Chincha

Chincha is the name of both a province and a city in Peru. The province, located 124 miles south of Lima in the Peruvian department of Ica, has a population of 168,578 and a city population of 52,661 (2000 census). Chincha—a Quechua word for "north," indicating its location relative to Cuzco, the center of the Inca empire—also refers to the pre-Hispanic people who lived in this area. Conquistador Diego de Almagro founded the city Villa de Almagro in Chincha in 1537. Grand estates, holding the largest slave population in Peru, produced wine, sugar, and cotton developed in the rich soil. During the nineteenth century, guano exports from the Chincha Islands led to an economic boom for Peru, which provoked a massive importation of workers from Canton, China. In the early twenty-first century, Chincha is a major agricultural center and the heart of Peru's black culture. An earthquake of 8.0 on the Richter scale shook the region in 2007 causing major destruction.

See alsoArchaeology; Art: Pre-Columbian Art of South America; Indigenous Peoples.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Feldman, Heidi Carolyn. Black Rhythms of Peru: Reviving African Musical Heritage in the Black Pacific. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2006.

Cushner, Nicholas P. Lords of the Land: Sugar, Wine and Jesuit Estates of Coastal Peru, 1600–1767. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980.

Rodríguez Pastor, Humberto. Hijos del Celeste Imperio en el Peru (1850–1900): Migración, agricultura, mentalidad y explotación. Lima: Sur Casa de Estudios del Socialismo, 2001.

Uhle, Max. Explorations in Chincha, ed. A. L. Kroeber. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1924.

                                          MÓnica Ricketts