La Calera, Chile

Infobox City
official_name = La Calera

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|thumb|580px
image_caption = Downtown La Calera from the hills

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mapsize = 200px
map_caption =
leader_title = Mayor
leader_name = Roberto Chahuán Chahuán
area_as_of = 2002
area_magnitude =
area_total_sq_mi =
area_total_km2 = 61
population_as_of = 2002
population_note =
population_total = 49.502
website =
[http://www.lacalera.cl/ lacalera.cl]
footnotes =

La Calera is a Chilean city in Calera commune, Quillota Province, Valparaíso Region. Pop. 50,644 (2007 est.).

Location and limits

La Calera is located in the Province of Quillota, Fifth Region of Chile, 66 km from Valparaíso, 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 "quicklime mine".

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. José Joaquín Perez and Arturo Prat Streets are full of Stores and Shops owned originally by Palestinians. Noteworthy is the case of [http://www.seidemann.cl 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
* [http://www.sopraval.cl Sopraval]
* [http://www.algamar.cl Algamar]
*Falabella Shopping Plaza
* [http://www.ripley.cl Ripley Shopping Plaza]
*Regional Fair of Animals
*Regional Fruits and Vegetables Market

Demographics

According to data from the Census 2002 [ [http://www.ine.cl/cd2002/index.php Census 2002] ] cast by Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas (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 spaniards make up the majority of the population, about the 85%, and the rest is mostly made up by white European and Mid-Eastern Asian descendants, namely Spaniards (7%), Palestinian (4%), Italian (1%), and others (2%).

Famous Caleranos

*Eugenia Errázuriz
*Elías Figueroa
*Matías Fernández

Educational institutions

* [http://www.ues.cl/portal/directorio/display.php?num=19 Universidad Aconcagua]
* [http://www.ubolivariana.cl/index.php?id=2289 Universidad Bolivariana]
* [http://www.ucevalpo.cl CTF Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso]

Sources

[http://www.lacalera.cl Official website]

See also

*Valparaíso
*Viña del Mar

External links

*http://www.lacalera.cl