Paita, Piura Region, Peru

Geography | Population | History | Colonial period | Whaling port of call | Economy : Industry | Celebrations | Cultural references

🇵🇪 Paita is a city in north-western Peru. It is the capital of the Paita Province which is in the Piura Region. It is a leading seaport in the region. Paita is located 1,089 km north-west of the country's capital Lima, and 57 km north-west of the regional capital of Piura. Starting in 2014, the city has considered ideas for separating from the Piura Region, proclaiming itself as the "Miguel Grau Region".

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Geography Paita is located at 05°05′28″S 81°06′23″W on a small peninsula south of the mouth of the Río Chira on an area of 1,785 km². Paita faces the Bay of Paita, and is sheltered from southerly winds by a headland called Punta Paita and by a large hill called Silla de Paita. 90 km to the south-east is the capital of the Piura Region, Piura, and 160 km to the south is located Chiclayo, commercial centre of the Lambayeque region.

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Population The population of Paita was 3,800 in 1906, 20,000 in 1993, 122,127 in 2007, and 168,900 in 2015.

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History Paleontologist Edgar Herning collected remains in 1978. He determined from his findings that the peoples here were a highly evolved cultural group, as there was evidence of primitive villages on the coast of Paita like Colan, Tayta, and Amotape from up to 9,000 years ago.

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Colonial period The city was founded on 30 March 1532 by the conqueror Francisco Pizarro, who named it San Francisco de Paita of Good Hope.

From 1578 to 1588, Paita was the Spanish capital of the north-western Peruvian coast, before attacks from English pirates and corsairs made it necessary to relocate the capital at Piura. Paita was the port for Peru and the end terminus of the Manila Galleons connecting Latin-America with Asia.

The port of Paita is best known to many Peruvians as the former home of Manuela Sáenz, Simón Bolívar's lover.

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Whaling port of call Paita was a significant port of call for whaling ships in the first half of the 19th century. The whaling grounds west of Peru were popular with British and American whaling ships that often called at Paita for supplies and repairs. Local men were sometimes recruited to serve as crewmen on these vessels. The first vessel known to have called was the British whaleship Emilia in 1792. Sixty-four American whaleships visited in 1833 alone. So many American vessels called that in 1833 the United States government decided to establish a consulate at Paita. A hospital was established for American seamen in the 1840s. The large protected Bay of Paita provided a safe anchorage for visiting vessels and the irrigated farms of the nearby Chira Valley produced a wide range of agricultural produce for the whalers. The money they injected into the local economy provided substantial economic benefits to the town and hinterlands, and this continued till American whaling visits began to taper off in the 1860s.

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Economy: Industry In 1875, a railway line of 97 km length was completed from Piura to Paita, but it was destroyed in the war with Chile from 1879 to 1883 and reconstructed in 1884. A street railway opened on 30 August 1891 and ran until the late 1920s.

Today the port of Paita is Peru's fifth-largest port and an important container port. It is located in a geopolitically important position on the Pacific coast.

Paita has one of the best natural harbours on the Peruvian coast. Regular mail steamers run between Valparaíso and Panama.

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Celebrations On 24 September the Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes is celebrated, lasting a week and including pilgrimages in honor of the Catholic icon.

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Cultural references The Golden Ocean by Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1954 then again in 1996, mentions the successful attack of Anson's squadron at Paita on his voyage around the world, taking a prize of merchant's gold, silver, and trade goods valued at 30,000 British pounds.

In the 1947 film Dark Passage, Humphrey Bogart's character, falsely blamed for three murders, flees to Paita, with hopes of linking up with a love interest. He tells her of "a little cafe right on the bay". Parts of the telephone conversation are used in the 1982 film Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid.

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Paita has a population of over 168,900 people. Paita also forms one of the centres of the wider Piura Province which has a population of over 1,856,809 people.

To set up a UBI Lab for Paita see: https://www.ubilabnetwork.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/UBILabNetwork

Twin Towns, Sister Cities Paita has links with:

🇵🇦 Balboa, Panama 🇪🇸 Barcelona, Spain 🇨🇳 Beijing, China 🇵🇪 Callao, Perú 🇻🇪 Caracas, Venezuela 🇪🇨 Guayaquil, Ecuador 🇵🇪 Lima, Perú 🇪🇨 Manta, Ecuador 🇲🇽 Mexico City, Mexico 🇩🇪 Munich, Germany 🇺🇸 New York, USA 🇵🇦 Panama City, Panama 🇪🇨 Quito, Ecuador 🇱🇻 Riga, Latvia 🇯🇵 Tokyo, Japan
Text Atribution: Wikipedia Text under CC-BY-SA license

Antipodal to Paita is: 98.9,5.083

Locations Near: Paita -81.1,-5.08333

🇵🇪 Piura -80.633,-5.2 d: 53.3  

🇵🇪 Talara -81.267,-4.567 d: 60.3  

🇵🇪 Sechura -80.817,-5.55 d: 60.6  

🇵🇪 Máncora -81.05,-4.1 d: 109.5  

🇵🇪 Chiclayo -79.844,-6.764 d: 232.9  

🇪🇨 Machala -79.967,-3.267 d: 237.9  

🇪🇨 Loja -79.2,-3.983 d: 243.5  

🇪🇨 La Libertad -80.9,-2.233 d: 317.7  

🇪🇨 Santa Elena -80.858,-2.227 d: 318.8  

🇪🇨 Salinas -80.968,-2.207 d: 320.1  

Antipodal to: Paita 98.9,5.083

🇮🇩 Langsa 97.95,4.467 d: 19889.5  

🇲🇾 Bayan Lepas 100.267,5.283 d: 19862.1  

🇲🇾 Penang Island 100.251,5.384 d: 19861.8  

🇲🇾 Kampung Sungai Ara 100.267,5.317 d: 19861.5  

🇲🇾 George Town 100.329,5.416 d: 19852.6  

🇮🇩 Medan 98.676,3.585 d: 19846.7  

🇲🇾 Kuah 99.85,6.317 d: 19842.3  

🇲🇾 Kepala Batas 100.417,5.517 d: 19840.4  

🇲🇾 Penang 100.457,5.354 d: 19840.1  

🇲🇾 Seberang Perai 100.467,5.4 d: 19838  

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