Arica

Arica occupies a narrow coastal shelf in the Atacama Desert, where the Lluta and Azapa valleys carry water down to the Pacific. Sea breezes moderate one of the driest climates on Earth, and river oases supply fruit, maize and pasture in an otherwise barren coast. The site offers an unusual anchorage beneath the coastal ridge.

Chinchorro communities made elaborate mummies along this coast thousands of years before the Inca, preserving a maritime society of fishers and gatherers. Later Aymara and Inca routes joined the ocean to the high Andes. Spanish ships entered the bay in the sixteenth century, and the port became a link between southern Peru and the silver mountain of Potosí. The bay also sheltered small fishing boats and coastal shipping that supplied the oasis valleys.

Arica grew as a colonial landing for mercury, wine, flour and imported goods bound for the Andes. Earthquakes and tsunamis repeatedly damaged the town, while its dry hinterland forced dependence on valley oases and imported food. By the eighteenth century it was a fortified but exposed port whose value came from the exchange between mountain mines and the Pacific.