San Javier, Chile

San Javier is a Chilean town, municipality and "comuna" located in the Province of Linares, Maule Region. The town lies in the geographical center of the country, some 270 km south of Santiago, 31 km to the northwest of the provincial capital, Linares, and 24 km to the south of Talca, the regional capital. The Pan-American Highway ("Ruta 5 Sur") passes through the comuna of San Javier, touching tangentially the eastern side of the town. A paved road connects San Javier with Colbún, the Colbún dam lake and the Panimávida and Quinamávida hot springs.

Demography

According to recent estimations (2005), the municipality of San Javier has a population of 39,583, of which 19,682 are male and 19,901 are female. About sixty percent of the population is urban and 40% is rural. Between the 1992 census and that of 2002, the population of San Javier grew at a 6.2% rate (.62% annual rate).

Geography

The municipality covers an area of 1,313 km². The eastern - and smaller - part of its territory lies within the fertile, central plain or "depresión intermedia", (Chilean Central Valley) but the extense western part is hilly and somewhat drier, a typical "Cordillera de la Costa" terrain, which requires supplemental irrigation to support its varied cultivations. This area lends itself nicely to wine growing and cereal cultivation. Therefore, San Javier is gifted with some of the better vineyards and quality wines of the bountiful Maule Valley, in the Chile's central valley viticultural regions or appellations.

San Javier is bordered on the west by the "comuna"s of Constitución and Empedrado, (both in Talca province), Cauquenes, (in Cauquenes province), and Villa Alegre; on the north by Pencahue and Maule comunas, in Talca province; on the east, by Yerbas Buenas, Villa Alegre, Linares and Longaví and on the south, by Cauquenes and Retiro. The town lies on the right margin of the river Loncomilla. Located a few km north of San Javier is the wide Maule river, of which the Loncomilla is the main tributary. River Purapel, a regional "anomaly", since it flows eastward in a country where the overwhelming majority of rivers flow in the opposite direction, is a tributary of the Loncomilla.

Geographic Coordinates

* Altitude: 83 mt.
* Latitude: 35° 36' 0S
* Longitude: 71° 42' 0W

Heritage

There are many villages and other smaller, rural entities within the municipality territory; several of them are quite distant from the main urban centers and relatively isolated from the more distorting external cultural influences. Therefore, the "comuna" can boast several villages with well-preserved colonial rural architecture - the criollo legacy - both in the religious as well as the civil domains. Singular examples of this brand of picturesque and bucolic villages, in the comuna, are: Huerta de Maule, Nirivilo, Bobadilla, Caliboro and Melozal. Some of the parish churches in this zone are among the oldest in the Linares diocese and the Maule Region.

Poets

The Maule Region has produced a remarkable number of writers and poets and in consonancy with this legacy, San Javier has been the birthplace of two gifted poets: Raimundo Echeverría y Larrazábal (1897-1924) and Jerónimo Lagos Lisboa (1883-1958).

Local administration

The mayor of San Javier is Mr. Pedro Fernández Chavarri (PDC), and the municipal councillors are the following ones:

* José Zapata Mora: UDI
* Jabra Hadweh: RN
* Jorge Ignacio Silva Sepúlveda: (PDC)
* Aquiles Vergara Murga: (PDC)
* Ronaldo Abraham Flores: PPD
* Francisco Azócar Zubicueta: PS

External links

* [http://maps.google.es/maps?f=q&hl=es&q=San+Javier,+Chile&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=13&ll=-35.584037,-71.736002&spn=0.071339,0.14677&t=h Aerial view of San Javier, Chile with the Loncomilla river to the west and the confluence of the latter and the Maule river, to the north (Google maps)]