La Calera is a city and municipality (population, 50,644, 2007 estimate) in the V Region of Valparaiso, Chile.
Location and limits
La Calera is located in the Province of Quillota, Fifth Region of Chile, 66 km from Valparaiso, and 118 km from Santiago. Its area is about 61 km² and its population exceeds the 50,000 inhabitants (2007 estimate). La Calera borders on Nogales at the north and west, on Hijuelas at the east, and on La Cruz at the south.
History
Its name origin comes from the production of quicklime (Spanish "cal") that is obtained from the processed limestone (Spanish "piedra caliza") (calcium carbonate), extracted from the hills at the south of the town, which were already exploited by the Chilean and Peruvian Natives since about 400 years. In other words, La Calera means "The Quicklime Producer".
The old ranch of La Calera belonged to the Jesuits up to 1767, in 1842 it was acquired by Bolivian Citizen Ildefonso Huici, who started industrialising it with local products.
Already by 1844, the small town emerged in its first houses' conglomerations that little by little gave life to what today La Calera is.
La Calera as a commercial centre
Due to its central location and the pioneer commercial work of the Palestinian immigrants, La Calera is nowadays the main commercial centre in the interior of the Fifth Region, even though it is not the capital city in the province, and also the industrial source to work for the rural population around it. Taking into account the fact that La Calera is a very small town with an infrastructure and economy not noteworthy at all in the zone, the city has developed commerce in a very advanced way. The inhabitants surrounding it in a circle of 15 km radio overpass the 150,000, which allows the development of downtown La Calera as a commercial centre. Jose Joaquin Perez and Arturo Prat Streets are full of Stores and Shops owned originally by Palestinians. Noteworthy is the case of Seidemann Megastores, which has three more branches in Quillota and La Calera. Two of the five greatest retailer companies in South America, —namely Fallabella and Ripley— and four of the six largest supermarkets firms in Chile all have a branch in La Calera, a thing that does not occurr in any 50,000-inhabitants town in Chile. Furthermore, the main Fruits and Vegetables Market and main Fair of Animals of the region are based in the town.
Industries and commercial markets in La Calera
- Lafarge
- Sopraval
- Algamar
- Falabella Shopping Plaza
- Ripley Shopping Plaza
- Regional Fair of Animals
- Regional Fruits and Vegetables Market
Demographics
According to data from the Census 2002Census 2002 cast by Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas (INE), the commune covers an area of about 61 km² and its population is 49.503 inhabitants, from whom 24.134 are women and 25.369 are men.
La Calera holds the 3,21% of the total population of the region. The 3,37% (1.667 people) belongs to rural population and the 96,63% (47.836 people) belongs to urban population.
Among the important immigrant communities set in La Calera before 1950, Palestinians and Italians stand out, which makes it the town with the largest proportion of Palestine people out of the Mid-Eastern World.
It is estimated that Mestizos (Spanish and other European mixed with Mapuches and Quechuas from Bolivia, see history) make up the majority of the population, about the 85%, and the rest is mostly made up by white European and Mid-Western Asian descendants, namely Spaniards (7%), Palestinian (4%), Italian (1%), and others (2%).
Educational institutions
- Universidad Aconcagua
- Universidad Bolivariana
- CTF Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso
Sources
See also
External links
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article La_Calera,_Chile
