Santa Cruz de la Sierra

The voice that carried a taquirari

Gladys Moreno began singing on Radio Electra in Santa Cruz in 1948. Her first recordings took her to La Paz with the group Los Planetas. Among the music she carried from the east of Bolivia was the taquirari, a dance song associated with the region.

One of her best-known interpretations was “Viva Santa Cruz”, written by Gilberto Rojas. Rojas came from Oruro in western Bolivia; visits to the east and its music informed his compositions. The song praises Santa Cruz and has become closely associated with the city through Moreno’s voice.

Moreno also sang cuecas from other Bolivian regions. The movement went in both directions: an eastern singer recorded in La Paz, while a composer from Oruro wrote a taquirari for Santa Cruz. Her recording of Rojas’s song keeps those journeys together.

Another voice on the radio

Radio helped another Santa Cruz group find its name. The musicians who became Los Cambitas appeared on Radio Amboró in the 1960s. Ramón and Milton Coimbra had arrived in the city and performed with other relatives before the group took the name by which listeners came to know it.

Armando Terceros later recalled being asked for a song for the city’s fair. His “Negrita, vamos a la feria” became an early recording for the group: its invitation points to a particular local event rather than a distant landscape. Los Cambitas continued recording and travelling; in a later formation they also accompanied Gladys Moreno.

A dance with a contested history

The taquirari that Moreno and Los Cambitas sang is associated with eastern Bolivia, but its precise origins are not settled. Santa Cruz’s cultural office notes different accounts and describes the genre’s Indigenous connections without presenting one explanation as certain.

The musicians’ careers offer a more concrete history. Moreno first appeared on a Santa Cruz station and recorded with Los Planetas in La Paz; Los Cambitas found an audience through another local station and carried songs from the region on tour. “Viva Santa Cruz” and the invitation to the fair return those journeys to the city.

A record with several rhythms

An archival catalogue of Moreno’s El disco de oro shows how varied her recorded repertoire could be. “Viva Santa Cruz” appears alongside other taquiraris, a carnival song, a waltz and cuecas. The list of tracks is a reminder that a singer associated with one city anthem also moved between forms and regions.

The songs themselves often came from collaborations. Santa Cruz’s cultural office describes a flourishing of taquirari in the 1960s, when writers such as Raúl Otero Reiche and Hernando Sanabria Fernández supplied words for composers including Susano Azogue and Nicolás Menacho. Their work gave performers material to bring to radio, records and dances; it was not the achievement of a voice alone.

More recently, the city has also hosted jazz festivals, including Buri Jazz in 2025. That gathering belongs to a different musical story from Moreno’s early broadcasts. Both, however, depend on musicians finding a public in Santa Cruz and on listeners making room for more than one sound.

Songs for carnival

A different Moreno helped shape the city’s festive repertoire. Composer José René Moreno wrote melodies that became familiar in eastern Bolivia, including “El carretero” and “El aguilillo”. He also worked with poets, among them Arturo Pinckert and Antonio Landívar Serrate. Their collaborations remind us that the words and music of a song could begin with different people before a singer carried them to an audience.

His wife Rosalía Peña was the first to sing “El aguilillo”, a song in carnival rhythm. Other performers, including Gladys Moreno and Arminda Alba, later sang it. Another piece associated with Peña was “Viva mi tierra linda”, a chobena. A municipal account describes how this rhythm, associated with Chiquitos in eastern Bolivia, was adopted in Santa Cruz for carnival celebrations. Chiquitos is a wider region, not a district of the city; the movement of its music into urban festivities is part of the story.

In 2019, the carnival opening brought another of José René Moreno’s songs back to a public celebration: Guísela Santa Cruz sang “El carretero” as dancers and bands joined the parade. The scene connects a composer’s work to singers, instrumentalists and dancers, each giving the song another occasion to live. A 2021 tribute in the city’s Plaza 24 de Septiembre marked Moreno’s seventy years of artistic life.