MarÃa Pinto
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Maria Pinto is a municipality in the province of Melipilla, Región Metropolitana de Santiago in Chile. It has about 10,000 inhabitants, of which 16 % in the village and 84 % in the rural area to live (as of 2002).
Geography
María Pinto is located about 70 km west of the capital Santiago, embedded in the broad valley of the river Estero Puangue between the rugged rising mountains of the Coastal Cordillera, which the higher valley of Santiago separate in this zone of the coastal region of the port cities of Valparaíso and San Antonio. The community area is approximately 395 km2.
History
Mid- 1536 reached the Spanish conquistador Diego de Almagro and his followers were the first Europeans, the territory of the present municipality of María Pinto. They came from the direction of the valley of Casablanca over the pass at Ibacache into Puanguetal. In search of riches and gold they left the valley largely unnoticed because there was nothing to find like. They then moved further on Puangue along in the direction of today's Melipilla. A little later, Almagro broke off his discovery and conquest, and returned to Peru.
What remained was a rudimentary knowledge of the population. In those days, several groups of indigenous people scattered all over the valley of the Puangue, in small settlements with up to 10 cabins. The Spaniards referred to the inhabitants generally as Picones, but distinguished the individual groups by the name of their clan chiefs, who were dubbed cacique. They owned fields in delimited areas, although not scattered from one another within a district, but at some distance. The plots were probably occasionally traded for one another. It is well known that corn and melons were planted and an irrigation system was created.
The second Spanish invasion, led by Pedro de Valdivia, reaching from 1540, the Central Region. The war which sparked by the newly founded Santiago del Nuevo Extremo in the Mapocho valley at first prevented for several years the further expansion of the young colony. That left the Puanguetal, separated by high, almost insurmountable mountains from Mapochotal, for the next ten years because of its isolated location largely outside the control of the Spanish and served only as a transit route between Santiago and the coast ..
The first encomienda in the zone has been awarded the end of 1550 in the north adjacent Curacaví by Pedro de Valdivia to Juan Bautista de Pastene. In the next 50 years then the area now María Pinto was colonized. Until around 1600, there were already some estancias, some of which belonged to the descendants of Pastene. Over the next hundred years, about six estancias divided the entire present-day municipality of about 395 square kilometers. This large estate was found to be stable across generations. Except in zones where today the settlement cores María Pinto and Los Rulos are. There the land was parceled out strongly in the 18th century and it grew smaller settlements.
1903 María Pinto got its own municipality.
Economy
María Pinto is dominated by agriculture. There is no industry. The main source of income of the municipality are incurred every year in March for the renewal of approval for road vehicles the charges.