Pre-Columbian era At the time of the
Spanish conquest, the region around Tacna was already multiethnic, displaying a mix of local sedentary populations and
mitma settlers from the
Altiplano. The proportions of these are that the first made up about 66% of the population and the latter 25%. Its economic prosperity attracted a wave of immigrants from
Italy. Today, their
Italian Peruvian descendants live in the city and many of them still have Italian surnames. This era of successful commerce and agriculture ended drastically with the start of the
War of the Pacific. Hosting a large Peru-Bolivian army under poor sanitary conditions the city lost a substantial part of its population to
infectious diseases before its capture by Chile in May 1880 following a
defeat of the allied army in the outskirts of the city by a Chilean force under General
Manuel Baquedano. taking into account the limits assigned by the decrees of 9 November 1885 and 10 May 1886, and was composed of four subdelegations:
El Callao,
San Ramón,
El Mercado and
El Alto de Lima. According to the 1907 census, the population that year was numbered at 10,593 people. During this period, people such as
Jorge Basadre and
Salvador Allende (as well as
his family) lived in the city. On 27 February 1927, a
mudslide began at the
Quebrada del Diablo at 4 p.m., following a continous period of unusual heavy rain and lightning that began at 10 a.m. It was described at 4 to 5 metres in height and, once it reached a point known as Piedra Blanca, its path bifurcated, with most of the volume headed towards Arunta hill, while a lesser amount travelled through a dry river's path, where garbage would be disposed of, in the
Quebrada de Karamolle. The flooding stopped short of the city's cemetery. Starting on 1 February 1928, by virtue of Decree with Force of Law No. 8,583 published that 28 January under the government of
Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, the commune of Tacna was composed of three subdelegations:
Intendencia,
Comercio and
Pocollay. This decree also ordered the creation of the communes of
Palca and
Sama, which together with Tacna formed a single municipal group; That is, neither Palca and Sama had their own communal government as in most communes in Chile. In 1929, the
Treaty of Lima was signed in which Chile kept Arica, whilst Peru
reacquired Tacna and received a $6 million indemnity and other concessions. The commune ceased to exist when the treaty became effective on 28 August, in a ceremony held at the home of the prefect Federico Fernandini, in which an agreement was signed between the interim mayor of the Chilean province of Tacna, Gonzalo Robles, and a delegation of Peru headed by Foreign Minister
Pedro José Rada y Gamio. At 4 p.m. that day, the Peruvian municipality of Tacna began its functions.
Present Today, Tacna is a mostly commercial city with many migrants from the
Puno Region living there. Its economy is based on mercantile activities with the north of Chile (Arica and
Iquique). Since it is part of a
duty-free zone, Tacna has come to rival
Arequipa as southern Peru's main business area. The city has one of the largest artifact markets in the world with imports from
Japan and
China, and traditional Peruvian handicrafts. On 30 January 2019, flooding affected the Quebrada de Karamolle for the first time since 1927. ==Geography==