Cachuela Esperanza
Cachuela Esperanza is a village in the Bolivian Departamento Beni.
Location
Cachuela Esperanza is situated on the right bank at the rapids of Beni River, 30 km before its confluence with Mamoré River which both form the Madeira River 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 Palacios. Attracted by the rubber boom, Nicolas Suárez Callaú set up his company's headquarters of a multinational rubber empire at Cachuela Esperanza, with branches at Acre, Manaus, Belém, and London.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 unit of Bolivia, and millionaires from Rio de Janeiro und São Paulo were flown in by seaplanes. 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.