Santiago de Cotagaita

Cotagaita (also: Santiago de Cotagaita ) is a country town in the Potosí Department in the South American Andes State of Bolivia. The village was founded in 1570.

Location in near space

Cotagaita is the central place of the district ( bolivian: Municipio) Cotagaita and capital of the province of Nor chichas. Cotagaita situated at an altitude of 2640 m on the Rio Cotagaita, a tributary of the Río Pilcomayo.

Geography

Cotagaita located in the southern part of the barren plateau of the Bolivian Altiplano. The climate is characterized because of the internal situation in cool, dry and by a typical diurnal climate, in which the temperature fluctuations between day and night are generally significantly greater than the seasonal variation.

The average annual temperature is 15 ° C (see climate chart Cotagaita ) and varies only slightly between 11 ° C in June / July and 18 ° C in December and January. The annual rainfall is about 300 mm, with a pronounced dry season from April to October month precipitation less than 10 mm, and a humidity from December to February with an 70-80 mm month precipitation.

Traffic network

Cotagaita lies at a distance of 240 kilometers by road south of Potosi, the capital of the department.

From Potosí leads from the paved highway Ruta 1, which leads from Lake Titicaca from the southeast to the Argentine border, 37 kilometers to Cuchu Ingenio. From there, the largely unpaved Ruta 7 branches off in a southerly direction, reaching over Vitichi and Tumusla after 203 kilometers Cotogaita.

Population

The population of the town has risen in the past two decades by almost half:

The population of the region is mainly the indigenous people of Quechua to ( people ), 96.1 percent of the population in the municipality of Cotagaita speak the Quechua language.