Astrea is a municipality and town of the Department of Cesar in northern

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

. Government of Cesar: Astrea

Geography

The municipality of Astrea limits to the north with the municipality of

El Paso El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the seat of El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the 23rd-largest city in the U.S., the s ...

and northwest with Magdalena Department; to the south with the municipality of Chiriguana. It has an extension of 580 km². The average temperature throughout the year is 30 °C. The region is part of the geological Zambrano formation, formed in the

Neogene The Neogene ( ), informally Upper Tertiary or Late Tertiary, is a geologic period and system that spans 20.45 million years from the end of the Paleogene Period million years ago ( Mya) to the beginning of the present Quaternary Period Mya. ...

presenting a gray-greenish

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

History

Founded by a farmer named

Martín Mier Barbosa Martin may refer to: Places * Martin City (disambiguation) * Martin County (disambiguation) * Martin Township (disambiguation) Antarctica * Martin Peninsula, Marie Byrd Land * Port Martin, Adelie Land * Point Martin, South Orkney Islands Aust ...

in 1936 when a group of farmers from the Magdalena Department arrived seeking better pastures. After the creation of the Department of Cesar in 1964 Astrea became a corregimiento of the municipality of Chimichagua. On November 26, 1984 Astrea segregated from Chimichagua and became a municipality of the Department of Cesar by Ordinance 013 of 1984. Cesar 30 Años de Progreso - Gobernación del Cesar (1997). -Page 21-]

Politics

Administrative divisions

;Corregimientos * Arjona * San Pedro * Santa Cecilia * El Vallito

Economy

Ranching A ranch (from es, rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of a farm. These terms are most often ...

and

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

are the main economic activity in the region having the town of Astrea as the main urban center of the municipality. Agricultural products are commercialized in the town such as;

yuca ''Manihot esculenta'', commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively cultivated a ...

sesame Sesame ( or ; ''Sesamum indicum'') is a flowering plant in the genus ''Sesamum'', also called benne. Numerous wild relatives occur in Africa and a smaller number in India. It is widely naturalized in tropical regions around the world and is cu ...

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

and common bean among others.

Culture

Astrea celebrates the ''Día de San Antonio de Pádua'' ( Saint Anthony of Pádua) Day in the corregimiento of Arjona, every year on June 16. Astrea also celebrates a traditional feast honoring the ''Día de San Martín'' (

St. Martin's Day Saint Martin's Day or Martinmas, sometimes historically called Old Halloween or Old Hallowmas Eve, is the feast day of Saint Martin of Tours and is celebrated in the liturgical year on 11 November. In the Middle Ages and early modern period, it ...

) every November 11.

References

External links

Government of Cesar Department: Astrea

Astrea official website

Departamento Nacional de Estadistica - Astrea.
{{Municipalities Cesar Department Municipalities of Cesar Department