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Puerto Carreno
Puerto Carreno is the departmental capital, and a municipality, of the department of Vichada in the llanos of Colombia.
History
In 1913 the Colombian government created the province (comisaria) of Vichada and it was decided that its capital should be at at the convergence of the Orinoco and Meta rivers where there was a small village known locally as El Picacho. In 1934 the town was renamed after Pedro Maria Carreno, the Colombian Minister of External Relations from 1912 to 1913. The "municipio" (similar to county in the U.S.) was created in 1974. On July 5, 1991, Vichada's status was updated to "departamento" under the Colombian Constitution and Puerto Carreno was ratified as its capital.
The DANE (Colombian government's bureau for statistics) projected Puerto Carreno's municipal population to be around 10,034 for 2005, based on the 1993 Census. There are some Indian tribes within Puerto Carreno's administrative zone as well.
Geography
The area of the municipality is uniformly flat, although there is a very slight rise at the town which gave it its original name. The climate is hot, with heavy rains from April through October.
Economy
Economic activity is based on agricultural and ranching activities, fishing, and mining. There is some international trading activities as Venezuela is just across the Orinoco River.
There is an airport at Puerto Carreno
External links
Puerto Carreno official town (alcaldia) website
Puerto Carreno official municipality website
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Puerto Carreno
