Tacna

關於Tacna

Tacna, officially San Pedro de Tacna, is a city in southern Peru and the capital of the department of Tacna. Located in the Caplina River valley about 35 km (22 mi) north of the border with Chile, it is one of the country's main commercial centers and Peru's tenth most populous city. Known for its strong patriotic identity, Tacna features numerous monuments and place names commemorating Peru's independence and the War of the Pacific. Its inhabitants are known as tacneños.

The term Tacna is derived from two Quechua words: Taka, meaning 'to hit', and na, which means 'place'. Thus, the full name means "I hit this place" or "I rule this place".

At the time of the Spanish conquest, the region around Tacna was already multiethnic, displaying a mix of local sedentary populations and mitma settlers from the Altiplano. The proportions of these are that the first made up about 66% of the population and the latter 25%. Fishing-oriented people known as Camanchacos made up about the remaining 9% of the population. Much of the population practising agriculture is believed to have spoken...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.