I’ve probably never been so full of preconceptions about what I would find in a town as I was when the bus brought me into Santa Cruz. From the Che sites the bus had lumbered ever downhill into overgrown, tropical lands where the clothing got scantier as the foliage got denser, until we reached the big smoke that I’d heard so much about.

From a tourist perspective it would be easy to overlook Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s largest city in terms of population and of urban sprawl. From a holistic, wanting-to-see-both-sides perspective, though, the city is impossible to ignore. Even if there is really nothing to see here.

La Paz is high and dense, crammed into a canyon, full of old traditions, and fanatically loyal to Evo. Santa Cruz is flat, low and tropical, sprawling over the by turns muddy and dusty flats, full of SUVs and American brands, and rabidly, rabidly anti-Evo.

None of this is any secret; Santa Cruz is billed as more Miami than Bolivia, and it has often erupted into violence and confrontation with Evo and his loyal factions. I was expecting to finds signs of all this, but on the other hand I’ve met great cruzeñas (one in particular) in other parts of the country, and these people testified to the friendliness and casual openess of the city. It is a world far removed from the hard stoicism of the mountains.

Walking the streets, Santa Cruz struck me as a weird cross between Houston and Manila, although the locals of either city would have good reason to consider Santa Cruz as small-fry in comparison with their own metropolises. None the less the similarities are there; Santa Cruz has grown out of a colonial Spanish outpost, and in its centre traces of this are still visible. Until a few years ago sloths hung from the trees in the leafy central plaza. The city has really only become significant in the last 60 years, though, as highways and railways have linked it with the rest of Bolivia, and more importantly with Brazil and Argentina. These allowed bargain-hunters in and agricultural produce out. Although how much more beef and fruit do Argentina and Brazil need? The rise of cocaine and the rise of Santa Cruz may form a far more important correspondence.

More important still was the discovery of grand gas reserves in Santa Cruz department. Thus came Houston to Santa Cruz, a city now of opportunistic businesspeople, of the nouveau riche, of urban sprawl, and of gaz-guzzling vehicles. Nobody is anybody without a car in Santa Cruz; how else would the world know what music you like to play?

I had no idea what to do in Santa Cruz. I wandered the city centre looking for guidebook-recommended restaurants, but most had moved on. Time and again I returned to the pretty central plaza, where old men gathered to play chess, and dignified, jacketed vendors sold steaming cups of coffee with rapidly-forming skins. Nuns flitted by and dogs attired in far more expensive clothes than mine strained on their leashes. Still, the most surprising thing about this place was how Bolivian it felt.

No true cruzeña would want to hear this. The woman I stayed with, among others, sang the praises of Santa Cruz, a modern, cosmopolitan city without the problems of the poor mountain pueblos. But the salons and boutiques of the centre quickly give way to familiar crumbling facades and dirt streets. The people here are whiter, many are taller and slimmer than the mountain-dwellers, but they are still filled with caution and curiosity and need to stare a bit when they spy a gringo. There are still people begging, people selling whatever they can to earn a crust, people sleeping on crushed cardboard in doorways. In Santa Cruz everyone can work if they want to, my hostess told me, but the city is known for its crime too, and even immediatly beyond the high walls and gates of the hostess’s house there are decrepit hovels, and streets that are little more than thick bogs of mud.

On my Saturday night in Santa Cruz the city gathered around any public screen to watch featherweight Venezuela beat the Bolivian national team in a world cup qualifier.Anguished faces and fists slamming on tables – just like those in every other city in the country – showed that beneath all the vitriol of regionalism these people are Bolivian, just like their highland rivals.

Why so much hatred then? Why the photographic exhibits proudly showing cruzeñas attacking police, storming government buildings, humiliating indigenous people? The uniformity of the bile on the tip of every tongue here makes me throw questioning glances at the media, which makes no attempt at objectivitiy, and is (of course) owned by the powerful and wealthy of the region. These people have reason to hate Evo; Santa Cruz has risen as a haven of semi-legal business, of tax evasion and of getting unmarked packages across the border. Evo wants to redistribute land, ensure the government receives its share of all profits; he wants to centralise and legislate, and hamper the freedoms these remote jungle traders enjoy. And from these people, I can only assume, spreads all the fascistic claptrap about the need to defend ‘liberty’, to fight Evo and his indigenous, pagan hordes. The same old, tired story of the cunning and the influential tapping into the credulities, ignorances and vanities of those propping them up.

Three days in Santa Cruz was more than enough. I grew tired of all the pro-Santa Cruz babble and the anti-Evo drivel; for all its wealth Santa Cruz is a dull city, low on art, low on prettiness or curiosity, low on traditions and culture, high on shopping and gas. The sad truth, I suspect, is that those making all the money know that this ia a temporary thing, and are just trying to make what they can while they can. The gas supplies will deplete, the tax and border regulations will tighten, and they will be forced to take their rackets elsewhere. There is thus little reason for them to invest in the city; SUVs are a safer investment, and will allow them to flee the scuppered city all the more quickly when the time comes.