in eastern Bolivia is Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
The word camba
The regional demonym carries the same history as the land. The earliest written record appears in the 1676 Relación de la provincia de Mojos by the Jesuit brother Joseph del Castillo, where the plural cambas denotes a group of Mojos natives the Jesuit was taking to San Lorenzo, present-day Santa Cruz, for domestic service, to learn Spanish as guides and translators, and to work the fields.
Sixty years later, the historian Paula Peña found a telling entry in the 1735 cathedral archive: Juan indio de Piray, Juan Manuel Saldaña, Pedro Pablo camba. Indio marked ethnicity, Saldaña was a surname, and camba sat as an undefined category, probably for labourers who lived in the city and worked in rural areas.
| Origin | Meaning | Argued by |
|---|---|---|
| Guaraní kambá | Black, mulatto | Most widely accepted; Ramón Rocha Monroy |
| Kimbundu kamba | Friend | Via enslaved Africans, later adopted into Guaraní |
| Guaraní kuimba'e | Man, lord | Gustavo Pinto Mosqueira · pre-Hispanic origin |
The word began by naming Mojeño people in servitude and rural labourers. It ended up naming those who now hold the land.
What the myth is for
A stereotype that collapses under a single statistical table survives because it does a job. Breeding like rabbits converts internal migration into biological invasion. It naturalises what is an economic decision, leaving a department that grew four per cent in twelve years for one that grew seventeen point five, and presents it as an overflow of bodies.
Above all it sorts the conflict into two sides, cambas against collas. It sets the interculturales against the lowland Indigenous peoples, who together are the overwhelming demographic majority of the east, and removes from the frame the side that holds 93.5% of the land. That geometry is false. Someone benefits a great deal from keeping it.
Sources · Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2024 Population and Housing Census and 2023 Demographic and Health Survey · Paula Peña, La permanente construcción de lo cruceño · Hernando Sanabria, El habla popular de Santa Cruz · Joseph del Castillo, Relación de la provincia de Mojos, 1676 · Ramón Rocha Monroy.