Arica

People have lived where the Azapa and Lluta valleys meet the sea for about 10,000 years. The Chinchorro, sedentary fishing people of this coast, were deliberately mummifying their dead by about 5050 BC — men, women and children alike, their bodies reinforced, modelled with clay and given wigs and pigments — some two thousand years before the Egyptians. Their burials still turn up beneath the city, and in 2021 their settlements and cemeteries in the region were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Spaniards settled here under Captain Lucas Martínez de Begazo in 1541, and by 1545 Arica was the main port for the silver of Potosí, one of the leading harbours of the Spanish Empire. Its wealth drew Francis Drake, Thomas Cavendish and other pirates and privateers. Earthquakes and tsunamis struck repeatedly: one in 1604 forced the town to be rebuilt, and the great earthquake of 13 August 1868 destroyed the church and threw the American warship Wateree far inland. After independence Arica belonged to Peru, which opened a railway to Tacna in 1855.

On 7 June 1880, during the War of the Pacific, Chilean troops stormed the Morro, the last Peruvian defence. The 1929 Treaty of Lima returned Tacna to Peru and left Arica in Chile. From 1953 a free zone, and from 1958 a development board offering tax incentives, brought car assembly plants; General Motors built pickups there until 2008. In the 1980s smelter waste from Sweden was left at a site later surrounded by social housing, causing lasting arsenic poisoning among residents. Arica hosted matches of the 1962 World Cup and became capital of the new Arica and Parinacota Region in 2007.

Arica's identity is that of a border city with roots on both sides. Aymara communities have lived in the region for millennia, and many families keep links with villages in the valleys and the altiplano. The city is also home to much of Chile's Afro-Chilean community, descendants of people enslaved in the colonial era, and to a Chinese Chilean community that arrived as miners and railway workers in the 1890s. Many residents share cultural ties with neighbouring Peru and Bolivia, and people cross daily to Tacna.

Andean music and dance are at the heart of the calendar. The Carnaval con la Fuerza del Sol fills the streets for three days in January or February with dance troupes, and June brings the Semana Ariqueña, which includes the national cueca championship, the regional holiday for the Battle of Arica on 7 June, and the fishermen's processions in the bay for San Pedro on 29 June.

The sea shapes local life. Arica's breaks are known well beyond Chile: the wave called El Gringo hosts surfing and bodyboarding championships, the city held an international surfing contest in 2007, and a leg of the world bodyboarding tour has been held here since 2004. The city also gave its name to the Arica School, after the spiritual teacher Oscar Ichazo held a ten-month training here in 1970.

The 2024 census counted about 242,000 people in the commune of Arica, almost the whole population of the region; about 15 per cent were immigrants, nearly all from elsewhere in South America. The city spreads outward from the Morro into the desert towards the Peruvian border, and the Azapa Valley's year-round farms produce olives, tomatoes, vegetables and citrus.

The port is the economic backbone. Arica serves as a free port for Bolivia and handles a large part of that country's foreign trade, it is the end of an oil pipeline from Oruro, and railways link it to Tacna and La Paz. An industrial park run by the Iquique free zone company stands near the airport. Tourism, from Bolivian families on the beaches to visitors heading for the altiplano, adds to the economy, and cross-border commerce with Tacna is part of everyday life, as residents cross for cheaper doctors, dentists and shopping.

The pace is relaxed and outdoor, with evenings on the beaches and the pedestrian streets. Long-running concerns include the health legacy of the toxic waste site, the scarcity of water in one of the driest inhabited places on Earth, and the city's exposure to earthquakes and tsunamis.

Arica's kitchen draws on four zones — coast, valley, foothills and altiplano. The best-known product is the aceituna de Azapa, the Azapa olive: purple, fleshy and strong-tasting, cured bitter or mild, pressed for oil and mixed into white cheeses with paprika and oregano. The Azapa Valley also grows sweet tomatoes, and the valleys produce passion fruit, guava, mango and tumbo.

The traditional desayuno ariqueño, the Arica breakfast, is marraqueta bread with butter and Azapa olives, served with lemon verbena tea. Seafood is eaten all along the coast, and a local speciality, the copa Martínez, blends raw eggs with ceviche, piure — a strong-flavoured sea squirt — and mixed shellfish; it is named after the owner of the seafood bar who created it.

From the highlands come quinoa, the sweet maize of Socoroma, and chuño, potatoes freeze-dried in the frosts of June and July by a traditional method. The city's Chinese community has made chifa, Chinese-Peruvian cooking, a staple of the centre, and empanada shops serve turnovers with many fillings, cheese among them.