Santa Cruz Inc. debunks myths and sparks debate

Illustration © Massiel Cardozo (creative direction) and Dorian López (design and artwork).

Review • Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar • September 11, 2026 • Leer en castellano 

Since its launch in August, the book Santa Cruz Inc.: Agribusiness and the Corporate Myth has sparked intense debate, in particular in the Bolivian department of the same name.

The second book launch, which was scheduled to take place August 11 in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, was beset with problems. Access to the original venue was suddenly canceled by the mayor’s office without explanation. This was widely seen as a form of censorship and a form of boycott by local elites whose power is dissected in the book’s pages.

Despite this, the editors and authors secured another venue and kicked off a debate that has since spread to other departments across the country. In the last month, two print runs of the book have sold out, and discussions of its content have gone viral on social media.

Business associations have responded aggressively, and in universities and other public spaces, new debates continue to emerge. The authors, Stasiek Czaplicki, Suzanne Kruyt, José Octavio Orsag, Blanca Rivero, and Huáscar Salazar—two of whom are contributors to Ojalá—have also been interviewed by various media outlets. 

Why so much fuss?

The narrative promoted from Santa Cruz defines Bolivia's most conservative right-wing discourse, and is advanced by a sector that seeks to deepen the predatory agro-industrial export model, which generates concentrated surpluses and spreads damages and costs across the fabric of life as a whole. Santa Cruz Inc. provides arguments and information that challenge this narrative of corporate exceptionalism and expose it as a myth.

To quote the authors’ introduction:

Santa Cruz presents itself to Bolivia and the world as a success story. As the department that produces the bulk of the country’s food, generates the largest volume of agricultural exports, and grows while the rest of the country stagnates. Its representatives speak of entrepreneurship, of hard work, of a region that succeeded on its own merits... This narrative contains many distortions and, in particular, many omissions.

Santa Cruz Inc. seeks to “reveal something profound and disturbing in Bolivian history: the existence of a power structure that operates independently of whoever occupies the Palacio Quemado,” the seat of central power located in La Paz.

The authors trace threads of continuity in power dynamics that adapt and repeat themselves time and again. They highlight continuities and connections and encourage broad collective discussions that can help to break patterns and avoid repetitions.

The only way to open up possibilities for the future amid a brutal economic crisis that has worsened over the past three years is to abandon and overhaul the agro-export model, which itself is another form of extractivist economic practice.

The authors conducted extensive research to ensure that the information they share goes beyond the technical reports and specialized publications that circulate in academic circles. 

“What is hard to find is a single work that brings all the pieces together, connecting the history of the land to financial networks, financial networks to environmental destruction, environmental destruction to identity-based violence, and all of that to the state structure that makes it possible,” the authors explain.

The launch of Santa Cruz S.A. in Cochabamba, Bolivia, on September 2, 2026. Photo © Massiel Cardozo.

Distortions and omissions

Many of the issues that are deeply entrenched in conventional wisdom have formed a wall that blocks critical thinking. This is especially true when it comes to economic issues.

These are sets of fallacious, one-sided assertions that, through constant repetition, have become the framework through which we understand events in a manner that limits criticism.

Santa Cruz Inc. dismantles the distortions and omissions that present the agro-export sector as a viable way to organize the economy for Bolivian society as a whole. These distortions prevent us from understanding how agribusiness is sustained by a repeated pattern of dispossession, elitist abuse, and violence.

Let’s look at some examples of these myths and the realities behind them, in the authors’ own words:

• How a productive sector accounting for nearly a fifth of the country’s exports contributes less than two percent of government revenue.

• How the expansion of the agricultural frontier has made Bolivia the country with the second-highest amount of primary forest loss in the world.

• How smoke from forest fires, which in 2024 covered one-tenth of the national territory [12.5 million hectares], doesn't just linger over soybean fields, but also makes people in cities sick, including in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

In order to critically examine these fantastic narratives of business success and prosperity spread by Santa Cruz elites, the authors bring together, in six rigorous and well-documented chapters, research on how agroindustrial power has taken shape in Bolivia over the course of more than a century. 

These corporate narratives and, above all, the hierarchical and abusive practices they impose on society as a whole are already causing significant unrest in the Santa Cruz region itself. The problem lies in the enormous difficulty of critically challenging this material and discursive structure.

Drawing on elements of colonial history, the book discusses the land grabs that occurred throughout the 20th century, entrenched in the myth of making so-called “empty lands” productive. The authors trace the regional history of Santa Cruz, revealing how the power of large landowners, which was based on plantations, which later became “agricultural enterprises,” which are now at the core of financialized corporations, the stronghold of Santa Cruz elites.

Fuelling an important debate

Although Santa Cruz Inc. centers on Bolivia, it aspires to contribute to a broader conversation. Almost every country in Abya Yala has endured violent processes of dispossession during the neoliberal era. The book seeks to foster a much-needed reflection on progressive interventions that colluded with corporate power, only to give way to the despicable right-wing governments that today rule several countries in the region.

The authors see the power of agribusiness in the central-eastern region of South America as a problem that must be taken seriously. To understand it thoroughly, it is urgent to delve deeper into the links between agro-industrial corporations, extractivism, financial turmoil, and the spread of violence and militarism.

“The fact that in 2026 it is necessary to piece together information that was available 40 years ago says something important about the power this book examines,” the authors write. “What these pages aim to do, among other things, is to recover that scattered memory and put it to work in a narrative that makes it visible once again. Because if there is one thing the data gathered in this book makes clear, it is that the power of agribusiness is not sustained solely by money, land, and laws. It is also sustained by forgetting.”

Santa Cruz Inc. is a key aspect of that struggle—a struggle against forgetting and for the future.

Santa Cruz Inc.: Agribusiness and the Corporate Myth was published by researchers at the Center for Popular Studies, a cooperative dedicated to research and public debate that cultivates and produces critical knowledge to sustain and defend dignified conditions for the reproduction of life. The book is available in bookstores in Bolivia, and Dum Dum Editora will announce digital distribution in the coming days.