Llallagua

Llallagua ( Quechua: " Llallawa ") is a small town in the Potosí Department in the highlands of South American Andes State of Bolivia.

Location in near space

The city is Llallagua central place of the district ( bolivian: municipality ) in the Province of Llallagua Rafael Bustillo and lies at an altitude of 3895 m six kilometers north of the provincial capital Uncia and three hundred kilometers south of the Bolivian capital La Paz

Geography

Llallagua is located at the junction of the highlands of Oruro in the mountain of Potosí. The city is bounded on the north and west by high mountain ranges of the Cordillera Central. The vegetation is that of the Puna, the climate is a typical diurnal climate in which the daily temperature fluctuations are larger than the monthly fluctuations.

The mean annual temperature is 9 ° C, the monthly average values ​​vary between less than 5 ° C in June / July and 11 ° C from November to March (see climate chart Uncía ). The annual precipitation is 370 mm and falls mainly in the summer months, the arid period with monthly values ​​of maximum 10 mm lasts from April to October.

Traffic network

Llallagua is located at a distance of 101 kilometers of road southeast of Oruro, the capital of the department of the same name.

From Oruro the paved highway Ruta 1 leads in a southerly direction 22 kilometers above Vinto after Machacamarquita, eight kilometers north of Machacamarca located. In Machacamarquita the Ruta 6 branches off in a south-easterly direction, reaching over Huanuni and pass altitudes of over 4,500 m by 79 kilometers, the city Llallagua. From there, the Ruta 6 performs an additional 98 kilometers above Uncia by Macha. In Macha branches off a dirt road in a southwesterly direction and leads after 33 kilometers at Ventilla back to the Ruta 1 from here to the capital of the department of Potosí, it is another 109 km.

Economy

The tin mines in Llallagua among the largest and richest ore deposits in the world, here the Zinnbaron Simón I. Patiño founded his world empire, here there was the largest mine in Latin America. After the collapse of Zinnmarktes in the 1980s, the Bolivian mines were privatized and many gradually closed, even here in Llallagua and the neighboring town of Siglo XX. Today live in Siglo XX many Mineros who work on their own or in small cooperatives in old mines in appalling safety conditions, or browse the huge spoil heaps after Zinnresten.

Population

The population of the city has been declining since the decline in tin production, it has declined in the past two decades by about a quarter:

Life expectancy in the municipality of Llallagua is 58.2 years, the literacy rate for those over 15 years is 83 percent.