Camiri Day in Bolivia

Camiri is a city and municipality, known as the oil capital of Bolivia, located in the Cordillera province in the department of Santa Cruz on the banks of the Parapetí River; it is one of the main cities of the Bolivian Chaco. The municipality has a population of 33,838 inhabitants (according to the INE 2012 Census).

In 1931 the Chaco War broke out between Bolivia and Paraguay. The Bolivian population began to perceive various events that disenchanted them with respect to the expectations and hopes they had in reference to Standard Oil. Co. had been gradually suspending its exploratory work and transferring its equipment and materials to Argentina, thus showing that it had no intention of fulfilling its commitments with Bolivia. This negative attitude reached extremes, when in the middle of the conflagration Standard declared itself "neutral" and denied the government's requests to produce gasoline for the army's airplanes, which forced the army to intervene and take control of the wells and refineries.

The war entered the stage of cessation of hostilities on June 14, 1935 (three years later, in 1938, the Chaco Peace Treaty would be signed definitively), but in view of the fact that the permanence in the place of the General Directorate of Army Stages and the expansion of the Standard refinery had caused the formation of an appreciable population nucleus. For this reason, on July 12, 1935, a Supreme Decree was issued during the government of José Luis Tejada Sorzano, which made viable the expropriation of 300 hectares of land belonging to Mrs. Carmen Gonzales to make the layout of the urban area and thus officialize the birth of Camiri.