Puerto Berrío is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

and town in the

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

n department of

Antioquia Antioquia is the Spanish form of Antioch. Antioquia may also refer to: * Antioquia Department Antioquia () is one of the 32 departments of Colombia, located in the central northwestern part of Colombia with a narrow section that borders th ...

. It is part of the

Magdalena Medio Antioquia Magdalena Medio Antioquia is a subregion in Antioquia Department, Colombia. The region comprises six municipalities. The region is determined by its location within the Middle Magdalena Valley which covers the central area of the Magdalena River ...

sub-region.

Geography

Puerto Berrío is located in a region of Antioquia known as the Middle Magdalena (near the

Magdalena River The Magdalena River (, ; less commonly ) is the main river of Colombia, flowing northward about through the western half of the country. It takes its name from the biblical figure Mary Magdalene. It is navigable through much of its lower reaches, ...

). It is bounded on the north by the municipalities of

Yolombó Yolombó is a town and municipality in the Colombian department of Antioquia. It is part of the subregion of Northeastern Antioquia, located 108 km from Medellín. History Yolombó is an indigenous term that comes from the area. In 1535 ...

, Remedios and Yondó, on the east by the department of Santander, on the south by the municipalities of Puerto Nare and Caracolí, and on the west by the municipalities of Caracolí and Maceo. It is some 191 km away from the city of

Medellín Medellín ( ; or ), officially the Special District of Science, Technology and Innovation of Medellín (), is the List of cities in Colombia, second-largest city in Colombia after Bogotá, and the capital of the department of Antioquia Departme ...

, capital of Antioquia. The municipality has an extension of 1,184 km².

History

Puerto Berrio was founded in 1875 by Colombian General Ricardo Maria Giraldo. It became a

in 1881. In 1801,

Alexander von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, natural history, naturalist, List of explorers, explorer, and proponent of Romanticism, Romantic philosophy and Romanticism ...

drew up an official sketch of the place then known as Great Eddy in the region of the today Puerto Berrío. Later, the Cuban engineer Francisco Javier Cisneros, constructor of the Antioquia Railway, selected this same place to construct a port for the department of Antioquia by the

Magdalena river The Magdalena River (, ; less commonly ) is the main river of Colombia, flowing northward about through the western half of the country. It takes its name from the biblical figure Mary Magdalene. It is navigable through much of its lower reaches, ...

, and also establish it as a railroad station. In 1875, the government of Antioquia ordered by decree the official establishment of the town and named it after former governor of Antioquia and General of Colombia Pedro Justo Berrío. Since then Puerto Berrío's development has been tied to the railroad. When the railways extended to

in 1914 Puerto Berrio became an important port for shipments of products going over the Magdalena river, distributing Antioquia products to other main ports over the river and exports to through the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere, located south of the Gulf of Mexico and southwest of the Sargasso Sea. It is bounded by the Greater Antilles to the north from Cuba ...

. In 1925, a fire devastated all the population, with the exception of the facilities of the Railroad. The town went through a reconstruction process to quickly recover. Puerto Berrío became epicenter of the regional commerce and site forced for the transit of load, passengers and tourists. This although economic one lasted until 1963, when '' Railroad of Antioquia '' was nationalized. Due to intensification of the

Colombian armed conflict The Colombian conflict () began on May 27, 1964, and is a low-intensity asymmetric war between the government of Colombia, far-right paramilitary groups, crime syndicates and far-left guerrilla groups fighting each other to increase their i ...

the flow of the economy drastically decreased. In 1991 in an effort to recover the government helped establish an association to recover the navigation. This was created, with constitutional rank, '' the Corporation of the Great river of the Magdalena, '' in order to recover the navigability of the river. Nowadays, it is an intermediate city of great commercial movement, and is considered the '' capital of the Antioquian Mid-Magdalena'', with a history related to

and to '' Railroad of Antioquia ''. Its condition of multimodal port, the possibility of connection with

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish Imperial period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city, capital and largest city ...

department of Santander Santander () is a department of Colombia. Santander inherited the name of one of the nine original states of the United States of Colombia. It is located in the central northern part of the country, borders the Magdalena River to the east, Boya ...

and '' North Coast '' by land, and their airport, has been determining in the development of the region. Majestic '' Hotel Magdalena '' recovered well like witness of more than 125 years of history, and attractive the natural exuberantes, are his more appraised tourist treasures to the date.

Economy

Agriculture Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...

: Cacao,

Maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

Banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing the ...

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, from Brazil, Paraguay and parts of the Andes. Although a perennia ...

Lemon The lemon (''Citrus'' × ''limon'') is a species of small evergreen tree in the ''Citrus'' genus of the flowering plant family Rutaceae. A true lemon is a hybrid of the citron and the bitter orange. Its origins are uncertain, but some ...

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

Milk Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of lactating mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfeeding, breastfed human infants) before they are able to digestion, digest solid food. ...

and derivatives *

Mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

Gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

Logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, trucksFishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment (Freshwater ecosystem, freshwater or Marine ecosystem, marine), but may also be caught from Fish stocking, stocked Body of water, ...

* Informal commerce *

Arts & Crafts The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiat ...

: '' Atarrayas'' and '' Chichorros''.

Celebrations

* Celebrations of the Return and Reign of

Ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

, celebration emblem of the municipality * Celebrations of Virgin of the Carmen *

Festival A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, Melā, mela, or Muslim holidays, eid. A ...

of Cometa * Festival the Night of

Poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

s * Fiestas of

Anniversary An anniversary is the date on which an event took place or an institution was founded. Most countries celebrate national anniversaries, typically called national days. These could be the List of national independence days, date of independen ...

* Festival of

Dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

s and Música Folkloric.

Notable residents

* Juan José Florián, para-cyclist and former paramilitary soldier

Climate

External links

Tourist Antioquia, Puerto Berrío

Municipal mayorship, Puerto Berrío

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Puerto Berrio Municipalities of Antioquia Department