Chapare Province
- 16.833333333333 - 66.166666666667Koordinaten: 16 ° 50 ' S, 66 ° 10' W
Chapare is a province in the northern part of the Bolivian department of Cochabamba.
The province is located in the tropical lowlands and is mostly covered by jungle. Chapare is scenic and undeveloped.
Location in near space
The province is one of sixteen provinces in the department of Cochabamba. It extends approximately between 15 ° 48 'and 17 ° 30 ' south latitude and 65 ° 12 ' and 66 ° 48 ' west longitude, its extent from east to west is 150 kilometers from north to south, 80 km.
Neighboring provinces: The province is bordered on the west by the province Ayopaya, on the southwest by the province Quillacollo and the province of Cercado, on the south by the province of Esteban Arce, the province of Germán Jordán and the province Punata, in the southeast of the province Tiraque, on the northeast by the province Carrasco, and to the north by the department of Beni.
Population
The population of the province of Chapare has risen in the past two decades to double:
41.5 percent of the population are younger than 15 years, the literacy rate in the province is 80.6 percent. (1992)
82.4 percent of the population speak Spanish, 84.4 percent Quechua, Aymara 4.8 percent, and 0.5 percent other indigenous languages. (1992)
63.2 percent of the population have no access to electricity, 56.4 percent have no sanitary facilities (1992).
85.8 percent of the population are Catholics, 11.5 percent are Protestant (1992).
Economy
Since the 1980s, more and more indigenous miners ( Mineros ) and small farmers ( campesinos ) have settled in the Chapare, in the highlands ( Altiplano ) saw no livelihood.
Since that time, the Chapare had developed into a center of the cultivation of coca. Through government programs against coca cultivation has occurred in the following decades repeatedly to violent confrontations between the government authority and the coca growers. Tensions erupted repeatedly in massive social unrest, during which it regularly to blockages of the main east - west road connecting Cochabamba - has come Santa Cruz, passing through the troubled province.
Evo Morales, leader of the Bolivian coca planters movement and now the current President of Bolivia, is the son of one of those farmers who migrated from the highlands to Oruro in the Chapare, in order, inter alia, to create through the cultivation of coca a livelihood.
Structure
The Chapare province is divided into the following three counties ( bolivian: municipios ):
- Municipio Sacaba - 117,100 inhabitants ( 2001)
- Municipio Colomi - 16,262 inhabitants
- The municipality of Villa Tunari - 53 996 inhabitants