Talk:Arica, Chile

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I am an American living in Arica now for 5 months. Comments:

1. The external link is broken, as the city of Arica seems to have decided that they don't want to publish informaiton directly about their city and converted it to a private site for city employees. The content has been picked up by someone frustarted with the situation: http://www.infoarica.cl/

2. I would not say that Arica itself is dry, why not include a link to WiKi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama ? As Arica has rivers and water (that is why the grow produce and people live here). Agreed it doesn't rain, just that there are dryper parts of the Atacama that have neither rain nor rivers. -> Comment by PabloM: Seems a nice idea. I would like to say Arica doesn´t have a "tropical climate" as stated in the article. Is closer to a desert climate. (there are several kilometers to the north of Arica which aren't tropical either... i would say even lima isn't tropical)

3. I think the railroad is no longer active, or at least is only freight and no longer has transport for persons.

4. Things I would like to see added: How Bolivia has no Pacific Port and has a free trade zone in Arica, dispute with peru and bolivia is still in the news today even after the war ended long ago, 21 de mayo pedestrian mall, universities are big here (external links), Chincorro Mummies, poverty/unemployment (as a rural area, has more like 10% vs. Chile has a national average closer to 6%).

I will try to come back and contribute more.


[edit] Neutral point of view

I made some changes in the 1868 Tsunami part. I wrote:

On August 16, 1868, the Peruvian port of Arica was devastated by a tsunami which followed a magnitude 8.5 earthquake in the Peru-Bolivia Trench off the coast. The earthquake and tsunami killed an estimated 25,000 people in Arica and perhaps 70,000 people in all, this tsunami is well documented by press and photo. An officer of the US ship Wateree, L.G. Billings, who later became a rear admiral, in 1915 published a horrifying account of his experience as a witness of this earthquake in the Peruvian coast.[1]

This part of Arica's history belongs only to Peruvian history, since that port was then part of Peru. The account is completely neutral because there are no discrepancies in the text: - The text is completely accurate in historical terms. - The Tsunami affected only the Peru-Bolivia border, since it was barely detected in Cobija, thus it could not be felt in Chile. - The accounts of Admrl Billings describe very vividly the experience lived in that Peruvian port. The phrase "earthquake in the Peruvian coast" belongs to him.

The text was deleted by one editor who belongs to the Chile Wikipedia group. I find no reason for doing this, since the text is completely neutral and accurately describes the historical events. Please reconsider your decision. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 200.37.120.18 (talk • contribs).

It is tendentious and biased to repeat the info about the Peruvian sovereignty. The earthquake issue is used only as a excuse to include nationalistic text, it is only question of looking at your history on Wikipedia for proving this fact. To call Peru-Bolivia Trench to the Peru-Chile Trench is original research and blatant POV-pushing. Jespinos 22:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
In response to your reply: it is not tendentious, nor biased. It is an historical fact and the truth. The earthquake was felt only in territories that in those times were Peruvian and Bolivian. You are using nationalistic text by denying or minimizing the historical fact that Arica was a Peruvian port in the exact moment of that historical event. The Earthquake is NOT part of the History of Chile because it did not happen in Chile. It is part of the History of Arica and Peru. The victims were Peruvian, the city was Peruvian and even the "America" was Peruvian. I studied very closely about this event and own several relics from those times. The events that ocurred in 1880 have nothing to do with the earthquake, the Aricans could not have foreseen the future. You are biased and tendentious by denying a big portion of of Arica's history, making everybody believe that its history begins in 1880. The city is more than 500 year old. 1880 was only 127 years ago. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 190.40.127.90 (talk) 01:30, August 24, 2007 (UTC)
FYI, the Arica area has thousand of years of history, being the Chinchorro culture the most notable example. Additionally, following your argumentation, the events that occurred here before Peruvian independence (1821) would not be considered part of the Peruvian history. Then you are those who magnify the scarcely 59 years of sovereign control by the Peru. However, the most critical is the inclusion of false information. There are not an oceanic trench called Peru-Bolivia Trench and the same source given in the article indicates that the tsunami damaged ships in Caldera, Chile. Jespinos 17:01, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
FYI, the Peruvian nationality and culture is considered a continuum even since the pre-inca cultures, but more accepted, after the forming of the Inca Empire, which is the first political union of what we call now Peru. Later events, as the Spanish conquest, the creation of the viceroyalty of Peru (which expanded through almost all Hispanic South America, and in the late XVIII century was subdivided into seral viceroyalties) and the republican period are only stages in the history of an already established nationality. To consider 1821 as the begining of Peruvian history is tendentions in order to establish your point of view regarding this argumentation. If that were the case, Ramon Castilla would not be considered Peruvian because he was born in Tarapacá before the independence. You are right about the "trench", I am sorry for that, and I admit my mistake. I would change that for "The Peru-Bolivia border", but that is only my opninion and I don't have any power to make my point of view prevail in this article.
In order to contribute to the investigation, I am attaching the accounts of Mr Billing's:

[edit] THE GREAT WAVES of 1868

I was sitting in the cabin with the captain towards four o'clock in the afternoon when we gave a sudden start: the ship was trembling with the same vibration that occurs when the anchor is let go and the chains thunder in the hawse-holes. We knew that it could not be that, and we ran on deck. Our eyes were at once caught by a huge cloud of dust over the land, which was coming up from the southeast while the terrible thundering grew louder and louder. As we watched, stupified, the hills seemed to be capsizing, and the ground moved like the short choppy waves of a rough sea.
The cloud swallowed up Arica. In that very instant, through its impenetrable veil, there arose shrieks for help, the din of falling houses, and the thousand mixed noises of a great calamity. Meanwhile, out ship was shaken as if by the grasp of a gigantic hand. Then the cloud passed on.
As the dust thinned out we rubbed our eyes and stared, unable to believe what we saw: where a few seconds before there had stood a happy and prosperous city, busy, active, and full of life, we saw nothing but ruins. The less seriously wounded of the unhappy people caught under the wreckage of what had been their houses were struggling among the ruins, and everywhere shrieks, cries of pain, and calls for help tore the air under the pitiless sun shining in a cloudless sky.
We were worried about the coming of a tsunami, and we put out to sea; but the water was calm and unruffled, and it might have been supposed that the four or five minutes that we had just passed through as well as the shockingly distressing scene upon which for the moment we were turning our backs were part of a nightmare. Nevertheless, as a measure of prudence the captain set out extra anchors, had the hatches closed, the guns lashed and lifelines rigged.
Meanwhile on shore the survivors were coming down the beach and crowding on to the little jetty, calling to the crews of the ships to come and help them get their relatives out of the twisted ruins and carry them to the apparent safety of the anchored vessels. This was more than we could withstand, and the yawl, with thirteen men aboard , was launched at once. It reached the shore and its crew got out, leaving only one sailor to guard the boat. We on board were in the act of organizing a body of forty men to be sent ashore with axes, picks, and shovels when all at once a hoarse murmuring noise made us look up; looking towards the land we saw, to our horror, that where a moment before there had been the jetty, all black with human beings, there was nothing; everything had been swallowed in a moment by the sudden rising of the sea, which the ship, floating upon it, had not noticed. At the same time we saw the yawl and its sailor carried away by the irresistible wave towards the lofty, vertical cliff of the Morro, where they disappeared in the foam as the wave broke against the rock.
At that very instant there was another earthquake shock, accompanied by a terrible roaring on the land that went on for several minutes. Once more we saw the ground move in waves and go from left to right, and this time sea drew back from the land until we were stranded and the bottom of the sea was exposed, so that we saw what had never been seen before, fish struggling on the seabed and the monsters of the deep aground. The round-hulled ships rolled over on their sides, while our Wateree sat down upon her flat bottom; and when the sea came back, returning not as a wave, but rather as a huge tide, it made our unhappy companions turn turtle, whereas the Wateree rose unhurt on the churning water.
From that moment on, the sea seemed to defy all natural laws. Currents rushed in opposite directions, dragging us along at a speed that we could never have reached even if we had been going at full steam. The earth was still quaking at irregular intervals, but less violently and for shorter periods each time.
The Peruvian ironclad America, which was held to be one of the fastest ships in the world at that time, was still afloat, and so was the American ship Fredonia. The America, who had tried to get out to sea with her engines running at full speed before the withdrawal of the water, was nevertheless partially stranded, and her hull was stove in. Now the sea was carrying her at a great speed towards the shore, and with her funnels belching thick clouds of smoke she seemed to be running in to the assistance of the helpless Fredonia, which was being drawn towards the cliffs of the Morro. Captain Dyer of the Fredonia, believing this to be the case, ran aft and hailed the man of war, which was now no more than a few yards away. "Ahoy! You can do nothing for us, our bottom is smashed in. Save yourselves! Good-bye!" A moment later the Fredonia broke to pieces against the cliff and not a man was saved, while a countercurrent miraculously took hold of the Peruvian ship and carried her in the other direction.
The last rays of the sun were lighting up the Andes when we saw to our horror that the tombs in which the former inhabitants had buried their dead, in the slope of the mountain, had opened, and in concentric ranks, as in an amphitheater, the mummies of natives dead and forgotten for centuries appeared on the surface. The had been buried sitting up, facing the sea. The nitre-impregnated soil had preserved them astonishingly, and the violent shocks that had crumbled the desert-dry earth now uncovered a horrifying city of the dead, buried long ago.


Words cannot convey the appalling appearance of the scene. Our minds had been much worked upon by what we had undergone already and we were ready to believe that the Day of Judgment had come and that the world was going to disappear: the bitterness of so terrifying a death went beyond anything that we could imagine.
It had been dark for some time when the lookout hailed the deck and said that a breaking wave was coming. Staring into the night we first made out a thin phosphorescent line which, like a strange kind of mirage, seemed to be rising higher and higher in the air: its crest, topped by the baleful light of that phosphorescent glitter, showed frightful masses of black water below. Heralded by the thunder of thousands of breakers all crashing together, the tidal wave that we had dreaded for hours was at last upon us.
Of all the horrors, this seemed the worst. We were chained to the bed of the sea, powerless to escape; we had taken all the precautions that were humanly possible, and now we could do nothing but watch this monstrous wave approach, without the moral support of having something to do or the hope that the ship could go through the mass of water rushing to overwhelm us. We could only hold on to the rails and wait for the catastrophe.
With a terrifying din, our ship was engulfed, buried under a half-liquid, half-solid mass of sand and water. We stayed under for a suffocating eternity; then, groaning in all her timbers, our solid old Wateree pushed her way to the surface, with her gasping crew still hanging on to the rails. A few men were seriously hurt; none was killed and nobody was missing. It was a miracle that I can scarcely really believe in even at this length of time.
Wateree stranded on the beach, America in the background
Our survival was certainly due to the construction of the ship, her shape, and her fitting out, which allowed the water to pour off the deck almost as quickly as if she had been a raft.
The ship had been carried along at a very great speed, but all at once we became motionless. In the end, after a short wait, we lowered a lantern over the side and we discovered that we had run aground. Where we were we could not tell. There were still a few waves that came to strike us, but they were not so strong, and presently they stopped altogether. For some time we stayed at our posts, but as the ship remained quite still and nothing further happened the order was given for the exhausted crew to go below and sleep in their hammocks.
The sun rose upon such a spectacle of desolation as can rarely have been seen. We were high and dry, three miles from our anchorage and two miles inland. The wave had carried us at an unbelievable speed over the sand dunes which line the shore, across a valley, and beyond the railway line that goes to Bolivia, leaving us at the foot of the coastal range of the Cordillera of the Andes. Upon an almost vertical cliff we found the mark that the tidal wave had left: it was forty-seven feet up. If the wave had carried us on for another sixty yards, it would have smashed us against the perpendicular mountain wall.
Near us there lay the wreck of a big English three-master, the Channacelia; one of her anchor chains was wrapped round her as many times as its length would allow, thus showing how the vessel had rolled over and over, head over heels. Some way further off, nearer the sea, lay the ironclad America upon her side, quite wrecked.
During the days that followed the earth went on shaking, but none of the tremors reached either the violence or the length of the first; yet some were still quite strong enough to make the Wateree rattle like an old kettle, and we had to leave the ship and go and camp on the plateau, two hundred feet higher up. From that height we could see the disastrous effects of the earthquake upon the topography. In some places we found enormous fissures, some of which were more than a hundred feet wide and of an unknown depth, while others were no more than ordinary cracks. Both the one kind and the other showed how panic-stricken the people must have been when they fled: for example, I remember seeing the body of a dead woman on the dead body of her horse, both having been swallowed by a crevasse as they were flying for their lives.
The town itself had disappeared: where it had stood there stretched an even plain of sand. Except in the suburbs on the mountain slopes there was not a single house to show where Arica had been. All the buildings, which were made of those hollow bricks called adobes, had been destroyed by the shocks, and then the debris had been swept away by the sea. In the suburbs that lay above the level that the sea had reached we walked over a hideous piling of everything, including corpses, twenty or thirty feet deep.
Out of Arica's ten or fifteen thousand inhabitants, a bare few hundred had survived. For the three long weeks during which we waited for help, we shared the Wateree's victuals and drinking water with these wretched people. I will not attempt to describe our feelings when at last we saw the old United States Navy frigate Powhatan come into the roadstead, with her holds and her deck overloaded with all possible kinds of victuals and stores. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.37.120.18 (talk) 17:56, August 24, 2007 (UTC)