El Callao
Location in Perú	Coat of Arms
Location in Perú
	City flag
City nickname	El Primer Puerto (the first port)
Founded	1537
Government:
- Region	Callao
- Province	Constitutional Province of Callao
- Mayor	Félix Moreno
Area:
- Total	146.98 km²
- Subdivisions	6 districts
- Latitude/Longitude
Population:
- Urban (2005 est.)[1]	813,264
- Metropolitan	8,187,398
- Density	5,608.4/km²
Demonym	chalaco/a
City calling code	14
Time zone	UTC/GMT-5
Official website	www.municallao.gob.pe

Callao (Spanish: El Callao) is the largest and most important port in Peru. The city is coterminous with the Constitutional Province of Callao, the only province of the Callao Region. Callao is located west of Lima, the country's capital, and is part of the Lima Metropolitan Area, a large metropolis that concentrates almost one-third of Peru's population. Callao borders Lima Province on the north, east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west.

History

Callao was founded in 1537, just two years after Lima (1535), and soon became the main port for Spanish commerce in the Pacific. The origin of its name is unknown; both Indian (particularly Yunga, or Coastal Peruvian) and Spanish sources are credited, but it is certain that it was known by that name since 1550.

At the height of the Viceroyalty, virtually all goods produced in Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina were carried over the Andes by mule to Callao, to be shipped to Panama, carried overland, and then transported on to Spain via Cuba.

On August 20, 1836, during the Peru-Bolivian Confederacy, President Andrés de Santa Cruz mandated the creation of the Callao Littoral Province (Provincia Litoral del Callao), which had political autonomy in its internal affairs.

During the government of President Ramón Castilla, Callao was given the name of Constitutional Province (Provincia Constitucional), on April 22, 1857. The province's first mayor was Col. Manuel Cipriano Dulanto. However, this new name had no practical difference as the status of Callao was the same as that of any other province, and it belonged, just like all others, to a department (in this case, the Lima Department). The only difference was that all Peruvian provinces had been given that name by law, while Callao was given it by constitutional mandate. As part of the decentralization process promoted by President Alejandro Toledo in 2002, the Callao Region was created, and the Constitutional Province of Callao was no longer part of the Lima Department (now Lima Region).

Notable events

• In 1746, a tsunami caused by an earthquake destroyed the entire port of Callao.
• On 2 May 1866, during the Battle of Callao, the Spanish fleet tried to reconquer independent Peru.
• On June 19,1986 hundreds of prisoners were massacred on El Frontón.

City highlights

Callao is built on and around a peninsula, the district of La Punta, once a wealthy residential neighborhood. An historical fortress, the Castillo de Real Felipe (site of "Rodil's Last Stand"), stands on the promontory overlooking the harbor.

There is also a large naval base in Callao, in which the leader of the Shining Path rebel movement, Abimael Guzmán, and Vladimiro Montesinos, the ex-director of internal security during the Fujimori regime are currently imprisoned.

Lima's Jorge Chávez International Airport is located in Callao.

On a bluff overlooking the harbor sits Colegio Militar Leoncio Prado, the military high school Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa attended and made famous in his first novel, La Ciudad y los Perros (1962) (published in English as The Time of the Hero in 1963). The book was later filmed as The City and the Dogs and featured exterior shots of the school. The city also has a university, the National University of Callao.

Callao also has several islands, San Lorenzo (currently a military base), El Frontón (a former high security prison), the Cavinzas, and the Palominos, where a large number of sea lions and sea birds live in a virtually untouched ecosystem. There is currently proposed plans to build a huge naval, terrestrial, and air port on San Lorenzo Island. This project is called the San Lorenzo Megaport Project.

Residents of Callao are known as chalacos.

Districts

Callao is divided into six districts, (Spanish: distritos; singular: distrito), each of which is headed by a mayor (alcalde).

• 1 Bellavista
• 2 Callao (downtown)
• 3 Carmen de la Legua Reynoso
• 4 La Perla
• 5 La Punta
• 6 Ventanilla

* The rest of Callao Region is composed of the islands of San Lorenzo, El Frontón and Cavinzas, which all together have an area of 17.63 km².

Government

Local government affairs are divided into two levels. Regional matters are handled by the Regional Government of Callao (Gobierno Regional del Callao), which is located in the Bellavista District. Affairs such as city cleaning, promoting of sports and basic services are handled by the Provincial Municipality of Callao, which is headquartered in the Callao District. Also, each of the six district has its own Municipality which handles matters in their respective jurisdictional areas.

Railway

The port is served by the Ferrocarril Central Andino railway, which in 2006 is to be modernised from narrow gauge of 914mm to the world standard gauge of 1435mm.

References

External links

• Municipality of Callao (in Spanish)
• Chim Pum Callao
• Todo Callao (in Spanish)
• National University of Callao (in Spanish)
• Islas Palomino (Palomino Islands) pictures and videos
• Regional government of Callao
• Callao.Net la Internet del Callao (in Spanish)
• Sport Boys Association (unofficial) (in Spanish)

 •  • [ e]

Peruvian cities with a population of over 100,000

Arequipa

 •  • [ e]

Regions of Peru

Amazonas

Anthem
Somos libres, seámoslo siempre   (Spanish)
"We are free, may we always be so"
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15th century - 16th century - 17th century
1500s  1510s  1520s  - 1530s -  1540s  1550s  1560s
1534 1535 1536 - 1537 - 1538 1539 1540

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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Republic of Peru

This article is part of the series:
Politics and government of
Peru

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Government
Constitution of Peru

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President Vice President
Council of Ministers (Cabinet)

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Congress of the Republic

---

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The provinces of Peru, known in Spanish as provincias, are the second-level administrative subdivisions of the country. They are divided into districts (Spanish: distritos).
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A mayor (from the Latin māior, meaning "larger", "greater") is the modern title of the highest ranking municipal officer.

In many systems, the mayor is an elected politician who serves as chief executive and/or ceremonial official of many types of
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Square kilometre (U.S. spelling: square kilometer), symbol km², is a decimal multiple of the SI unit of surface area, the square metre, one of the SI derived units. 1 km² is equal to:

• 1,000,000 m²
• 100 ha (hectare)

Conversely:

• 1 m² = 0.

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Administrative division (also known as "Subnational entities") is a generic term for an administrative region within a country or Political division — on an arbitrary level below that of the sovereign state — typically with a local government
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equator divides the planet into a Northern Hemisphere and a Southern Hemisphere, and has a latitude of 0. Latitude, usually denoted symbolically by the Greek letter phi, , gives the location of a place on Earth north or south of the equator.
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equator divides the planet into a Northern Hemisphere and a Southern Hemisphere, and has a latitude of 0. Longitude is the east-west geographic coordinate measurement most commonly utilized in cartography and global navigation.
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The Lima Metropolitan Area (Spanish: Área Metropolitana de Lima, also known as Gran Lima (Greater Lima) or Lima Metropolitana), is an area formed by the conurbation of the Peruvian cities of Lima (the nation's capital) and Callao.
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In physics, density is mass m per unit volume V—how heavy something is compared to its size. A small, heavy object, such as a rock or a lump of lead, is denser than a lighter object of the same size or a larger object of the same weight, such as pieces of
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Square kilometre (U.S. spelling: square kilometer), symbol km², is a decimal multiple of the SI unit of surface area, the square metre, one of the SI derived units. 1 km² is equal to:

• 1,000,000 m²
• 100 ha (hectare)

Conversely:

• 1 m² = 0.

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A demonym or gentilic is a word that denotes the members of a people or the inhabitants of a place. In English, the name of a people's language is often the same as this word, e.g., the "French" (language or people).
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telephone number is a sequence of decimal digits that uniquely indicates the network termination point. The number contains the information necessary to identify the intended endpoint for the telephone call.
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time zone is a region of the Earth that has adopted the same standard time, usually referred to as the local time. Most adjacent time zones are exactly one hour apart, and by convention compute their local time as an offset from UTC (see also Greenwich Mean Time).
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Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is a high-precision atomic time standard. UTC has uniform seconds defined by International Atomic Time (TAI), with leap seconds announced at irregular intervals to compensate for the earth's slowing rotation and other discrepancies.
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 Spanish, Castilian}}} 
Writing system: Latin (Spanish variant)
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: —
ISO 639-3: —

Spanish (
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Anthem
Somos libres, seámoslo siempre   (Spanish)
"We are free, may we always be so"
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province is a territorial unit, almost always a country subdivision.

Roman provinces

The word is attested in English since c.1330, deriving from Old French province (13th c.
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Lima

Flag
Seal
Nickname: City of the Kings
Motto: Hoc signum vere regum est
Lima Province and Lima within Peru
Coordinates:
Country  Peru
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The Lima Metropolitan Area (Spanish: Área Metropolitana de Lima, also known as Gran Lima (Greater Lima) or Lima Metropolitana), is an area formed by the conurbation of the Peruvian cities of Lima (the nation's capital) and Callao.
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metropolis (in Greek μήτηρ, mētēr meaning mother and πόλις, pólis meaning city/town) is a big city,^[1]
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15th century - 16th century - 17th century
1500s  1510s  1520s  - 1530s -  1540s  1550s  1560s
1534 1535 1536 - 1537 - 1538 1539 1540

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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15th century - 16th century - 17th century
1500s  1510s  1520s  - 1530s -  1540s  1550s  1560s
1532 1533 1534 - 1535 - 1536 1537 1538

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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Motto
"Plus Ultra"   (Latin)
"Further Beyond"
Anthem
"Marcha Real" ¹
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Earth's oceans
(World Ocean)

• Arctic Ocean
• Atlantic Ocean
• Indian Ocean
• Pacific Ocean
• Southern Ocean

The Pacific Ocean (from the Latin name Mare Pacificum
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Created in 1542, the Viceroyalty of Peru (in Spanish, Virreinato del Perú) was a Spanish colonial administrative district that originally contained most of Spanish-ruled South America, governed from the capital of Lima.
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Motto
"¡La unión es la fuerza!"   (Spanish)
"Unity is strength!"
Anthem
Bolivianos, el hado propicio
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Motto
En unión y libertad   (Spanish)
"In Union and Freedom"
Anthem
Himno Nacional Argentino
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Andes (Quechua: Anti(s/kuna))

The Andes between Chile and Argentina

Countries |
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