Department of Ayacucho


Ayacucho is a department of Peru, located in the south-central Andes of the country. Its capital is the city of Ayacucho. The region was one of the hardest hit by terrorism in the 1980s during the guerrilla war waged by Shining Path known as the internal conflict in Peru.
A referendum was held on 30 October 2005, in order to decide whether the department would merge with the departments of Ica and Huancavelica to form the new Ica-Ayacucho-Huancavelica Region, as part of the decentralization process in Peru. The bill failed and Ayacucho remained an independent department.

Political division

The department is divided into 11 provinces, which are composed of 111 districts.

Provinces

The provinces, with their capitals in parenthesis, are:
  1. Cangallo
  2. Huamanga
  3. Huanca Sancos
  4. Huanta
  5. La Mar
  6. Lucanas
  7. Parinacochas
  8. Paucar del Sara Sara
  9. Sucre
  10. Víctor Fajardo
  11. Vilcas Huamán

    Demographics

Languages

According to the 2007 Peru Census, the language learnt first by most of the residents was Quechua followed by Spanish. The Quechua variety spoken in Ayacucho is Chanka Quechua. The following table shows the results concerning the language learnt first in the department by province:

Gallery