Cachuela Esperanza is a village in the Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

n Departamento

Departamento

Departamento is the Spanish term for a department.As country subdivision it can be found in several countries of Latin America....

 Beni

Beni Department

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...

.

Location

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

Rapid

A rapid is a section of a river where the river bed has a relatively steep gradient causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence. A rapid is a hydrological feature between a run and a cascade. A rapid is characterised by the river becoming shallower and having some rocks exposed above the...

s of Beni River

Beni River

The Beni River is a river in the north of Bolivia.It rises north of La Paz and flows northeast through the pampas. One of the tributary rivers is Tuichi River in the Madidi National Park. Tuichi River joins the Beni River upstream from the town Rurrenabaque. South of Rurrenabaque, Río Beni runs...

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

Madeira River

The Madeira River is a major waterway in South America, approximately 3,250 km miles long The Madeira is the biggest tributary of the Amazon...

 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. Attracted by the rubber boom

Rubber boom

The rubber boom was an important part of the economic and social history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, being related with the extraction and commercialization of rubber...

, Nicolas Suárez Callaú

Nicolás Suárez Callaú

Nicolás Suárez Callaú set up a multinational rubber empire in South America at the beginning of the 20th century....

  set up his company's headquarter of a multinational rubber empire at Cachuela Esperanza, with branches at Acre

Acre (state)

Acre is one of the 27 states of Brazil. It is situated in the southwest of the Northern Region, bordering Amazonas to the north, Rondônia to the east, Bolivia to the southeast and the Ucayali Region of Peru to the south and west. It occupies an area of 152,581.4 km2, being slightly smaller...

, Manaus

Manaus

Manaus is a city in Brazil, the capital of the state of Amazonas. It is situated at the confluence of the Negro and Solimões rivers. It is the most populous city of Amazonas, according to the statistics of Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, and is a popular ecotourist destination....

, Belém

Belém

Belém is a Brazilian city, the capital and largest city of state of Pará, in the country's north region. It is the entrance gate to the Amazon with a busy port, airport and bus/coach station...

, and London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

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

X-ray

X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...

 unit of Bolivia, and millionaires from Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

 und São Paulo

São Paulo

São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...

 were flown in by seaplane

Seaplane

A seaplane is a fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing on water. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are a subclass called amphibian aircraft...

s. In the 1920s, when natural rubber was substituted by synthetic rubber

Synthetic rubber

Synthetic rubber is is any type of artificial elastomer, invariably a polymer. An elastomer is a material with the mechanical property that it can undergo much more elastic deformation under stress than most materials and still return to its previous size without permanent deformation...

 gradually, the importance of Cachuela Esperanza declined, and with the Bolivian Revolution of 1952 the artificial djungle town sank into insignificance once and for all.

Population

Today, Cachuela Esperanza has a more 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

Simón Iturri Patiño

Don Simón Iturri Patiño was a Bolivian industrialist who was among the world's wealthiest men at the time of his death. With a fortune built from ownership of a majority of the tin industry in Bolivia, Patiño was nicknamed "The Andean Rockefeller"...

, Hochschild and Aramayo one of the most influential tycoons of Bolivia. Moreover, in 1925 Cachulea Esperanza was the birthplace of Eugen Gomringer

Eugen Gomringer

Eugen Gomringer is often called the father of concrete poetry. Gomringer lives in the region of Bamberg in Germany, he writes in German .-References:...

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

Concrete poetry

Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....

".