Valle del Cauca is Colombia’s third-largest economy and home to world salsa capital Cali. It is one of the most culturally diverse provinces of the country.
The province is located on the Pacific coast and of historic importance for the transport of goods from the Pacific Ocean to the capital Bogota and other inland cities.
Valle is inhabited by some 4.6 million people, making it the third most populated province of Colombia, preceded only by Bogota’s capital district and Antioquia.
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Archaeologists have found evidence of human activity in the region now called Valle del Cauca dating back as far as approximately 12,000 BC. This evidence consists of arrowheads that were found north of Cali.
The first real settlements are assumed to have been erected around 5,000 BC based on evidence that local peoples had reached a level of primitive agriculture and were cultivating corn to feed their communities.
The first distinguishable civilization was formed by people belonging to the “Ilama culture,” who settled north of Cali near the towns of Restrepo and Darien.
The Ilama culture was the first of what later became known as the Calima culture, the common culture of the Valle del Cauca region until the Spanish colonization of Latin America in the 16th century.
Spanish conquistador Sebastian de Belalcazar violently exterminated the local indigenous peoples and founded Cali on July 25, 1536. Other Spanish settlements like Cartago were founded only years later in the north of what is now Valle.
Almost immediately after the Spanish settled in Valle, kidnapped slaves from Africa were put to work on the growing sugar cane plantations to replace the dying locals.
Following Colombia’s independence from Spain in 1819, the newly independent peoples of Great Colombia got engaged in numerous territorial and partisan civil wars. For decades Valle del Cauca was part of the Cauca state that covered Colombia’s entire Pacific coast.
Valle del Cauca as we know today came to exist in 1910. Cali only then became a capital.
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Valle del Cauca’s GDP per sector
GDP per sector (millions of pesos)
Valle del Cauca’s economic growth
Unemployment in Valle del Cauca
Valle del Cauca’s Poverty rate
Valle del Cauca’s ethnic groups
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Cali
Bahia Malaga
Calima lake
Buga
