If anything captures the growing tension between La Paz, the capital, and this flourishing city in the eastern lowlands, it is an alarming photomontage people send to one another's cellphones showing Bolivian President Evo Morales with a gunshot wound to the head and the words "Viva Santa Cruz" scrawled above him in blood.
The image has become a symbol of the rift between Morales, an Aymara Indian who after one year in office is celebrating populist feats like energy nationalization and the start of an ambitious land reform plan, and the conservative political and business elite of Santa Cruz, who speak of a country on the cusp of being torn asunder.
Morales, who rose from an impoverished background as a coca farmer and llama herder, has pressed forward with his contentious efforts to lift Bolivia's indigenous majority out of poverty and neglect.
But he has encountered intense resistance in this flourishing city in the eastern lowlands.
Protestors have painted the phrase "Evo, Chola de Chavez" -- which loosely translates as "Evo, Chavez's Indian Woman" -- on walls throughout Santa Cruz, a reference to Venezuela's growing influence here.
"We're turning into another Zimbabwe, in which economic chaos will become the norm," said Branko Mavinkovic, the president of a cooking oil manufacturer and one of Bolivia's richest men.
"Evo wants to create a situation where we're driven to civil war," he said, speaking English with a light Texas twang he picked up during his studies at Southern Methodist University.
Bolivia remains far from such a dire predicament. But pressure for more political autonomy in Santa Cruz and neighboring eastern provinces is the most pressing challenge to Morales' government.
It is no surprise that many Bolivian supporters of Morales view Santa Cruz as a redoubt of racism and elitism.
After students pelted his motorcade with rocks when he visited here last month, Morales expressed his disdain for some of the region's political and civic leaders who were on a hunger strike by saying they were not eating because they had grown "very fat."
While much attention has focused on political and cultural differences, at the heart of the dispute is control over proceeds from the extraction of natural resources like iron ore, timber, oil and, above all, natural gas. The state of Santa Cruz produces almost half of Bolivia's tax revenues while it has about a fifth of the population.
"The east wasn't clamoring for autonomy when the mineral wealth was in the tin mines of the Bolivian highlands," said Jim Schultz, a political analyst in Cochabamba. "Strip away the rhetoric on both sides and this is about who controls the gas revenues."
Even Morales' market-oriented critics acknowledge that the nationalization announced in May has gone better than expected, at least for now.
Foreign energy companies from Brazil, France and Spain agreed to stay in Bolivia and cede control of operations after Argentina recently said it would purchase large amounts of gas for three times what Bolivia had been receiving for its exports.
Indeed, Morales' nationwide approval ratings have climbed to 62 percent after falling as low as 50 percent in October. In Santa Cruz, his approval rating is 35 percent.
"We're witnessing the best economic conditions in Bolivia in the last 45 years," said Gonzalo Chavez, an economist at Catholic University in La Paz. "It's hard to envision civil war in this environment."
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