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Pichilemu (Mapudungun: Small forest, pronounced [pitʃiˈlemu] ⓘ), originally known as Pichilemo, is a beach resort city and commune in central Chile, and capital of Cardenal Caro Province in the O'Higgins Region. The commune comprises an urban centre and twenty-two villages, including Ciruelos, Cáhuil, and Cardonal de Panilonco. It is located southwest of Santiago. Pichilemu had nearly 20,000 residents as of 2024.
The Pichilemu area was long populated by the indigenous Promaucaes. European-Chilean development began in the mid-sixteenth century, as conquistador Pedro de Valdivia gave Juan Gómez de Almagro the Topocalma encomienda (which included the current territory of Pichilemu) in January 1541. Pichilemu was established as a subdelegation on 16 August 1867, and later as an "autonomous commune" on 22 December 1891, by decree of the President Jorge Montt and Interior Minister Manuel José Irarrázabal. Agustín Ross Edwards, a Chilean politician and member of the Ross Edwards family, planned to develop it as a beach resort on the Pacific Ocean for upper-class Chileans.
Pichilemu is home to five of the National Monuments of Chile: Agustín Ross Cultural Centre and Park; the wooden railway station, Estación Pichilemu; El Árbol tunnel; and the Caballo de Agua. Part of the city was declared a Zona Típica ("Traditional Area" or "Heritage Site") by the National Monuments Council, in 2004.
The city is part of District No. 16 and is in the senatorial constituency of O'Higgins Region electoral division. Pichilemu is home to the main beach in O'Higgins Region. It is a tourist destination for surfing, windsurfing and funboarding.
Tourism is the main industry of the city, but forestry and handicrafts are also important. Pichilemu has many expansive dark sand beaches. Several surf championships take place in the city each year at Punta de Lobos.
Pichilemu was inhabited by Promaucaes, a pre-Columbian tribal group, until the Spanish conquest of Chile. They were hunter-gatherers and fishermen who lived primarily along the Cachapoal and Maule rivers. The remaining Promaucaes were assimilated into Chilean society through a process of hispanicisation and mestisation after the conquest of Chile.
Aureliano Oyarzún, professor of pathology at University of Chile, investigated pre-Ceramic middens from Pichilemu and Cahuil. His book Crónicas de Pichilemu–Cáhuil (Chronicles of Pichilemu–Cáhuil) was published posthumously, in 1957. Tomás Guevara published two volumes of Historia de Chile, Chile Prehispánico (History of Chile, Pre-Hispanic Chile) in 1929, which discusses the indigenous centre of Apalta, the Pichilemu middens, the Malloa petroglyphs, a stone cup from Nancagua, and pottery finds in Peralillo.
José Toribio Medina (1852–1930), who was a writer and historiographer, spent most of his life in Colchagua Province, and completed his first archeological investigations in Pichilemu. In 1908, he published Los Restos Indígenas de Pichilemu (English: The Indigenous Remains of Pichilemu), in which he stated that the Indians that were inhabiting Pichilemu when the Spaniards arrived at Chile were Promaucaes, part of the Topocalma encomienda, given on 24 January 1544, by Pedro de Valdivia to Juan Gómez de Almagro, therefore establishing Pichilemu.
During the colonial and Republican periods, agriculture was promoted by the government. Many Chilean haciendas (estates) were successful during this time, including the Pichileminian Hacienda San Antonio de Petrel. Part of the land where San Antonio de Petrel was created was given by the Captaincy General of Chile to Bartolomé de Rojas y Puebla in 1611, who later acquired more lands in order to establish it. San Antonio de Petrel produced leather, jerky, soles, tallow, and cordovan, as well as other products which would later be exported to Peru, or sold in Santiago and Valparaíso. San Antonio de Petrel was bordered by properties of Laureano Gaete and Ninfa Vargas, and Pedro Pavez Polanco.
The area around Pichilemu was densely populated, especially in Cáhuil, where there are salt deposits that were exploited by natives. Pichilemu has had censuses taken since the 17th century.
In 1872, President of Chile Aníbal Pinto commissioned the corvette captain Francisco Vidal Gormaz to perform a survey of the coast between Tumán Creek and Boca del Mataquito. He concluded that Pichilemu was the best place to construct a ferry. The family of Daniel Ortúzar, inheritors of the hacienda San Antonio de Petrel, constructed a dock in 1875, which served as a fishing port for a few years, and would be decreed as a "minor dock" by President José Manuel Balmaceda in 1887. Homes were built along the dock on what currently is the Daniel Ortúzar Avenue (Avenida Daniel Ortúzar). The name Pichilemu comes from the Mapudungún words pichi (little) and lemu (forest).
During the Civil War of 1891, Daniel Ortúzar and the priest of Alcones were transferred as prisoners from Pichilemu to Valparaíso via the dock, which was later burned. The dock was later reconstructed and used until 1912, but it never reached "port" status.
The inheritors of Lauriano Gaete and Ninfa Vargas, who were proprietors of the land which is currently Central Pichilemu, traced the initial design of the city by dividing the land in plots, defined by engineer Emilio Michón. By decree of President Jorge Montt and his Interior Minister, Manuel José Irarrázabal, the territory was officially established as an "autonomous commune" on 22 December 1891. José María Caro Martínez became the first mayor of the commune in 1894. Caro Martínez held the mayor office until 1905.
Agustín Ross Edwards, a wealthy politician, bought a 300-hectare (740-acre) tract of land, and named it La Posada, in 1885. At the time, it was merely a set of thick-walled barracks.
Agustín Ross turned Pichilemu into a summer resort town for affluent people from Santiago. He designed an urban setting that included a park and a forest of over 10 hectares (25 acres). He transformed La Posada into a hotel, named Gran Hotel Pichilemu, which has since been renamed to Hotel Agustín Ross. He built the Ross Casino (currently a cultural centre), several chalets, terraces, embankments, stone walls, a balcony facing the beach, and several large homes with building materials and furniture imported from France and England. However, Ross was not able to build the dock he had planned for the town. He died in 1926 in Viña del Mar. Agustín Ross' inheritors donated all of his construction (streets, avenues, squares, seven hectares of forests, the park in front of the hotel, the perrons, the balcony, and the terraces) to the Municipality of Pichilemu, on the condition that the municipality would hold them for recreation and public access. The Agustín Ross Casino, constructed in 1905, and the Agustín Ross Park, constructed in 1885, have since become an important part of the city, and have been declared Monumentos Históricos (Historic Monuments) by the National Monuments Council.
After the creation of the Cardenal Caro Province, by decree of General Augusto Pinochet on 3 October 1979, Pichilemu became its capital. The province is named after the first Chilean Catholic Cardinal, José María Caro Rodríguez, who was born in Pichilemu.
Between 2003 and 2009, the municipality of Pichilemu was embroiled in a succession of political and corruption scandals. In March 2003, local businesswoman Lidia Catalán accused mayor Jorge Vargas González of bribery after he demanded two million pesos for operating a bicycle rental service, leading to the Caso Video after Catalán recorded their conversations; Vargas was convicted of bribery in March 2006, receiving a 541-day suspended sentence and a disqualification from holding public office, a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court of Chile in June 2007. Concurrently, municipal councillors filed formal complaints regarding the misuse of municipal health service funds to finance promotional calendars bearing Vargas's portrait, an investigation dubbed Caso Calendarios. Following Vargas' removal in July 2007, councillor Víctor Rojas González assumed the mayoralty, but governance collapsed into greater turmoil in September 2007 under the Caso Parquímetros, when audio recordings revealed municipal authorities soliciting bribes for the town's parking meter concessions; the investigation prompted the arrest of Rojas, former mayor Vargas, and several top officials, causing eighteen leadership successions in the mayor's office over the subsequent two years, including councilors Marcelo Cabrera Martínez (elected mayor in 2008, briefly holding the office) and Hernán Garrido.
Pichilemu was severely affected by the 2010 Chile earthquake and its subsequent tsunami, which caused massive destruction in the coastal zone. On 11 March 2010, at 11:39:41 (14:39:41 UTC), a magnitude 6.9 earthquake occurred 15 kilometres (9 mi) northwest of Pichilemu, killing one person.
Pichilemu is located 126 kilometres (78 mi) west of San Fernando, in the westernmost area of the O'Higgins Region, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. It is within a three-hour drive of the Andes Mountains. It is near the Cordillera de la Costa (Coastal Mountain Range) which rises to 2,000 metres (6,562 ft) in elevation.
The city is bordered by Litueche to the north, Paredones to the south, and Marchigüe and Pumanque to the east. To the west lies the Pacific Ocean. Pichilemu covers an area of 749.1 square kilometres (289.2 sq mi).
Pichilemu is located close to a geological fault (Pichilemu Fault), which is according to reports between the city and Vichuquén at 15 km depth, 40 km in length and 20 km wide. It is not known whether the fault was formed during the March 2010 earthquake or if it was just reactivated.
Although the majority of the forest areas around Pichilemu are covered with pine and eucalyptus plantations, a native Maulino forest (now the Municipal Forest) remains. It contains species such as litres, quillayes, boldos, espinos, and peumos.
The city consists of an urban centre and twenty-two rural villages: Alto Colorado, Alto Ramírez, Barrancas, Cáhuil, Cardonal de Panilonco, Ciruelos, Cóguil, El Maqui, El Guindo, Espinillo, Estación Larraín Alcalde, La Aguada, La Palmilla, La Villa, La Plaza, Las Comillas, Pueblo de Viudas, Quebrada del Nuevo Reino, Pañul, Rodeillo, San Antonio de Petrel, and Tanumé.
Nearby bodies of water (apart from the Pacific Ocean) include the Estero Nilahue, which flows to Laguna Cáhuil, Estero Petrel, which flows to Laguna Petrel, and El Barro, El Bajel, and El Ancho lagoons, the latter of which provides the city with drinking water.
Pichilemu experiences a Mediterranean climate, with winter rains which reach 700 millimetres (28 in). The rest of the year is dry, often windy, and sometimes with coastal fog. Occasionally the city receives winds as high as 150 kilometres per hour (93 mph).
By the 17th century, Pichilemu had 1,468 inhabitants. In 1787, Pichilemu held 1,688 inhabitants, and the population rose to 11,829 by 1895. From there onward, the city's population progressively decreased: 7,787 inhabitants in 1907; 7,424 in 1920; 6,929 in 1930; and 6,570 in 1940. In 1952, the city's population increased to 7,150 inhabitants; however, the 1960 census showed it decreased to 5,724 inhabitants, and to 5,459 in 1970. The number of people in Pichilemu reached 8,844 in 1982, and in 1992, 10,510. As of the 2002 census, the population comprised 12,392 people, and 6,228 households.
The 2002 census classified 9,459 people (76.3%) as living in an urban area and 2,933 people (23.7%) as living in a rural area, with 6,440 men (52.0%) and 5,952 women (48.0%). According to the 2002 Casen survey, 544 inhabitants (4.4%) of the population live in extreme poverty compared to the average in the greater O'Higgins Region of 4.5%, and 1,946 inhabitants (15.7%) live in mild poverty, compared to the regional average of 16.1%.
The National Statistics Institute of Chile has estimated that, as of 2010, 78.96% of the inhabitants in the city were living in an urban area and 21.04% were living in a rural area, with 52.4% men and 47.5% women; the population density was estimated as 19.09 per square mile. In the 2012 census, the population of Pichilemu was 13,916 inhabitants; although earlier estimates put it higher.
Most of the people from Pichilemu are Catholic, as of the 2002 census, 7,611 persons (83.44%), well above the national and regional average (69.96% and 79.08%, respectively); the evangelical population is considerably lower, at only 689 people (7.55%); 361 (3.96%) said they were Atheists or Agnostic individuals, while the remaining 460 (5.04%) are part of other religions. Based on information from the Casen survey, twenty-four persons living in Pichilemu declared themselves as Aymaras in 2006, and in 2009, 390 people said they were part of the Mapuche indigenous ethnic group; the survey revealed no one living in Pichilemu claimed to be either of the Atacameños or of the Rapa Nui indigenous peoples.
Pichilemu, along with the communes of San Fernando, Nancagua, Chimbarongo, Peumo, San Vicente de Tagua Tagua, Las Cabras, Placilla, Chépica, Santa Cruz, Pumanque, Palmilla, Peralillo, Navidad, Lolol, Litueche, La Estrella, Marchihue, and Paredones, is part of Electoral District No. 16 and belongs to the Senatorial Constituency (O'Higgins) of the electoral divisions of Chile.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Pichilemu”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.