Piura

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Piura

Piura, the name of a city, district, province, and department in northern Peru with a population of 325,000 as of the year 2000. The department, which was created by law 30 March 1861, is bounded by Ecuador on the north, the department of Lambayeque on the south, the department of Cajamarca on the east, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Its territory includes areas of desert as well as fertile lands on the coast and in the Andes Mountains. Its products are tar, petroleum, and such minerals as gold, silver, and copper. Goats, mules, and beef cattle are raised on its ranches.

Piura, the city, is remembered today as the first Spanish city founded (in 1532) on Peruvian territory. More recently Piura is recalled as the birthplace of Luis M. Sánchez Cerro, a president of Peru in the 1930s, and Juan Velasco Alvarado, an army general with a radical reform agenda who came to power following a coup d'état in 1968. It is also the site of a U.S. airbase that was built at Talara during World War II. In 1964 it was the scene of serious peasant unrest, with ten thousand protestors invading and occupying 30,000 acres of land on the coast. In 1969 Opus Dei founded the Universidad de Piura, which has expanded into ten undergraduate faculties and six graduate faculties organized by disciplines.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán, Diccionario geográfico estadístico del Perú (1877).

Ruben Vargas Ugarte, Historia general del Perú, 2d ed., 10 vols. (1971), especially vols. 1, 2, 5, and 7.

David P. Werlich, Peru: A Short History (1978).

Additional Bibliography

Aldana, Susana. Empresas coloniales: Las tinas de jabón en Piura. Piura: Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado; Lima: Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos, 1989.

Arce Espinoza, Elmer. La reforma agraria en Piura, 1967/1977. Lima: Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Participación, 1983.

Diez Hurtado, Alejandro. Comunes y haciendas: Procesos de comunizalización en la Sierra de Piura (siglos XVIII al XX). Piura: CIPCA: CBC, 1988

Reyes Flores, Alejandro. Hacendados y comerciantes: Piura, Chachapoyas, Moyobamba, Lamas, Maynas (1770–1820). Lima: Juan Brito Editor, 1999.

Susan E. RamÍrez

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture