Tacna

Before the Spanish conquest the Tacna valley was already home to a mix of peoples: local farming communities, who probably spoke the Puquina language, settlers moved there from the Altiplano, and fishing people on the coast known as Camanchacos. Under Spanish rule the village of San Pedro de Tacna belonged to the corregimiento of Arica and became a parish in 1613. Pirate raids, tidal waves and fevers in the port of Arica led the royal treasury and the local governor to move inland to Tacna.

On 20 June 1811 Francisco Antonio de Zela led an uprising against Spanish rule here, one of the earliest in Peru, and in 1828 President José de La Mar declared Tacna the "Heroic City". It was the capital of the short-lived Peru–Bolivian Confederation (1836–1839), and a railway to Arica was built in 1856.

The War of the Pacific ended that prosperity. Weakened by disease among the allied army it hosted, Tacna fell to Chile after the Battle of the Alto de la Alianza on 26 May 1880. The Treaty of Ancón of 1883 placed Tacna and Arica under Chilean administration for ten years, to be followed by a plebiscite that was never held, while Chilean authorities ran a campaign of Chilenisation. Under the Treaty of Lima of 1929 Chile kept Arica and Peru recovered Tacna, which returned on 28 August 1929. Since then the city has grown fast, its duty-free zone making it a rival to Arequipa as the south's main business centre, and it was damaged by the 2001 earthquake.

Few Peruvian cities wear their history so openly. Tacna is known for its strong patriotic identity, and its monuments and place names commemorate independence and the War of the Pacific, from the Parabolic Arch honouring Grau and Bolognesi to the battlefield memorial at Alto de la Alianza. The defining day is 28 August, when a giant Peruvian flag is carried through the streets in the Paseo de la Bandera, a tradition begun in 1901 by tacneños who defied the Chilean ban on Peruvian flags.

The city's best-known son is the historian Jorge Basadre, whose birthplace is now a house museum and whose name was given to the university and the main stadium. The Estadio Jorge Basadre was remodelled for the 2004 Copa América, and the local football club, Coronel Bolognesi, founded in 1929 and named after Francisco Bolognesi, has played in the Copa Libertadores.

Religious life follows the Catholic calendar, with the cathedral at its centre and the festival of the Señor de Locumba each September drawing thousands of pilgrims. The long Chilean period left close everyday ties with Arica: families, shoppers and patients cross the border in both directions, and the city's private clinics serve Chilean as well as Peruvian patients.

The urban area spreads over five districts with an estimated population of about 325,000 in 2020, according to Peru's statistics institute. Growth has created new districts — Alto de la Alianza, Ciudad Nueva and Coronel Gregorio Albarracín Lanchipa — and absorbed part of Pocollay, and the city now reaches south across the plain of Viñani.

Commerce drives the economy. Trade with northern Chile, above all Arica and Iquique, is the main source of income, and the duty-free zone, now known as ZOFRATACNA, supports a large trade in imported goods. The city has a large market for imported goods, with products from Japan and China alongside Peruvian handicrafts. The irrigated valleys grow maize, potatoes, wheat, oregano, alfalfa and grapes for pisco and wine, and dairy farming is important.

Several universities, led by the Universidad Nacional Jorge Basadre Grohmann, give the city a sizeable student population. Water is a constant concern in the desert: the city's drinking water and much of its irrigation come from the Uchusuma canal. Visitors from Arica come for the markets and clinics, and Pocollay is known for its traditional country restaurants.

Tacna's signature dish is picante a la tacneña, a spicy stew of tripe and meat. Other local favourites include ají relleno, a stuffed pepper; charquicán, a stew made with dried meat; arroz con pato, rice cooked with duck; cuy chactado, fried guinea pig; pastel de choclo, a sweetcorn pie; and adobo. The coast supplies ceviche, locos (abalone-like shellfish) with mayonnaise and seafood rice.

Bread and sweets have their own tradition: the crusty pan marraqueta, and roscas and condesas, sweet pastries sold in bakeries. Tacna is one of Peru's designated pisco regions, and the old bodegas of the Valle Viejo, in Pocollay, Calana and Pachía, make pisco, wines and macerations of fruit in pisco, while peach liqueur and peach wine are local specialities.

The city has its own cocktails. The Tacna Sour joins the national pisco sour, and the Mercado Viejo — pisco, evaporated milk and melcocha, a soft sugar candy — was created in 1998 at the Universidad Privada de Tacna. Pocollay, on the city's eastern edge, is known for its traditional restaurants.