Barranquilla

Barranquilla, a city 12 miles (19 kilometers) from the mouth of the Magdalena River, near the Caribbean coast of Colombia, is the capital of that country's department of Atlántico. In the 2005 census, the city had a population of 1,113,016, making it the fourth largest in Colombia.

Founded in 1629, the city developed slowly as a river port. Its growth was hindered by a shifting sandbar at the mouth of the Magdalena that obstructed passage of large, oceangoing vessels. In 1870–1871 a railroad bypassing the sandbar was built, linking Barranquilla with nearby satellite ports on the Caribbean. Barranquilla then became Colombia's principal port, but the railroad solution was still far from ideal, and the twentieth century saw efforts to dredge and maintain a navigable channel linking the city directly to the sea. Nevertheless, by midcentury Barranquilla had lost its leadership to Buenaventura on the Pacific; later it was overtaken by Cartagena as well. In the meantime, however, it had become an important manufacturing center, producing processed foods and beverages, textiles, and petrochemicals. It proved more attractive than Colombia generally to immigrants, including an important Middle Eastern contingent. Yet as elsewhere in coastal Colombia, popular culture retained a strong Afro-Colombian imprint—clearly evident in Barranquilla's yearly carnival, the best-known in Latin America outside Brazil.

See alsoMagdalena River .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nichols, Theodore E. "The Rise of Barranquilla." Hispanic American Historical Review 34 (1954): 158-174.

Posada Carbó, Eduardo. Una invitación a la historia de Barranquilla. Bogota: Fondo Editorial CEREC, 1987.

                                        David Bushnell