Puerto Gaitán () is a town and municipality in the

Meta Department Meta () is a department of Colombia. It is close to the geographic center of the country, to the east of the Andean mountains. A large portion of the department, which is also crossed by the Meta River, is covered by a grassland plain known ...

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 ...

History

Puerto Gaitán was founded on February 11, 1932, when Venezuelan merchants: Pedro Capella, Ventura Alvarado and Concepción Izanoboco arrived on the banks of the Manacacías River and settled there before the announcement of the provision of a ferry or ferryboat from the Manacacías River to achieve transit between Puerto Carreño and Villavicencio. In this first point there was quite a lot of “majaguillo” tree, which gave it the name of majaguillal, until 1960 when it was elevated to the category of Police Inspection of the municipality of

Puerto López Puerto López, with a population of 12,598, is a fishing village set in an arched bay on the Pacific coast in the Ecuadorian Manabí Province. Puerto Lopéz is the Machalilla National Park headquarters. The main industries include fishing an ...

and was called Manacacías. On November 29, 1969, the Departmental Assembly of Meta erected this population as a municipality with the name of Puerto Gaitán, in honor of the liberal leader

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala (23 January 1903 – 9 April 1948) was a Colombian politician and statesman who was the leader of the Liberal Party. A nationalist, he served as the mayor of Bogotá from 1936–37, the national Education Minister ...

Geography

Location

Pto Gaitan is a municipality located in the

department of Meta Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

. It includes an extensive area of flat structure known as the Savannahs of the Altillanura, whose main articulating axis is the Meta River. The Municipality is an irregular rectangle circumscribed by the Meta River to the north, the Manacacias River and the Yucao River to the west, the Iteviare River to the south and a straight line to the East. It forms the extreme north-east of the Department of Meta, being the most distant Municipality from the departmental capital city Villavicencio.

Hydrography

Rivers Manacacias, Meta, Yucao, Planas, Muco, Guarrojo, Tillaba, and Uva.

Climate

In Puerto Gaitán, the summers are short, warm, and cloudy; the winters are hot, wet, and mostly cloudy; and it is oppressive year round. During the course of the year, the temperature generally ranges from 22 °C to 34 °C, rarely falling below 20 °C or rising above 37 °C. Based on the beach/pool score, the best times of year to visit Puerto Gaitán for hot activities are mid June to mid October and early December to early February.

Political and administrative structure

Territorial organization

The municipality is made up of the neighborhoods of the municipal seat and the inspections of San Pedro de Arimena, Puente Arimena, San Miguel, El Porvenir, Tillaba, Puerto Trujillo, Planas, Rubiales, La Cristalina and Murujuy.

Economy

The economic activities of the municipality are basically subscribed to livestock, medium-scale

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 ...

, trade and fishing is incipient and artisanal industry as well. Livestock occupies the first line in the Municipality in the economic sector. In Agriculture,

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

, banana, cassava and

African palm ''Elaeis guineensis'' is a species of palm commonly just called oil palm but also sometimes African oil palm or macaw-fat. The first Western person to describe it and bring back seeds was the French naturalist Michel Adanson. Jean-Marie Pelt, ...

crops stand out. The practice of fishing also represents a very good source of income and in tourism. The Rubiales oil field is the largest generator of resources for this Municipality, being approximately 90% of the annual budget, but it is a non-renewable resource.

Infrastructure and urban equipment

References

Municipalities of Meta Department {{MetaCO-geo-stub