Antofagasta
| Antofagasta | ||
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Coordinates: 23 ° 39 ′ S , 70 ° 24 ′ W Antofagasta on the map of Chile
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| Basic data | ||
| Country |
 Chile
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| region | Antofagasta | |
| City foundation | October 22, 1868 | |
| Residents | 352,638 (2017) | |
| City insignia | ||
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| Detailed data | ||
| Waters | Pacific | |
| Time zone |
UTC −4 (normal time) UTC − 3 (summer time) |
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| City Presidency | Marcela Hernando | |
| Website | ||
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Antofagasta is a city in the north of the South American Andean state of Chile . It has 352,600 inhabitants (as of 2017). The name of the city comes from the Quechua language and means roughly village on the great salt lake . Antofagasta is the capital of the region and province of the same name .
Antofagasta is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Antofagasta . The episcopal church is the Cathedral of San José .
geography
The desert city of Antofagasta is located on the Pacific , on the edge of the Atacama . The distance to Santiago is about 1400 km.
The climate is dry but pleasant, sometimes very hot in summer.
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Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Antofagasta
Source: wetterkontor.de
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history
The political allocation of today's region around Antofagasta was initially unclear between the newly formed states after the independence of South America from Spain. Bolivia claimed the area when it gained independence in 1825 and later founded the port city of Cobija in 1827, about 130 km north of today's Antofagasta . The small population of the region consisted mainly of citizens of Chile , one speaks of 90-95%, who had also claimed the region seven years earlier in 1818 since independence. Since it was a barren and apparently useless desert region, neither country considered the question to be of practical relevance.
In 1866 large deposits of nitrate ( saltpeter ) were discovered in the region, which at that time was a very important and valuable raw material for the production of fertilizer and explosives, so that the question of the borderline now gained great economic and political importance.
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In 1866 and 1874 there were treaties between Chile and Bolivia in which the states agreed on a border in the southern area of today's Antofagasta and thus largely on the affiliation of the region to Bolivia. In return, in the contract of 1874, Bolivia had to grant Chilean companies the right to mine the region's nitrate deposits for 25 years without having to pay taxes to the Bolivian state.
In this context, they formed coastal settlements Cobija , Tocopilla , Mejillones and finally Antofagasta. As early as 1857, when the first nitrate deposits were found in the vicinity, immigration of foreign migrants, mostly Chileans, began. A Chilean prospector named Juan López is considered to be the first inhabitant of Antofagasta in 1866. The Bolivian government then officially founded Antofagasta on October 22, 1868. On January 25, 1872, the settlement received the administrative status of a city, whose council was made up in the majority of Chileans.
The city had a population of 5384 in 1875.
During a seaquake in 1877, the coast was hit by a tsunami . Cobija was hit hardest and so badly destroyed that the port there was abandoned and trade and administration relocated to Antofagasta, a city originally founded by the Chileans, which thus became the economic and political center of the region.
To finance the reconstruction of the damage after the seaquake, Bolivia decided in February 1878 to levy a special tax of 10 centavos retrospectively to 1874 per hundredweight of saltpeter mined. Chile saw this as a breach of the treaty of 1874 and protested. The Bolivian President remained undeterred, however, confiscated the Chilean companies almost a year later in January 1879 and put them up for auction in Antofagasta. Thereupon Chile saw the border treaty as annulled and let naval troops land in the city. The saltpeter war broke out and Antofagasta was captured by Chilean troops on February 14, 1879 .
A first treaty dated April 4, 1884 ensured that the area would remain with Chile; in the peace treaty of 1904, Bolivia finally recognized that Antofagasta would remain near Chile. However, in 2011 the Bolivian government of Evo Morales began increased international efforts to regain access to the Pacific. The validity of the 1904 treaty was publicly questioned.
In 2003, the first seawater desalination plant in Chile was built in the city . It has been steadily expanded, and in 2018 it provided 82.5 percent of the city's total drinking water. The concentrated brine that arises is then fed back into the sea. Occasionally, concerns about the environmental impact of this process were voiced.
| Population development | |||||||
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| year | 1982 | 1992 | 2002 | 2017 | |||
| Residents | 183,333 | 225,316 | 285.255 | 352,638 | |||
Attractions
The city is popular for boat trips. There are two beaches in the city, but their water is rather cold due to the Humboldt Current.
In the center of the city are worth seeing: the copper monument, the independence monument, the railway museum, the cathedral and some buildings from colonial Spanish times.
Economy and Transport
The city's port was used in particular as a loading port for saltpetre . Today copper and nitrate in particular are exported. The city is a center of export of mining products. In addition, is steel made in the city. The city is rich, but looks rather poor. The city lies on the Panamericana .
Large companies in the copper and saltpetre sector are located in the city area, e.g. B. Empresa Minera de Mantos Blancos ( copper ), SQM ( borax ), Compañía Minera Zaldivar (copper), Minera Escondida (copper) and Atacama Minerals ( saltpeter ).
The industrial area Ciudad Empresarial La Negra with an area of around 24 km² is located 20 kilometers outside the city . The Noranda copper refinery is located here .
North of the city is the major airport Aeropuerto Internacional Cerro Moreno . Antofagasta is involved in Chile's rail traffic; the Salta – Antofagasta line also provides a connection with the Argentine rail network .
education
There are several universities in Antofagasta. The most important are the Universidad de Antofagasta and the Universidad Cátolica del Norte , which together with the astronomical institute "Instituto de Astronomía de la Universidad Católica del Norte" in cooperation with astronomers from the Astronomical Institute of the Ruhr University Bochum, the hexapod telescope on the something about 100 km away Cerro Armazones mountain in the Atacama desert .
City partnerships Antofagasta's partner cities are Tongling in the People's Republic of China, Split in Croatia and Corvallis
sons and daughters of the town
- Lily Garáfulic (1914–2012), sculptor
- Neven Ilic (* 1962), sports official
- Jorge Letelier (1887–1966), painter
- Andrónico Luksic (1926-2005), Chilean billionaire of Croatian descent
- Carlos Narea (* 1953), musician and music producer
- Sergio Ortega (1938–2003), Chilean composer and pianist
- Dora Puelma (1898–1972), painter
- María Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez de Pinochet (* 1922), Chilean economist, wife of Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte
- Erick Pulgar (* 1994), Chilean football player
- Pedro Reszka (1872–1960), painter
- Antonio Skármeta (* 1940), Chilean writer of Croatian descent
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Pizarro, José Antonio González. "La influencia de la legislación municipal boliviana en Antofagasta, 1879-1888. Un capítulo desconocido en la historia del derecho público chileno." Revista Chilena de Historia del Derecho 22 (2010): 913-937. online ( Memento from April 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.8 MB)
- ^ John Bartlett: 'The salt they pump back in kills everything': is the cost of Chile's fresh water too high? In: theguardian.com January 2, 2020, accessed January 2, 2020.
- ^ Antofagasta (Chile): Provinces & Places - Population Statistics, Graphics and Map. Retrieved July 27, 2018 .
- ↑ Universidad de Antofagasta. In: Universidad de Antofagasta. Retrieved April 14, 2020 .