Lo Barnechea

Commune of Lo Barnechea seen from the top of Cerro Dieciocho. The parish church, the Mapocho River and Cerro Alvarado can be seen in the background.

Lo Barnechea has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. Before the Incas, it was occupied by the Llolleo culture and the Bato tradition, and after them,[3] the Aconcagua culture, the Promaucaes, the Incas and later the Spanish occupation.

Its pre-Hispanic inhabitants were called huaicoches (in Mapudungún: waykoche 'people who live in a landslide zone') because of the huaicos or huaycos of the region (in Quechua: wayqu 'stream'). Also called lloclla (in Quechua: lluqlla 'alluvium'), these are violent alluvial floods in which a large amount of material from the slopes is dislodged and dragged by the water downstream to the bottom of the valleys, causing enormous burial sites in its path. In modern scientific terms, according to the Multinational Andean Project, a huayco is known as a debris flow, or debris flow. A huayco is caused by the violent fall of water, which drags mud, stones, trees and anything else in its path. Its origin may be due to an intense rainfall or the overflowing of a river or lagoon at high altitudes.

The town of Lo Barnechea was created in the 19th century. So far, it has resisted conurbation with Greater Santiago.

The DFL 1-3260 of 9 March 1981 established the new commune of Lo Barnechea, from a subdivision of the commune of Las Condes;[4] however, until 1991, it was part of the communal grouping managed by the Municipality of Las Condes. By Decree with Force of Law No. 32-18.992 of 20 May 1991, the Municipality of Lo Barnechea was officially established, the same day as its neighbor Vitacura.[5]

In 2018, the number of registered companies in Lo Barnechea was 10,072. The Economic Complexity Index (ECI) in the same year was 1.01, while the economic activities with the highest Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index were Retail Sale of Underwear and Personal Wear (42.14), Dance Instructors (27.49) and Amusement Parks and Similar Centers Activities (18.79).[7]

According to the 2002 census of the National Statistics Institute, Lo Barnechea spans an area of 1,023.7 km² (395 sq mi) and has 74,749 inhabitants (34,901 men and 39,848 women). Of these, 72,496 (97%) lived in urban areas and 2,253 (3%) in rural areas. The population grew by 49.3% (24,687 persons) between the 1992 and 2002 censuses.[1] The 2006 projected population was 103,376.[8]

The architecture in the area of buildings is very scarce, with a few late colonial style houses located preferably in the so-called Pueblo de Lo Barnechea. As regards the commercial area, there are the shopping centers Portal La Dehesa, Espacio Urbano La Dehesa, Paseo Los Trapenses and Mall Vivo Los Trapenses. Also noteworthy is the large number of mansions and luxury homes that are established in this commune, especially in the sectors of Arrayán, Los Trapenses and La Dehesa, being these of various styles built mainly during the last twenty years and belonging to the so-called "upper class" of the country, making up one of the areas with the highest average housing prices in Chile.

In parallel to the construction of houses and luxury apartments, social housing was developed in Lo Barnechea, in addition to the processes of self-construction of the founding tenants of the town, along with their generations. For the same reason, in the commune of Lo Barnechea we can see a series of contrasts, not only architectural, but also of social character, given that in a few square meters, or crossing a street (Padre Alfredo Arteaga Barros with Comandante Malbec), neighborhoods of high socioeconomic strata can be seen, in opposition to sectors of low social strata, clearly delimited between them.

The commune has a low connection to the interconnected public transport of the city, consequently and being located at one end of the metropolitan area, together with Vitacura it leads the rate of motorization per capita (motor vehicles per inhabitant) in Greater Santiago. It was expected that by 2020, Lo Barnechea will have 3 stations of the Las Condes Tramway, which would give it a historic connection to the Santiago Metro, being currently one of the three communes of Greater Santiago (along with La Pintana and Lo Espejo) that does not have stations of the metropolitan railroad. However, the project was canceled by the authorities for not having the necessary subsidies for its execution.

Lo Barnechea was also part of the Transantiago feeder zone C, together with the districts of Providencia, Las Condes and Vitacura. It is currently served by units 4 and 6 of this transportation system.

There is an elevator on Cerro 18 operated by the Municipality of Lo Barnechea that connects this sector with Los Quincheros Street and the top of the hill, where the Parque de la Chilenidad is located.

In general terms, Lo Barnechea participates in the semi-arid Mediterranean climate that affects the Metropolitan Region, characterized by a prolonged dry season and a winter season, which concentrates annual rainfall.

• Annual rainfall 360 mm
• Average temperature 14 °C
• Average Maximum Temperature 22 °C
• Average Minimum Temperature 7 °C

These climatic patterns present, in this commune, very important variations due to its condition as a foothill area, subjected to the altitude factor. It is estimated that in a mountainous environment, rainfall increases by about 22 mm every 100 m of altitude, while the temperature decreases by about 0.5 °C every 100 m. According to this, being the urban area of the town of Lo Barnechea located at 850 m a.s.l., it receives 65 mm more rainfall than in the commune of Santiago. This varies according to the size of the rural territory of the commune. In the annual distribution of rainfall, and considering the entire mountainous area, when it rains several days in a row, large flows are produced in the riverbeds, which causes flooding by accumulation and its consequent transfer according to slopes (1982-84-87). The impact was regrettable, with loss of life, interruption of activities, damage to infrastructure and equipment, due to the permanence of inhabitants on the banks of the Mapocho River.

In addition to the reality of the Mapocho River and its location, there is a natural climatic event that will have to be taken into account in planning the future population of the Commune.

The incursion of warm winter fronts in 1982 caused a rise in the lower limit of the snowpack, from 1800 to 2400 m above sea level, generating a large increase in the volume of water and sediment runoff, resulting from the melting of snow, which caused saturation and subsequent overflow of the natural and artificial water drainage systems.

The repetition of a similar event, under the current conditions of occupation and urban expansion in Lo Barnechea, could cause even more catastrophic situations, due to the high degree of intervention and modification to which the natural system has been subjected by the construction that has taken place on increasingly higher ground.

• Tyler, Texas, United States[13]
• Guayaquil, Ecuador[note 1]

History

• Huaico
• Huaicoche
• Casa de piedra

Localities

• Los Trapenses

• Pueblo Lo Barnechea
• Corral Quemado (Chile)
• El Arrayán
• La Ermita

Entidades y personas

• Cuerpo de Bomberos de Santiago
• Doña Tina
• Barnechea Fútbol Club
• Pollo al Coñac
• Consuelo Michaeli
• El Mesón de la Patagonia
• Leontina Santibáñez
• Portal La Dehesa
• International School Nido de Águilas

• León Echáiz, René. ÑuÑohue, Historia de Ñuñoa, Providencia, Las Condes, Vitacura y La Reina, Editorial Francisco de Aguirre, primera edición, 1972.
• Piwonka Figueroa, Gonzalo. Las aguas de Santiago de Chile, 1541-1999.

• I. Municipality of Lo Barnechea
• Lo Barnechea Cultural Corporation
• Lo Barnechea Virtual Community
• Lo Barnechea community indicators in the Library of the National Congress of Chile