Beni Department
department of Bolivia
Beni (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈbeni]), sometimes El Beni, is a northeastern department of Bolivia, in the lowlands region of the country. It is the second-largest department in the country (after Santa Cruz), covering 213,564 square kilometers (82,458 sq mi), and it was created by supreme decree on November 18, 1842, during the administration of General José Ballivián. Its capital is Trinidad.
Etymology
The name of the department was given by President José Ballivián in honor of the Beni River. The name Beni is derived from the Movima word ben’i, meaning “grasslands”. However, a manuscript by Friar Nicolás Armentia states that the word Beni comes from the Tacanan languages, in which it means “wind.”
Population
With a population of 488,260, according to the 2024 census, Beni is the second least-populated of the nine departments of Bolivia, after Pando.
Although Beni is rich in natural resources, the poverty level of its inhabitants is high, mainly as a result of centuries of exploitation of native populations by European-descended elites. The main economic activities are agriculture, timber, and cattle. In addition, an underground economy linked to illegal narcotics activities flourished in the area during the last decades of the 20th century, with many cocaine laboratories hidden behind the façade of remote cattle ranches.
The Beni region is wide and flat, featuring many large mounds connected by straight earthen causeways, which are believed by researchers to have been built by ancient inhabitants.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Beni Department” as department of Bolivia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q233169. The Library of Congress control number is n80129076. Authority coordinates are -14.000, -65.000. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1842 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Beni Department” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.